http://www.laleva.org/eng/2008/04/cnn_helps_autism_debacle_blow_up_in_governments_face.html

Autism - Cut The Crap
by Evelyn Pringle

http://www.opednews.com/

In their public statements, officials within the FDA and CDC, are always claiming that researchers and scientists who conduct studies, not funded by drug companies or the government, are making unfounded claims about a link between thimerosal-laced vaccines and autism, and other neurological disorders, which they claim could lead to reduced vaccine coverage, resulting in preventable outbreaks of disease affecting the entire planet.

I say cut the crap.

Think about it. Why would so many highly respected scientists, researchers and physicians go to such great lengths to concoct bogus studies and issue false reports, in essence putting their professional reputations on the line, if their was no connection? I want these officials to do two things. First I want them to give me one good reason why these professionals would make this up, and two, I want them to give me one logical alternative theory for the current epidemic of disorders.

Lets look at a few of these experts.

Dr Jeffrey Bradstreet, is a practicing physician who treats children with autism and other brain-damage disorders. While in the Air Force, he was trained in toxicology and environmental health. His duties as an Officer included the responsibility for military personnel who had exposure to a wide variety of toxins, including mercury.

Dr Bradstreet has evaluated well over 2000 children with neurological disorders. He also directs a school for children with neurodevelopmental disorders where his responsibilities include supervising occupational therapists, speech and language pathologists, and applied behavioral analysts.

Dr Bradstreet is a Harvard Certified Medical Education Instructor in autism and has written three peer reviewed papers regarding the relationship between thimerosal, developmental disorders and biological markers for Mercury-Susceptibility.

In addition, he has conducted research regarding these disorders and has worked with some of the most highly respected professionals in the country, including Dr Jane El-Dahr of the Tulane University Medical Center; Dr V.K. Singh of the Utah State University Biotechnology Center; the University of Michigan Department of Pharmacology; Dr Vas Aposhian of the University of Arizona; Dr Anne Connolly of the Washington University Hospital; Dr Walter Spitzer of McGill University; the Department of Pediatrics at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School; Dr Jim Adams of the University of Arizona; and Dr Jill James, a former FDA researcher, now with the University of Arkansas, Department of Pediatrics.

Apparently the FDA, CDC, and vaccine makers expect us to believe that this long line of highly respected professionals from Universities all over the country somehow got together and conspired to conduct fraudulent research for decades and then authored 1000s of false reports and other publications.

I do not buy it. What would be the payoff?

Dr Mark Geier is a medical doctor who holds a PhD in genetics and is board-certified in medical genetics and forensic medicine. He was a researcher at the National Institutes of Health for 10 years and was previously a professor at Johns Hopkins University. He has studied vaccines for more than 30 years and has published over 50 peer-reviewed papers on vaccine safety, efficacy, contamination and policy.

He was instrumental in convincing officials to switch from the whole-cell Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis (DTP) vaccine to the safer version (DTaP). In fact, he wrote the article, “The True Story of Pertussis Vaccination:
A Sordid Legacy?” which in 2002, won the first annual Stanley W. Jackson award for the best paper published in the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences during the period of 2000 to 2002.

Dr Geier has made several presentations to the Institute of Medicine on the adverse effects of vaccines including one on thimerosal in 2004. He and his son, David Geier, are the only independent researchers who have ever been permitted to study the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) database of the CDC.

Dr Geier has testified before the US House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform Investigating Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic to critique the Hviid study, conducted in Denmark on autism and thimerosal exposure and he has also addressed the FDA Advisory Committee regarding vaccine safety.

Finally, Dr Geier has testified as an expert witness in about 100 cases before the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in the US Court of Federal Claims.

In one such case, on November 25, 2003, the Special Master French issued an opinion in which he praised Geier’s credentials and vast experience and said in
part:

Dr Geier “ranks high among those who have studied vaccine issues through the medical literature on vaccines, databases, studies, articles and information on vaccine safety and efficacy in vaccine policy.” ...“The tenor of his testimony in this case addressed the importance of statistical databases in providing statistical reliability and validity in interpreting the epidemiology and issues relating to autism and various vaccines. . . . Dr Geier has recently proposed a data-sharing process that would improve the reliability of present statistical data that would include the present VAERS statistical database. It would be helpful in interpreting the epidemiology and issues relating to the autism controversy.”

Give me one good reason why this world renowned scientist would put his professional career on the line by lying under oath, not only in court 100 times, but also before a congressional committee?

The drug makers and government officials have waged an all out attack on this particular expert in attempt to discount his opinions because Dr Geier speaks in term most people understand. He has reported on the staggering statistical numbers showing the rise in brain-damaged kids who were vaccinated with thimerosal compared to the children who received very little mercury, or mercury-free vaccines, and were not injured. When he speaks, people “get it,” and the powers that be know it.

Then there is expert, Dr George Lucier, who in the year 2000, retired from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences where he was Director of the Environmental Toxicology Program and Associate Director of the National Toxicology Program. In that capacity, he was responsible for coordinating toxicological research and testing across federal agencies as well as conducting risk assessments for exposure to toxic substances including mercury. He has authored well over 200 scientific publications involving toxicology, pharmacology and risk assessment, including ten articles on mercury.

In 1998, Dr Lucier was appointed the Chair of the Organizing Committee for the White House Workshop on Scientific Issues Relevant to Assessment of Health Effects from Exposure to Methylmercury. He has presented his opinions on numerous occasions in various forums and for 28 years, he was the co-editor in chief of the prestigious scientific journal, Environmental Health Perspectives.

Why would this guy lie under oath?

Another renowned scientist expressing the same view on thimerosal, is Dr Boyd Haley, who is currently a Professor and Chairman of the Department of Chemistry with a joint appointment in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Kentucky.

He teaches a class on mercury toxicology and has published more than 110 articles in the peer-reviewed literature including the toxic effects of elemental mercury. Since 1989, his laboratory has been conducting research on the relationship between mercury and neurological diseases, and has performed experiments with thimerosal. In 2001, Dr Haley made a presentation on “In Vitro Studies of Thimerosal Toxicity,” to the IOM.

So why would this guy spend 25 year of his life conducting bogus studies, rendering fraudulent results and authoring a 100 dishonest articles?

An expert I consulted during my initial investigation of this issue was Dr David Ayoub, MD, who when asked how certain he was of the link between autism and thimerosal, told me, “I can state that the certainty of the science supporting mercury as a major cause of autism is probably more overpowering than the science behind any other disease process that I studied dating back to medical school.”

Dr Ayoub is the Director of the Prairie Collaborative for Immunization, an organization that is self-funded, which aids organizations, journalists, and legislators obtain accurate information to assist their work. He is also the author of the report, “Pregnancy and the Myth of Influenza Vaccination-Is it safe, is it effective, is it necessary? What the CDC documents reveal.”

When asked why so many scientist were now conducting research Dr Ayoud said, “I think a disease that effects more individuals than AIDS or cancer, in previously normal infants and children, has created a sense of urgency amongst researchers.”

Flu shots with a toxic dose of mercury are still being given to pregnant women and Rh negative shots with thimerosal are still being given to pregnant women. Even though recent studies have shown that lower IQ levels linked to mercury exposure in the womb costs the US $8.7 billion a year in lost earnings potential, according to a study released in February 2005, by researchers at the Mount Sinai Center for Children's Health and the Environment, who combined a number of previous studies to determine hundreds of thousands of babies are born every year with lower IQ associated with mercury exposure.

Lead researcher and pediatician, Leonard Trasande, said annually, between 316,588 and 637,233 infants are born with umbilical cord blood mecury levels linked to IQ loss and about 4% of babies are born with mercury levels between 7.13 and 15 micrograms per liter which at that level, causes an IQ loss of 1.6 points.

The drug makers have been marching their own experts into court so lets look at the credentials of some of their experts to see how they match up with those listed above.

In the case of Vera Easter verses Aventis Pasteur, although Harvard-educated and the author of some 80 peer-reviewed articles, according to his deposition, Dr Philip Wang’s specialty was epidemiology related to antidepressants. Prior to being retained as an expert for the vaccine makers, Dr Wang had not done any evaluations associated with vaccines, had no specific training whatsoever regarding mercury, and had written no articles on the effects of heavy metal exposure.

Dr Wang has never investigated any illness claimed to be associated with heavy metal exposure and has never been asked to do a formal epidemiologic evaluation of the hypothesis that the thimerosal could cause neurological disorders or autism.

He claimed that he did know that the VAERS database existed prior to being retained as an expert, but had never conducted any analysis on the Vaccine Safety Datalink. Dr Wang’s knowledge of vaccines and thimerosal was limited to what he learned in 30 to 35 hours of meetings with defense attorneys and reading the relevant medical literature, most of which was provided by the defense attorneys.

Finally, Dr Wang only offered an opinion on the link between thimerosal and autism and not on the issues relevant to the case relating to other neurological disorders. For some reason, I don’t think Dr Wang would fare too well if called upon to take the stand to disprove the opinions of the many established experts on the plaintiff’s team with their combined decades of research experience in this area of expertise. Another drug maker expert in the case was Dr Chris P Johnson, who in her deposition agreed that, prior to the case, her experience with mercury poisoning cases was zero. She has had no experience related to mercury or its neurotoxic effects and conceded that she was not an expert on mercury or the effects of mercury exposure on the human body.

I hardly think Dr Johnson is a match for the experts above. In fact I think it would be grossly unfair to even throw this gal in the ring with the other heavyweights. I guess it just goes to show how much humiliation some people are willing to endure to make a buck.

Partnerships Between Industry and Regulatory Officials

In reaching decisions, officials within regulatory bodies seem more concerned about the impact of their decision on global vaccination policies than making an unbiased appraisal of the scientific evidence. In reviewing statements by these agencies, people need to consider the inherent conflicts of interest between the CDC, charged with investigating medical issues; the FDA, charged with regulating vaccines; the Institute of Medicine (IOM), which examines policy issues; and the vaccine manufacturers. After an on-going investigation of several years, the Mercury in Medicine Report was published on May 21, 2003 by the Subcommittee on Human Rights and Wellness of the Committee on Government Reform, and included testimony from numerous experts. The report rendered a number of specific findings.

Most significant was its statement that, “The CDC in general and the National Immunization Program are particularly conflicted in their duty to monitor the safety of vaccines, while also charged with the responsibility of purchasing vaccines for resale as well as promoting increased immunization rates.”

The report went on to say that the CDC due to its “biases against theories regarding vaccine-induced autism,” had chosen to fund researchers “who also worked for vaccine manufacturers to conduct population-based immunologic studies. . .” But most importantly, it identified Thimerosal as the culprit in plain language and in no uncertain terms:

“Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is directly related to the autism epidemic. 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 and the sharper eyes of infant exposure to this known neurotoxin. The public health agencies’ failure to act is indicative of institutional malfeasance for self protection and misplaced protectionism of the pharmaceutical industry.”

The CDC’s decision to promote the publication of research supportive of the vaccine industry to refute this report by a congressional committee, demonstrates just how far it will go to support its partners in crime.

Blatant evidence of this partnership can be found in a CDC plan to promote flu vaccine sales which detailed a “7 step recipe for generating interest in, and demand for, flu (or any other) vaccination.” The document discusses the “best recipe” that would foster interest and demand, including use of terms like “very severe,”“more severe,” and “deadly” to “motivate behavior” and increase sales. For any doubters, this evidence should confirm that the interests of the CDC and the industry are one and the same.

In addition, numerous articles published in medical journals between 2001 to 2004, were quoted as key studies relied upon by the Institute of Medicine, which as it turns out, were written by authors and researchers with direct conflicts of interest and real biases in favor of claiming that thimerosal did not cause injuries or autism. Many of the conflicts were not revealed by the authors at the time the articles were written in direct violation of policy rules pertaining to medical journals.

For instance, one article relied upon by the IOM, although not a population study, was Pichichero et al. Mercury concentrations and metabolism in infants receiving vaccines containing Thimerosal: a descriptive study, published in Lancet in 2002.

Pichichero did not declare any conflicts, despite the Lancet’s strict policy requiring that conflicts be disclosed. However, in a subsequent New York Times article, Pichichero admitted that he had done work for Lilly and other drug companies. But a fact that must have slipped his mind was that in an earlier article in American Family Physician, Pichichero had declarated:

The author has received research grants and/or honoraria from the following pharmaceutical companies:
Abbott Laboratories, Inc.; Bristol Myers Squibb Company; Eli Lilly & Company; Merck and Co.; Pasteur Merieux Connaught; Pfizer Labs; Roach Laboratories; Roussel-Uclaf; Schering Corporation; SmithKlineBeecham Pharmaceuticals; Upjohn Company; Wyeth-Lederle.

In defending thimerosal, officials will often refer to the World Health Organization as a body that has found it safe. Well in a June, 2001 WHO report, the agency itself refers to vaccine manufacturers as a full and equal “partner.” When the WHO was worried that regulations had affected drug maker’s costs, it stressed the need to get them to stay in the market, and even proposed a “communication strategy that would take account of public concern about adverse effects of vaccines.”

So, in a subsequent WHO meeting on April 15-16, 2002, a decision was made to “lobby Ministry of Health and senior regulators” on the thimerosal issue and to “develop a strong advocacy campaign to support the ongoing use of thiomersal.“ It can readily be seen that the WHO has similar reasons to those of the CDC to support the industry’s position.

As thimerosal containing vaccines continue to be shipped to countries all over the world, its becoming more and more apparent that these cozy “partnerships” wield a considerable amount of power when it comes to making decisions related to vaccine safety.

Who Knew What And When

The well-documented sordid history of thimerosal, including the continuing misrepresentations by its inventor, Eli Lilly, confirms that the product should never have been used in childhood vaccines, and should have definitely been removed prior to the doubling of the content that resulted from the addition of the HIB and Hepatitis B vaccines in the late 1980’s to mid-90’s.

Mercury in vaccines was tested and shown to be lethal many times over the past 40 years. In May of 1967, an article was published in Applied Microbiology, titled “Enhanced Toxicity for Mice of Pertussis Vaccine When Preserved with Merthiolate.” The abstract states:
Pertussis vaccines preserved with 0.01% merthiolate (thimerosal) are more toxic for mice than unpreserved vaccines prepared from the same parent concentrate containing the same number of organisms.

In this study, twenty mice were injected with a vaccine with no thimerosal and none died. 30 others were injected with the same vaccines, plus thimerosal, and 5 died. The article stated that “it would not be surprising if injection of this vaccine influenced the susceptibility of the mouse towards a mercurial preservative.“ The authors also noted that “other laboratories” had observed toxicity of final lots of preserved vaccine when the vaccines themselves were “atoxic or only slightly toxic.”

In 1972, Lilly received an article that confirmed that thimerosal had caused 6 deaths when too much of it had been used, which said: “The symptoms and clinical course of the 6 patients suggests subacute mercury poisoning.”

In 1975, autopsies on squirrel monkeys treated with thimerosal-containing nose spray, determined that mercury accumulated in the brain “which may represent a potential hazard in the chronic use of thimerosal as a preservative in products intended for human use.”

By the late 1970’s, vaccine companies realized the need to remove thimerosal because of its poisonous effects. In an October 12, 1979 memo, Merck scientists discussed the “potential problem” of having mercury in its flu and meningococcal vaccines, as well as the Hepatitis B vaccine that was under development and asked: “Should a program of replacement be initiated now to guard against any spontaneous rally to avoid its (thimerosal) use in injectables?”

This memo proves that the industry knew about the dangers long before the mercury-loaded Hib and Hep B vaccines were added to the schedule in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

In 1986, an article titled, “Organic Mercury Compounds and Their Toxicity,” noted that thimerosal had caused problems and stated that it was “now accepted that multidose injection preparations are undesirable, and preservatives should not present in unidose preparations.“

In the early 1990’s, the level of thimerosal in vaccines increased drastically, and in many cases doubled. The drug companies knew that adding 3 or four HIB vaccines and as many as 3 Hep B shots would substantially increase the level of mercury injected into infants at a critical period of brain development.

We now know that by 1991, Merck absolutely knew that the increase was harmful. A 1991 internal memo, recently revealed by the LA Times, concluded that exposure in infants within the first six month of life could be 87 times the level determined safe. The memo‘s damning revelations said:

For babies: the 25 ug of mercury in a single 0.5 ml dose and extrapolated to a 6 pound baby would be 25 times the adjusted Swedish daily allowance of 1.0 micrograms for a baby of that size. The total mercury burden in a baby is unknown, but it has been stated that the blood level of a newborn may exceed that of the mother. If eight doses of thimerosal-containing vaccine was given in the first six months of life (3 DTP, 2 HIB, and 3 Hepatitis B) the 200 micrograms of mercury given, say to an average size of 12 pounds, would be about 87 times the Swedish daily allowance of
2.3 micrograms for a baby of that size.

In the memo even acknowledged that “the best way to go is to switch to dispensing the actual vaccines without adding preservatives.” However, it went on to say that while this was the best solution, there was “a cost consideration the head of Health Services has to consider. Several large ampoules or bottles are more expensive than a smaller number of larger packages.”

So in essence, this Merck memo proves that by 1991, vaccine makers knew that they were injecting poison into infants and decided that profits were more important than the country’s most precious asset, an entire generation of children.

The vaccine makers are fighting hard against the removal of thimerosal for two reasons. The first is the usual suspect, greed. But the second reason is now higher on their list. The industry knows that if thimerosal were to be completely removed from all vaccines tomorrow, the public would not be able to ignore the corresponding decline, not only in cases of autism, but in the epidemic of all the strange disorders that have engulfed the public school system in all 50 states over the past 15 years. The decline is already happening in California, one of the first states to ban thimerosal.

In attempt to confuse the issue, officials have tried to avoid any discussion of the evidence establishing an association between mercury and a host of other neurological disorders.

In addition to autism, the epidemic includes attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADD/ADHD) and speech or language delay and each has its own spectrum of symptoms. For example, autism is characterized by impairments of social interaction, communication, and behavior. ADD/ADHD is typified by persistent patterns of inattention and/or hyperactivity. Speech and language delay are characterized by sensory and auditory processing disorders impacting on communication. See Immunization Safety Review, Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines and Neurodevelopmental Disorder, IOM 2001.

Officials should quit using scare tactics to infer a threat to the vaccine program as a whole. The issue is not the vaccines, its the preservative that has to go. And its not just contained in childhood vaccines. Thimerosal is in other products given to unsuspecting victims.

The flu vaccine is probably the most commonly used product that still contains the preservative, but there are other shots that have it as well. For instance, I just found out that a shot given to stop contractions in pregnant women who go into labor too early contains thimerosal.

I traveled to Wisconsin to be sure that I would be in the hospital at the time of delivery to protect my first grandson from any nurse with a needle looking to stick him with a Hep B vaccine. A few days ago, my daughter began to have early contractions. The doctor told her not to worry, to just come in for a check up. She came home with the great news that a shot stopped the contractions, only to find out a few hours later that the miracle shot may have contained thimerosal.

That was three days ago and I am still in shock!

While adverse effects of vaccines to a small number of susceptible individuals might seem justified in the interest of the greater good to mankind, the brain-injuring effects arising as a result of the government forcing parents to inject a known poison into their precious children should not be tolerated.

Evelyn Pringle epringle05@yahoo.com The author is a columnist for Independent Media TV and an investigative journalist focused on exposing corruption in government

American Academy of Pediatrics Unleashes Hysterical Attack on Fictional Television Show about Vaccine / Autism Link
by Mike Adams

(NaturalNews) The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has gone ballistic over a fictional television program airing on ABC that shows a family successfully suing a vaccine manufacturer for their child's autism. Not satisfied to push dangerous vaccines onto children in the real world, the AAP now feels it must also control the thoughts and ideas of people living in fictional worlds by pressuring television networks to censor their programming. Only television shows that conform to the pro-chemical, pro-pharmaceutical, pro-vaccine point of view will be tolerated by the AAP, it seems.

A letter signed by AAP President Renee Jenkins warns ABC that it will "will bear responsibility for the needless suffering and potential deaths of children from parents' decisions not to immunize based on the content of the episode." This is tantamount to saying that ABC's television program will kill children! The AAP letter goes on to state the usual conventional medicine propaganda line that there is "no evidence" of any link between vaccines and autism.

Of course, that's only true if you limit your "evidence" to whatever dogmatic beliefs are currently being circulated in the minds of the promoters of western medicine. To these doctors, there's no such thing as a dangerous injection, drug or synthetic chemical! It's all safe for children: Mercury fillings, chemical fluoridation of water supplies, 37 different vaccine injections, antibacterial soap in children's toothpaste... need I go on? The American Academy of Pediatrics seemingly hasn't met a corporate-sponsored chemical it didn't like.

Why the AAP has no credibility
This is the same association, you have to remember, that pushes ADHD drugs like Ritalin onto children. Children who show "symptoms" of ADHD (a fictitious disease invented by the drug companies) should not be treated with nutrition, according to the AAP. They should be treated with amphetamines that used to be sold on the street as "speed." (ADHD drugs are amphetamines.) Is this a children's health organization that parents should really trust?

Consider this: The 2002 cover of the American Academy of Pediatrics breastfeeding guide featured the name and logo of Ross Products, the company that makes Similac, the top-selling brand of infant formula. I recently picked up a bottle of Similac "Go & Grow" formula. The front of the product claims, "Balanced nutrition for older babies. Improved formula!" I checked the back of the product and was shocked to see the ingredients, which listed the following as the first five ingredients:
42.6% corn syrup solids, 14.7% soy protein isolate, 11.5% high oleic safflower oil, 10.1% sugar (sucrose) and 8.4% soy oil
That's over 50% sugar! Don't believe these ingredients? I took a picture to prove it: http://www.naturalnews.com/gallery/articles/similacingredients.jpg

Let me go on the record right here, right now, and say that any doctor or medical organization that recommends a diet of corn syrup, soy protein, sugar and cheap oils to an infant should be arrested for malpractice. To think that the American Academy of Pediatrics actually promoted this company tells you everything you need to know about the AAP. The organization, in my opinion, is a disgrace to medicine. Its remarkable lack of nutritional knowledge demonstrates the organization's complete lack of credibility when it comes to talking about children's health. In my opinion, the AAP is nothing more than a Big Business front group that pushes junk infant formula products and dangerous medicines onto unsuspecting parents and children.

But intelligent parents know better. Reasonably-minded persons are increasingly questioning the sanity of injecting children with vaccines containing mercury preservatives, and they're tired of being lied to by drug companies, the FDA and medical "front groups" that are really nothing more than propaganda organizations for Big Pharma. Did you know that the entire medical community calls vaccines "mercury free" even when they still contain trace amounts of mercury? It's just one of many lies told to the public about vaccines.

The links between vaccines and autism is real
As anyone who has been paying attention already knows, autism rates have skyrocketed in direct correlation with the rise in vaccines. Take any nation in the world, and you'll find that autism rates are near-perfectly correlated with vaccine rates. The conventional medical community acknowledges that autism rates are extremely high in the United States among those children who are vaccinated, but they insist there's "no proof" of any causal link between the two.

Sure there isn't. They're not looking for any. It's like asking Big Tobacco to find proof that cigarette smoke causes lung cancer and heart disease. The idea that vaccines might be unsafe goes against their whole distorted belief system of pushing more and more injections onto infants and children -- all while enriching the profits of powerful drug companies. You, the consumer, are not supposed to pay attention to the inconvenient truths that children are being killed by vaccine shots. Two more young girls just died last week after receiving the Gardasil HPV Vaccine shots, and the body count will continue to rise as long as children are subjected to these radically unsafe substances.

The reason the AAP has so viciously attacked ABC for airing a fictional television show on this topic is because the AAP recognizes the danger in inviting parents to wake up and start asking commonsense questions about the safety of vaccines. If there's one thing conventional medicine absolutely does not want to see, it's a mass revolt against the synthetic chemicals that pay their salaries and keep them in power. Just like any dynasty that exercises control over its population, the AAP doesn't want the commoners questioning the King. In fact, the peasants cannot even be allowed to read, view or think thoughts that might question the declarations of the King.

But the truth, of course, is that the Emperor has no clothes. The pro-vaccine push is more about pseudoscientific marketing than scientific medicine. It's about corralling people into a belief system, not about actually saving their lives. Any intelligent review of the literature on the safety of vaccines and the history of modern civilization will reveal, for example, that the sharp drop in infant mortality over the last one hundred years was due almost entirely to public health measures (better hygiene, better sewer systems, cleaner water, etc.). The vaccine-pushing industry would love to take credit for these improvements, but they really just stem from basic improvements in the hygiene practices of the nation.

How vaccines harm children -- even when they work!
The vaccine-pushing doctors in this country would also like to take credit for "saving the lives of children" by protecting them from diseases like the measles, mumps and chicken pox. And yet, even here their logic is flawed: Vaccinating children against these non-fatal diseases actually weakens the immune system, denying it the ability to expand its function via an adaptive response to the chicken pox, for example. Vaccines actually impair future immune function, causing that child to be increasingly susceptible to future infectious diseases. A truly healthy child is one whose health is supported through wise nutritional therapies and is exposed to the live chicken pox virus. After a few days of uncomfortable symptoms, the immune system "learns" to overcome the infection, and by doing so, it expands its ability to more strongly protect the body from future infections.

Vaccines deny the child this experience, handing them a dead chicken pox virus combined with a stew of toxic chemicals. The result? An immune system that learns very little. It's like giving a child the answers to a math test before he takes the test, and then declaring him to be a brilliant math student when he gets an "A".

Pharmaceutical-trained physicians don't understand (or even acknowledge) the important role of the immune system in experiencing and overcoming infectious disease, and they think that all health must be accomplished through intervention. Essentially, modern doctors don't trust Mother Nature, and they have no faith in the ability of the body to keep itself healthy. They do trust, however, in Big Pharma's chemicals, and they believe that virtually no chemical is too dangerous to inject or implant into the bodies of children.

Notice, for example, that most pediatricians don't even speak out against the toxic mercury used in dental fillings? To them, mercury is perfectly safe to put into the mouths of children. So why on Earth would we expect these people to be alarmed over mercury being injected into the bodies of those same children?

Vaccine-pushing pediatricians are a threat to the health of children
Conventionally-trained pediatricians, it's sad to say, are the real threat to the health and safety of our children. While they're the ones blaming ABC for airing a television show, the truth is that they are the ones directly responsible for the deaths and suffering of countless children and families. The brand of scientifically-retarded medicine practiced by modern pediatricians today is solely based on financial motivations and power struggles (as in, who controls the health of the population). For every vaccine shot given to an innocent child, there's a profit. And the reason the industry is attacking ABC over this television program is because every shot that's avoided is a loss of that profit. This is about money, not public health. Want proof? Consider this:

What do you think would be happening today if an herb (instead of a vaccine) taken by millions of children was correlated with a huge rise in autism? The "scientific" community would be all over that herb, airing accusations of toxicity, calling for its ban, and the FDA would no doubt immediately ban the herb and criminalize anyone importing it or selling it. But what happens when it's a vaccine instead? The medical community defends it, insists there's no evidence of harm, and attempts to censor television shows while pushing its propaganda to the hilt.

Do you see the double standard at work in conventional medicine today? It stems from the unstated assumptions of our "drugs and surgery" system of medicine today: That all natural medicines are dangerous unless proven safe, and all drugs are safe unless proven dangerous.

Vaccines, then, are safe until someone proves them dangerous (at least according to those docs who keep pushing them). And nobody from the conventional world of medicine is really looking for hard for evidence of their danger. Furthermore, if someone from outside the realm of conventional medicine finds evidence of the harm of vaccines, their evidence will be rejected on the grounds that those people aren't part of the "recognized medical community." This is how these medical types circle the intellectual wagons and protect the status quo while rejecting any new evidence that goes against whatever "scientific" positions they've already announced are true.

The safety of vaccines cannot be questioned -- EVER! -- because the system of medicine practiced today depends on those vaccines as its primary myth-carrier. What myth is that? The myth that human health requires chemical intervention, and only specially trained doctors are smart enough to know what the body really needs. Mother Nature is an idiot, these doctors think, and they're determined to inject every child in the world with dangerous substances just to prove themselves right.
The arrogance is nothing short of astonishing.

Spread the word
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Vaccines : Untested, Unsafe and Unnecessary.

(c) Dr Leo Rebello & Jagannath Chatterjee ,

(Published in Medical Journal "Homoeo a' fair", December 2006)

Presented personally to Swami Ramdevji on 01.01.2007

http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/ed-letters.htm

The link between autism and childhood vaccinations
Heather O'Brien's letter "Flu shots and autism" (Saturday) should be cause for national alarm when she writes that a 6-month-old baby receiving the recommended flu vaccine for this year will receive mercury levels that can be handled only by someone weighing 275 pounds according to the Environmental Protection Agency's standards.

 Six years after the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration all recommended that vaccine makers eliminate the mercury-based neurotoxin thimerosal because of the potential for neurological damage, it is still in 90 percent of the flu vaccine for this year.

 Dr. Kenneth Stoller, a Santa Fe pediatrician and assistant professor of åpediatrics at the University of New Mexico, addressed the State Pharmacy Board of New Mexico on Nov. 14 and told the board that "giving a three-year-old child the flu vaccine will raise their blood level of organic mercury beyond what the CDC has defined as a chemical poisoning."

During the past 20 years, the autism rate has gone from one in 10,000 to one in every 166 children. Furthermore, one in every six schoolchildren has a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder or some other learning disability. This increase has directly coincided with the increase in mercury-containing vaccines in the childhood schedule. The best our federal health agencies can tell us is that these numbers are all because of "better diagnosing." These agencies continue to deny that the neurological disorders are in any way connected to the increased use of mercury.

The vaccine program is truly the sacred cow of health care, and to challenge safety claims requires a great deal of courage. Too many of those who should have had the best interests of our children at the center of their professional work sought primarily to promote the interests of the drug companies. Our federal health agencies are rampant with hundreds of conflict-of-interest waivers for direct financial ties to the vaccine makers.

    ANNE MCELROY DACHEL
    Media relations coordinator
    National Autism Association
    Chippewa Falls, Wis.
 

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles
/2005/07/01/autism_mercury_and_politics/

Autism, mercury, and politics
By Robert Kennedy Jr.
July 1, 2005
THE BOSTON GLOBE

MOUNTING EVIDENCE suggests that Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative in children's vaccines, may be responsible for the exponential growth of autism, attention deficit disorder, speech delays, and other childhood neurological disorders now epidemic in the United States.

Prior to 1989, American infants generally received three vaccinations (polio, measles-mumps-rubella, and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis). In the early 1990s, public health officials dramatically increased the number of Thimerosal-containing vaccinations without considering the cumulative impact of the mercury load on developing brains.

In a 1991 memo, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the fathers of Merck's vaccination programs, warned his bosses that 6-month-old children administered the shots on schedule would suffer mercury exposures 87 times the government safety standards. He recommended that Thimerosal be discontinued and complained that the US Food and Drug Administration, which has a notoriously close relationship with the pharmaceutical industry, could not be counted on to take appropriate action as its European counterparts had. Merck ignored Hilleman's warning, and for eight years government officials added seven more shots for children containing Thimerosal.

Mercury is a known brain poison, and autism rates began rising dramatically in children who were administered the new vaccine regimens. A decade ago the American Academy of Pediatrics estimated the autism rate among American children to be 1 in 2,500. Today, the CDC places the rate at 1 in 166, or 1 in 80 boys. Additionally, one in six children is now diagnosed with a related neurological disorder.

In 2000, the CDC met with pharmaceutical companies and the FDA in secret to review its findings linking Thimerosal with the dramatic rise in neurological illnesses. According to transcripts, participants were alarmed about the undeniable links between the Thimerosal and widespread brain damage in children. Dr. Bill Weil told the group, ''You can play with [the results] all you want. They are statistically significant." Dr. Richard Johnston admitted he feared his grandchild getting a Thimerosal-containing vaccine. But the group was most concerned with keeping the findings secret. ''Consider this embargoed information," said Dr. Roger Bernier, a senior director at the National Immunization Program, at the meeting's close. The CDC now says it has ''lost" the data that supported the crucial study and has persistently defied congressional requests and federal law requiring it to open up the federal Vaccine Safety Database to scientists and the public.

Numerous animal, DNA, epidemiological, and other studies point to Thimerosal as a culprit in America's epidemic of neurological disorders. Autistic children have been shown to have higher mercury loads than nonautistics, and there have been reports of significant improvements in some brain-injured children by removing mercury from their brains. Most of the symptoms of autism are similar to the symptoms of mercury poisoning. Scientists have been able to induce autism-like symptoms in mice by exposing them to Thimerosal. A recent study by an FDA scientist, Dr. Jill James, found that many autistic children are genetically deficient in their capacity to produce glutathione, an antioxidant generated in the brain that helps remove mercury from the body.

Government health agencies who green-lighted Thimerosal have turned a blind eye to the hundreds of studies linking Thimerosal to a wide range of neurological disorders and joined the pharmaceutical industry to gin up a series of flawed European studies to exonerate Thimerosal. Those studies examined children exposed to a tiny fraction of the Thimerosal given to American kids and took advantage of the autism spike that resulted from deceptive data-gathering in Scandinavia to argue that autism rates are unrelated to Thimerosal use.

Drug makers wary of liability reduced Thimerosal in most children's vaccines in recent years, but the preservative remains in flu shots, tetanus boosters, and over-the-counter drugs. Mercury-laced vaccine stocks were given to American children until the end of 2003.

Government officials who continue to champion Thimerosal should recognize that this is not just a theoretical exercise in bureaucratic face-saving. Their wrong-headed defense of Thimerosal safety in the face of overwhelming science is discouraging testing of promising treatments which may be effective. They are depriving vulnerable populations from being identified to avoid Thimerosal. They also cannot escape responsibility for their failure to warn international health agencies and governments who, based upon American assurances, are now injecting the developing world's children with this brain-killing chemical.

Robert Kennedy Jr. is senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
 

Vaccinating For Profit - From Cradle to Coffin
February 2, 2006. By Evelyn Pringle


Due to the flooding of special education classrooms, along with the rising medical costs of treating injured children, local taxes will soon go through the roof, at which time the public will be forced to face the unthinkable truth about the poisoned generation.

And when that happens, government officials had better not even think about trying to feign ignorance because parents, scientists, and medical experts have been screaming about the epidemic in vaccine injuries, from one end of the country to the other, since the 1990s, and the fact is that lawmakers knowingly allowed it to happen.

Over the past twenty years, our government has facilitated a nationwide experiment on our country's youngest citizens via the Mandatory Childhood Vaccine Schedule, and the tragic results of the experiment can be equally credited to the joint efforts of compromised regulatory officials and politicians, and the pharmaceutical industry that stood to make billions.

In a perverse twist of fate, the vaccine program has evolved into a grand profiteering scheme, second only to the military industrial complex's war on terror fiasco. Instead of prevention, the program has resulted in an epidemic of serious health problems for an entire generation of children and at the same time, produced an infinite market expansion for the sale of other prescription drugs, for the scheme's developers.

The start of the epidemic can be traced to the late 1980s, when public health officials dramatically increased the number of vaccines, which contained the mercury-based preservative thimerosal, without taking into consideration the impact of the cumulative mercury load on developing brains of infants.

Once the mercury poisoning was discovered by the FDA in 1999, vaccine-makers claimed they were eliminating thimerosal from vaccines but they never recalled the vaccines already on the market and children continued to receive mercury in vaccines for several more years. Even today, the flu vaccine recommended for 6-month-old babies and pregnant women still contain a full dose of thimerosal.

Instead of ordering drug companies to get the preservative out of all vaccines, Congressional Republicans and President George W Bush spent much of the past 3 years working on strategies to give the pharmaceutical industry protection against lawsuits from vaccine injured children. A handful of shameless Congressional Republicans remained lurking around in the shadows for years, just waiting for the right moment to attach the protective provision to some "anti-terror" spending bill until they succeeded in December 2005.

Before the age of two in this country, children receive at least 20 injections involving twelve diseases. By the time they reach first grade, they have had at least 24 vaccinations, if they are in compliance with the CDC's 2005 Immunization Schedule.

For good reason, many parents do not want their children to receive 24 injections for diseases they have never heard of. However, government officials use every trick in the book to force them to inject these poisonous concoctions into their children, including economic sanctions for refusing to comply.

Refusing vaccination can result in citizens being denied enrollment in daycare, elementary school, and college; denial of health insurance; denial of employment; and denial of federal and state benefits for poor children including cutting off medical care under Medicaid, and food, under the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program.

Medical professionals have been trying to get lawmaker to take notice of the health problems caused by vaccines since the 1990s. On June 14, 1999, Jane Orient, MD, Executive Director of the Associating of American Physicians and Surgeons, testified before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources of the Committee on Government reform and said:

"Striking increases in chronic illnesses have occurred in temporal association with an increase in vaccination rates," she said. "Asthma and insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, causes of lifelong morbidity and frequent premature death, have nearly doubled in incidence since the introduction of many new, mandatory vaccines."

"There is no explanation for this increase," Orient added.

"Even more alarming," she told lawmakers, "is the huge increase in reports of autism and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, with devastating, life-long impacts."

"Measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis B, and the whole panoply of childhood diseases are a far less serious threat," Orient warned, "than having a large fraction (say 10%) of a generation afflicted with learning disability and/or uncontrollable aggressive behavior because of an impassioned crusade for universal vaccination."

About 3 years later, across the country on the West Coast, Barbara Loe Fisher, President of the National Vaccine Information Center, testified before the California Senate Committee on Childhood Immunization Mandates: Politics vs Public Health on January 23, 2002. Fisher acknowledged that the CDC, and American Academy of Pediatrics, vigorously deny that the vaccines could have anything to do with more children being chronically ill.

“Yet, the haunting question remains,” she said, “if we have wiped out polio and almost eliminated measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough and other childhood diseases with vaccines - why are so many of our children stuck on sick?”

“Why are our special education classrooms so crowded that we can’t find enough money or train teachers fast enough to care for these learning disabled, hyperactive, autistic, asthmatic, diabetic, emotionally disturbed, sick children?” Fisher asked.

Since 1982, she charged, “the numbers of American children with learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder and asthma have doubled; diabetes has tripled; and the incidence of autism has reached epidemic proportions, increasing 200 to 600 percent in every state, marking a staggering 3400 percent increase in the prevalence of autism in our children.”

Scientist have also been warning lawmakers about the vaccine injuries. Dr Mark Geier, holds a PhD in genetics, and was a researcher at the National Institutes of Health for10 years. He has studied vaccines for over 30 years. Dr. Geier and his son, David Geier, are the only independent researchers who have gained access to the Vaccine Safety Datalink database controlled by the CDC, to conduct studies on the connection between vaccines and the epidemic in neurological problems.

In a March 22, 2003 letter to Senator Hillary Clinton, the Geiers reported: “we have concluded in our studies that a causal relationship exists between mercury from thimerosal in childhood vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders.”


“Our best estimates are that the thimerosal contributed to about 75% of the cases of neurodevelpmental disorders while the MMR contributed to about 15%,” they said. “The remaining 10% of the cases were related to mercury in Rhogam, a shot given to Rh-negative women, and to other sources of neurotoxicity.”

On June 18, 2004, Representative Dave Weldon (R-FL), a doctor by calling, was on the floor of Congress waving red flags, and literally begging Congress to recognize the seriousness of the epidemic in children with neurological disorders all over the country.

“Mr. Speaker, something dreadful is happening to our youngest generation, and we must sound the alarm and figure out what is going on with our children,” he said.

He quoted the Department of Health and Human Services when explaining that one in every 167 children was being diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. “Furthermore," Weldon reported, "one in 7 children is being diagnosed with either a learning disability or a behavioral disability."

On June 19, 2002, James Bradstreet, MD, Clinical Director of The International Child Development Resource Center in Florida, testified in Washington before the Government Reform Committee, and warned lawmakers about the cost of the autism epidemic back then.

“ICDRC estimates the minimal cost in present value, to care for those 420,000 existing children with autism is $1,260,000,000,000 (based on $3million/lifetime and 420,000 children affected)."

"So a little over a $1 trillion in the next 50 years would be required if we stopped creating new cases today," Bradstreet said.

"Because autism is doubling every four years, this is likely an overly conservative estimatem" he added. "The societal cost could easily be $3-4 trillion.“

On June 20, 2005, Robert F Kennedy, Jr, a relatively new advocate calling for the removal of thimerosal from vaccines, appeared on the Don Imus Show on MSNBC, and warned the public that our government is allowing drug companies to ship thimerosal-containing vaccines for use on children in other countries.

"They're giving this now to kids all over the third world," Kennedy warned. "In China, autism was unknown five years ago," he said. "They started giving them American vaccines containing thimerosal and now they've got 1.8 million cases of autism," he added.

Autism is also exploding in Argentina, India, and Nigeria, Kennedy said.

"What's going to happen when our enemies around the world realize that the United State's most heralded foreign policy which is vaccinating the children of the world is poisoning the brains of developing third world children?" he warmed.

"This is just a disaster," Kennedy told Imus.

But it gets worse. Over the past 15 years, the vaccine scheme has resulted in a full-circle cycle of profits for the pharmaceutical industry. After poisoning an entire generation, drug companies are now making record profits from drugging their victims.

And the true irony of the situation is that due to their partnership with compromised officials and lawmakers, they were able to pull most of it off on the tax payer's dime. Federal and State government programs, are the largest buyers of vaccines, administered "free" beginning with pregnant women all the way up to seniors citizens in nursing homes.

The vaccine racket is raging on at full-throttle. In 2005, more vaccines were administered to infants under the age of 1 in the US than in any other country. The current immunization schedule calls for 3 doses of Hepatitis B, the first at birth, 3 doses each of DTAP, HIB, IPV, Prevnar, and one dose of flu vaccine before a child's first birthday.

The first year of childhood vaccines costs $620, and the second year costs $340, according to Pediatric Preventive Care Cost, Estimated US Average, 2005, by Patient Age, Recommendations for Preventive Pediatric Health Care (RE9939) and Recommended Childhood and Adolescent Immunization Schedule, US, 2005.

For the year 2004, the CDC reported the US birth rate to be 4,115,590. Without an industrial size calculator, it would be impossible to do the math to multiply the birth rate by the vaccine costs above. Suffice to say that the total amount represents major profits for vaccine makers especially when most of the bill is sent directly to the tax payers.

As for making money off the vaccine-injured children, between 2000 and 2003, the number of children treated for "severe behavioral conditions" related to conduct disorder and autism rose more than 60%, according to Behavior Drugs Lead in Sales for Children, New York Times, May 17, 2004.


Tax dollars are being directly funneled to the pharmaceutical industry through the damaged children. Public funds currently account for 63% of all mental health spending and Medicaid spending has risen more than 50% since 2000 to more than $300 billion per year, according to Parity-Plus: A Third Way Approach to Fix America's Mental Health System, Progressive Policy Institute, June 22, 2005; Medicaid Largest US Payer, Daily Health Policy Report, March 30, 20005.

Drug companies have also been raking in major profits from the sale of attention deficit drugs, with much of it coming from the public trough. The National Center for Health Statistics, reports that the number of children aged 3 to 17 with ADHD went from 3.3 million in 1997 to 4.4 million in 2002. Between 2000 and 2004, use of attention deficit stimulant drugs rose 56% among children, according to data compiled Medco Health Solutions, one of the largest prescription benefit managers in the nation.

According to testimony at the February 18, 2004, FDA hearing, by Dr Gianna Rigoni, of the FDA's Office of Drug Safety, a combined total of approximately 10.8 million prescriptions were dispensed for SSRI antidepressants and atypicals antipsychotics to the 1 to 17-year-old population in 2002, and children between 1 and 11-years-old, accounted for about 2.7 million of those prescriptions.

In 2004, SSRIs and antipsychotics became the third-and fourth-biggest classes of drugs in the country, with sales of $20.7 billion. And much of that cost was borne by government health-care plans, according to the July 27, 2005 Wall Street Journal.

As for the continued use of thimerosal-laced flu vaccines with infants, according to the ACIP report of July 29, 2005 / 54(RR08);1-40, actual deaths from influenza are uncommon among children with and without high-risk conditions. A study that modeled influenza-related deaths estimated that annually, an average of 92 deaths, or 0.4 deaths per 100,000, occurred among children under 5 during the 1990's.

So, are the risks associated with injecting a full dose of thimerosal into 4,115,590 six-month-old babies worth it when weighed against the benefits, if any, of flu vaccines? More and more parents think not.


http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/articles/vaccine-profit.html

A Childhood Miracle Slips Into Controversy
Gannett News Service

At the end of the century, public health officials are gratified with their progress in the war against several diseases, mainly through the "silver bullets'' of immunization: vaccines developed against a wide variety of serious illnesses from polio to whooping cough. In the United States, the last case of naturally occurring polio was in 1979. Whooping cough, which once killed 12,000 a year, now claims only five or 10 people. But with that good news comes bad. In rare -- but dramatic -- instances some vaccines trigger dangerous reactions resulting in lifelong disability or even death.

Because vaccines are the only substance the government forces Americans to put into their bodies, Gannett News Service has undertaken a four-month investigation, using the Freedom of Information Act and government computer databases, to provide insight to these little-known effects of a public health policy of immunizations:

Part 1: Shaken baby syndrome, when a baby can be literally shaken to death, is a serious social problem. But its symptoms match the reaction of a controversial childhood vaccine. When is a death caused by abuse and when is it caused by a vaccine? Many parents, including some who face prison, may never find out.

Part 2: Sudden Infant Death Syndrome can be a source of fear or guilt for parents. For almost a decade, a federal claims court has been drawing a significant association between mysterious deaths attributed to SIDS and a controversial vaccine.

Part 3: World health officials hope for a polio-free planet by the year 2000. But lurking under that great success has been the rare, but real risk of contracting polio as a result of the oral vaccine.

Part 4: Pervasive government efforts to immunize every child are prompting some privacy advocates, vaccination critics and lawyers to warn: Parents Beware.

Part 5: The government's National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program was set up to compensate children injured by their childhood immunizations. But it is sliding into controversy, as critics label it unfair, ineffective and a corruption of congressional intent.
 

 Dear Ms. Strassel,

I am writing in response to The Politics of Autism piece, which I understand that you authored, in the December 29th edition of the WSJ.  I must admit I was surprised to find out that the author was an employee of the WSJ rather than a PR rep for one of the  pharmaceutical companies.

I am the parent of a child that has been diagnosed with Pervasive Development Disorder (PDD) or Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD).  First, I want to say that I respect your opinion and your right to publish it.  I hope you do the same and publish some of the better responses you have received on the topic.

I am in strong disagreement with the opinions expressed in the piece, in particular with the conclusion that civil rights should be compromised in order to protect the greater good.  One of the bigger problem is that the opinions are expressed as though they were fact, when in actuality they are simply opinion.  Secondly, with all the scandal in the financial industry recently regarding conflict of interest (analysts and investment banking), how can you completely ignore the multitude of conflicts in the studies you reference?  I have many other issues with the piece, I have enclosed my original response which details them all.  I would appreciate it if you would  take the time to read the original response.

This is not a threat but I want you to know that eventually you will be proven wrong and your article will be viewed as another in a long line of "pharmaceutically-sponsored" rhetoric.  I have never been so sure of anything in my life. 

My son has mercury in his urine.  I would be glad to show you the test results.  Where did it come from?  He has never eaten fish in his life and he has never had any other exposure to mercury.  My son developed so normally for the first 15 months of his life that my  wife had to beg our family doctor to discuss her concerns about autism. Our doctory continually refused because Jack had always met all his milestones and hadn't shown any of the "signs".  We have video tapes of him acting very normally and then running in circles and screaming 3 months later.  What are the differences between ethyl mercury and the other types of mercury that make it less harmful to humans, specifically babies? 

Yes, we have much passion regarding the issue because the issue is our kids.  I hope that you have the same passion for your side of the argument because your piece could have bearing on the lives of alot of young children. 

For the good of us all, your reputation and the reputation of the WSJ, I am imploring you to take another look at the information with a more open mind.  I would be very happy to open my home to you so that you could take a detailed look at our situation and decide for youself.   I am serious about the offer and would be very glad to meet you. 

Sincerely,

Edward Bowden Jr.

Tuesday, December 30, 2003 2:31 p.m.

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

The Politics of Autism
Lawsuits and emotion vs. science and childhood vaccines.

Response from Ed Bowden Jr. – Yardley, PA 19067

Believe me, as a parent of a child diagnosed with autism; I would rather that this not be a political issue.  I would rather "science and medicine" initiate impartial and meaningful research into the causes of autism and the undeniable increase in the incidence of autism that are truly free of any conflicts of interest.  Hopefully that would lead to breakthroughs in treatment that would help my son get better.  Unfortunately I have yet to see any research from "science and medicine" that meets these simple criteria.  In this case the definition of "science and medicine" seems to be anyone on the payroll of the pharmaceutical industry.  The only research I have seen from "science and medicine" are biased studies with a clear conflict of interest that set out to disprove what is considered by many to be an unpleasant theory. 

I have always enjoyed and appreciated the WSJ but allowing this piece of obvious pharmaceutical industry propaganda to be published without identification or context is irresponsible at best.  Please have the guts and commitment to print responses that you get on this piece in order to maintain the integrity of your publication.  I'd like to offer some points of rebuttal on the information contained in the piece.  Caution: I am not a scientist just a parent who is trying to stay on top of the subject matter in order to best help my son.  However I think my rebuttals are relevant and present points that should be addressed.

If autism's origin is solely genetic, why has the incidence rate skyrocketed over the last decade or so?  Could there be an environmental trigger that pushes genetically susceptible kids into autism?  The environmental trigger would have to be some toxic substance that kids have been almost universally exposed to over the last decade or so at an increasing rate for this theory to be plausible.  Any ideas?  Nonetheless this is great news; please list the studies that have isolated the genes. 

Could the sudden growth spurt of the head be related to inflammation of the brain due to mercury toxicity?  Even Courchesne, the lead author of this study was quoted in the LA Times as stating that this theory is not incompatible with an environmental trigger to autism. 

In the Rochester study, why was blood tested when we know that mercury toxicity cannot be accurately measured from blood samples. Mercury only stays in the blood stream for a relatively short amount of time before it seeks out and inhabits tissue (like the brain for example)?  Were these children tested directly after receiving mercury-containing vaccines?

Thimerosal has not been completely removed from vaccines, flu and tetanus vaccines both still contain it.  Why is this so hard to get straight?  It is listed as an ingredient on the package inserts for God's sake and included in the Physician's Desk Reference for 2003.  Also thimerosal-containing vaccines were not recalled, they were simply allowed to exist until they were used up.  So thanks to its preservative powers, thimerosal-containing vaccines were still administered to children long after it was considered to be removed from other vaccines.  Thereby clouding the removal date for many vaccines and potentially skewing future analysis.

The CDC and Denmark studies are so flawed and laced with missing information, presumably in an effort to protect a conflict of interest, that they are transparent and have really helped to raise the issue more than anything else.  For a very well constructed analysis of both studies please refer to the Safe Minds website. (http://www.safeminds.org)   

What deal are you referring to regarding Senators Snowe, Collins, are Chafee?  I am not aware of any deal that was made.  The proposal was removed from the legislation because it was politics at its worst and didn't represent the best interest of the people.  We all welcome an open and honest review of the issue, regardless of the outcome.  However we demand integrity in the analysis.

Regarding Senator Frist, he is a very large recipient of pharmaceutical industry funds, near the top in the Senate.  Think he may have some "passion" about why the vaccine makers are innocent?  Think he sees things clearly or is he seeing things through green-colored glasses?  And how is his motivation any better than the motivation of the trial lawyers?  At least the trial lawyers motives  are clear and upfront. 

The piece completely ignores the multitude of research that does support the theory that mercury causes developmental disorders, such as autism, in children.   The piece suggests that parents are overly emotional and ignoring science. Go to the medical search engine "Pubmed" and type in thimerosal. You will get over 900 references to peer reviewed medical papers. All of these papers deal with the toxicity of thimerosal. The only science that defends thimerosal are the studies you reference in the piece and all of these are fraught with questions, debate over the conclusions and
conflicts of interests. 

Autism is a condition that now affects about 1 in 150 kids by most estimates.  Shouldn't autism be at the top of everyone's list in terms of funding for research, awareness, and treatment?  Yet autism continues to be a "dirty" word, surrounded by uncertainty, denial and  a lack of focus.

I am not against vaccination.  I am against the use of thimerosal until is proven to be safe.  (Why are we so concerned with ingesting tuna, which may or may not contain trace amounts of mercury but we don't think injecting mercury directly into our children is a  problem?)  I would like to see more testing of vaccines in general to ensure safety.  However if vaccines are tested with the proper level unprejudiced thoroughness and deemed safe it is obviously a great scientific achievement and universal benefit to society.

Its funny, this is not the first time I have seen the suggestion that some parents of kids with autism are using their child's affliction as some sort of get-rich-quick scheme.  I can't think of another childhood affliction where the victims (children and parents) are so vilified.  My wife and I did not have our son or any of our children as part of some sort of get-rich-quick scheme; to the contrary children are expensive.  Children with autism are very expensive; they need therapy, special diets, dietary supplements, medicines, vitamins, and numerous medical tests (none of which are usually  covered by tradition health insurance).  Not only can't we get an answer on what has made our children sick we also can't get any guidance (other than from a select few healthcare practitioners and researchers) or financial assistance for treatment.  Maybe this has  something to do with our "passion". 

If mercury from vaccines, increases of which have paralleled the increase in the incidence of autism, is not the cause then what is?  What studies are being undertaken by "science and medicine" to find a cause?  Do you think OJ is still looking for Nicole's killer?

My son suffers from "regressive autism" or Pervasive Development Disorder (PDD) or Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).  Meaning he developed very normally for the first 15 – 18 months of his life and then began to regress.  Regressive autism is a relatively new  phenomenon within the era of autism.  However it now accounts for the vast majority of cases.

One of the treatments that he has undergone is called chelation.  Chelation is the removal of heavy metals from the body via the use of binding agents.  My son regularly undergoes urine tests to see what, if any, metals are being removed from his body.  Mercury regularly shows up, at very high levels, in the urine tests.  He has gotten much better since we started chelation.  His therapists have adjusted the goals in his ABA therapy program upward several times since we started chelation.  I am grateful for the progress and hopeful for his future but I am left with questions.  Why does my son have extremely elevated levels of mercury in his urine?  Why does he get better when it is removed?  Why is it not OK to eat tuna for fear of  trace amounts of mercury but it is OK to inject mercury directly into our children?  I have more questions but answers to these would be a great start. 

I am open to any explanation for my son's condition that can be scientifically proven through impartial research conducted with integrity and free on any conflicts of interest.  I would rather have my son back than a scapegoat. 

Sincerely,
Ed Bowden Jr.

Published on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 by Knight Ridder
Playing Politics at Kids' Expense
Bill would insulate pharmaceutical firms from liability
by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has buried a provision in the "Protecting America in the War on Terror Act" to insulate the pharmaceutical industry from liability for venal actions that may have poisoned an entire generation of Americans. Mounting evidence suggests that Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative in children's vaccines, may be responsible for the exponential growth of autism, attention deficit disorder, speech delays and other childhood neurological disorders now epidemic in the United States.

Prior to 1989, American infants generally received three vaccinations. In the early 1990s, public-health officials dramatically increased the number of Thimerosal-containing vaccinations without considering the cumulative impact of the mercury load on developing brains. Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative in children's vaccines, may be responsible for the exponential growth of autism.

Warning Issued

In a 1991 memo, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the fathers of Merck's vaccination programs, warned the president of the company's vaccination division that 6-month-old children administered the shots on schedule would suffer mercury exposures 87 times the government safety standard (400 times the current U.S. government's safe level). He recommended that Thimerosal be discontinued, "especially when used on infants and children."

Merck ignored Hilleman's warning and, for eight years, government officials added seven additional shots for children containing Thimerosal.

Mercury is a known brain poison, and autism rates began rising dramatically in children who were administered the new vaccine regimens. A decade ago the American Academy of Pediatrics estimated the autism rate among American children to be 1 in 2,500. Today, the CDC places the autism rate at 1 in 166, or one in 80 boys. Additionally, one in every six children is now diagnosed with a related neurological disorder.

In 1998 the CDC's lead Thimerosal researcher, Dr. Thomas Verstraeten, complained to his colleagues in a secret memo that, despite rerunning and rethinking the research, the links between Thimerosal and autism "just won't go away."

Secret Meeting

In 2000, CDC, FDA and pharmaceutical companies called a secret meeting to review Verstraeten's findings. According to transcripts, participants were alarmed about the undeniable link between the mercury preservative and autism. Dr. Bill Weil told the group, "You can play with (the results) all you want. They are statistically significant."

Dr. Richard Johnston acknowledged he feared his grandchild getting vaccinated. But the group was most concerned with keeping the findings secret. Numerous animal, DNA, epidemiological and other studies point to Thimerosal as the culprit in America's epidemic of neurological disorders. Autistic children have been shown to have higher mercury loads than nonautistics, and there have been reports of significant improvements in some brain-injured children by removing mercury from their bodies.

Most of the symptoms of autism are similar to the symptoms of mercury poisoning. Recently, scientists have been able to induce autism in certain mice by exposing them to Thimerosal. In a recent study, former FDA scientist Dr. Jill James uncovered a scientific link that helps explain why Thimerosal injures some children and not others. That study found that many autistic children are genetically deficient in their capacity to produce glutathione, an antioxidant generated in the brain that helps remove mercury from the body, a harmless difference until the child is exposed to large quantities of mercury.

Porter Bridges' experience is typical. In 1993, this healthy 4-month-old slipped into a coma hours after receiving his vaccines. Today, 11-year-old Porter is autistic, hyperactive and severely brain damaged. He requires minute-to-minute supervision, is frequently afflicted with violent seizures and is not yet toilet-trained. After a seven-year legal fight, the U.S. government acknowledged that Porter was damaged by his vaccines. There are now 520,000 autistics in the United States with 40,000 new cases each year.

High Cost of Care

The cost of caring for autistic children is conservatively $40,000 annually. Families with children with autism and other neurological diseases have filed more than 4,200 claims in the special federal "Vaccine Court." Some plaintiffs have also filed in trial courts.

Some Drug Makers Act

Thimerosal defendants include Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Aventis, Weyeth and Eli Lilly. Frist's newly proposed "anti-terror" legislation would create insurmountable burdens of proof for plaintiffs in these cases and forbid states from banning Thimerosal. Drug makers wary of liability have reduced Thimerosal in children's vaccines in recent years, with the exception of Chiron and Aventis' pediatric flu vaccine. Mercury-laced vaccine stocks were given to children until the end of 2003.

Thimerosal's inventor, Eli Lilly, donated $226,000 to Frist's national Republican Senate Campaign Committee in 2002 and bought 5,000 copies of Frist's book on bioterrorism. Congress will vote on Frist's bill in the near future. Instead of demanding the immediate removal of Thimerosal from all vaccines, and making the drug industry help defray the public and private costs of caring for injured children, Frist's bill would give the industry a free ride at public expense.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper and a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

© 2005 Knight Ridder

In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Ga. 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 52 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.

    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 flatly that the study "should not have been done at all" and warned that the results "will be taken by others and will be used in ways beyond the control of this group. The research results have to be handled."

    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 11-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. Congress repealed the measure 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 Andy Olsen, a legislative  assistant 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 preeminent 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 25 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 11 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 20-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 20 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 22 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, 10 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 24 hours of birth, and 2-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 6-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 only three vaccinations - for polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and measles-mumps-rubella. A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations, children were receiving a total of 22 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. Infants who received all their vaccines, plus boosters, by the age of 6 months were being injected with levels of ethylmercury 187 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 advisors, told me, "I think if we really have an influenza pandemic - and certainly we will in the next 20 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 shares a patent on a measles vaccine with Merck, which also manufactures the hepatitis B vaccine. 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 advisors who approved guidelines for a rotavirus vaccine laced with thimerosal "had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine."

    Offit, who shares a patent on the vaccine, acknowledged to me that he "would make money" if his vote to approve it 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, parents and a few of its own panel members, the Institute of Medicine reluctantly convened a second panel to review the findings of the first. In February, the new panel, composed of different scientists, criticized the earlier panel for its lack of transparency 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, Penn., 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 32 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.

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper and president of Waterkeeper Alliance. He is the co-author of The Riverkeepers.

NO MATTER WHAT: A STORY OF UCLA
by Alan R. Yurko

We often hear Dr. Kupsinel tell us of UCLA -- Unconditional Love and Acceptance. Here is a tale of how UCLA has transformed me.

I had rushed my newborn son to the emergency room. He had stopped breathing. Seventy-five hours later he died. His brain was damaged severely. We had no idea what caused this. The doctors and police said that the only way this could happen was if someone abused him. Since I was the last person alone with him, I was arrested and thrown in jail without bond for First Degree Murder. So, there I was with a twenty-four hour “suicide watch” cell, my newborn son dead, and I was being accused of killing him. Other prisoners were throwing feces urine, spit and sour milk on me. I was taunted as a “baby-killer,” which somehow warped in “baby-raper.” I was in shock, grief, fear and a state of horror. I could not eat. I could not sleep. My body was shutting down, my spirit was dying and my mind was almost lost. I lost the ability to speak and eat as the stench of sour milk and the feces overpowered me. My wife was arrested as well. my four year old daughter was taken by the State and was sexually battered and molested in their care. I had developed a rash as I was forced to wash my body with toilet water because my “sink” was mysteriously broken. A prisoner across from me was gouging his nose to make it bleed and using his blood to paint pentagons and satanic symbols on his cell walls. He painted himself as well, sometimes using his own feces. I wasn’t allowed bedding and high powered fluorescent lights beamed on me twenty-four hours a day, non-stop. The media was busy painting my wife and I as devils and monsters. My wife Francine was released and charges were eventually dismissed, and our daughter was returned swiftly after her molestation. Eventually, I was convicted of murdering my baby boy and sentenced to life plus ten years in prison. However, my story here today focuses on those “dark” days at the onset while in that “suicide cell.”

It was during those times where I teetered on the edge of insanity. Literally. At times I wished I would die, and I know deep in my heart, I would in fact be dead were it not for UCLA.

As Dr. Roy Kupsinel has shown us in SYNAPSE, UCLA is the key to all healing. However, we often overlook how UCLA heals others as well as ourselves. Let me tell you someone else’s UCLA healed me! As I spent those early “dark’ days in fear and cried, I spiraled down a vortex of death. However, UCLA reached in and lifted me up. Alas, my wife, Francine, had called the jail for she was worried that I hadn’t called or written. (I was given no phone nor writing supplies,) Her assertiveness prompted jail officials to bring me a phone. I called. I needed to tell her that I loved her and that I was dying inside, but it was she who did all the talking. She told me she knew I didn’t hurt our baby. She said she never doubted me and never would. She told me she would stand by me, never resting, until we proved my innocence and that no power was greater than our love. She resounded to me that NO MATTER WHAT they say or do, that no matter what happened and came to pass that she would fight for me because she knew I was not a murderer. The phrase NO MATTER WHAT permeated the darkness that was enveloping me. I knew she knew that I never hurt our baby.
 
All through the phone call I wept in gratitude and sorrow and pain and joy. I was awash in serenity. She repeated the phrase that she would fight for the truth and stand by me NO MATTER WHAT and that NO MATTER WHAT she would love me. The words and UCLA she gave me stirred me and I grew strong. My appetite returned. I could speak better. My faith was restored! This was in 1997 and since then, the words NO MATTER WHAT have become our motto. NO MATTER WHAT is a manifestation of UCLA. It is love. Love is not selfish -- it heals you and the person you give it to. It's a living example.

Since 1997 we’ve been fighting, searching and gaining support. We found out through dozens of medical experts around the world who have received our son’s medical records that he died from vaccinations and that one of the vaccine lots was so “hot” it had been implicated in the deaths of five other children and harmed to date seventy others. We’ve rallied the support of 500 people of which over 200 are medical and health care professionals, doctors and experts. Over seventy organizations spanning twenty countries support our plight and my wife has spoken at medical conferences and we’ve put on seminars in New York and the United Kingdom. The wheels of justice turn slowly and we are gaining ground. We filed our appeal in the courts on March 22, 2002. We have a web site <www.freeyurko.bizland.com where you can see all the evidence and triumphs towards truth we’ve made. Our story and plight is featured in over fifty publications and is the subject of a beginning film documentary, but ... again, this tale is not about that, it is about UCLA and NO MATTER WHAT, It is about healing. It is about love.

Finally, the UCLA has grown. My wife and I and our close supporters, through UCLA/NO MATTER WHAT are not just working to resolve our own family’s injustice, we are helping others falsely accused and educating thousands of people about the dangers of vaccines as well as other health and legal issues. UCLA/NO MATTER WHAT is the key to our health, success and happiness. It affects the giver and the receiver. Practice it in all your affairs, no matter what!

There are two things you need to understand.

1) You need to understand that NO vaccine will ever be safe, because they all contain virtually nothing but poisons. In fact they need to include poisons as "adjuvants" in order to get the vaccine to do what it is "supposed" to do, because they think it is a good thing - "stimulate the immune system". In reality what they call "stimulation" is in fact irritation, but they do not understand the difference. The result of this irritation is that the person is not immunised, but the REVERSE, sensitised. This means susceptibility is INCREASED, not decreased. So the vaccine does not prevent the disease, quite the contrary. Many people even develop a disease from the vaccine itself that is supposed to be preventing it.

2) There is no need to worry about your child developing this illness. Meningococcus is a very common bacteria that under normal circumstances lives peacefully in our bodies without being pathogenic, i.e. it does not cause illness. Illness is provoked primarily as a result of medical intervention, which weakens and derails the immune system. The main intervention that does that is vaccination of any kind (including vaccination for meningococcus itself). Once the illness develops, the medical system only assaults the body further, with antipyretics and antibiotics, instead of supporting it, and then they die, and the poor old bacteria get all the blame. If you provide all the basics to your son - sufficient nutrition, clean water, sunshine, fresh air etc. and protect him from being fed or injected with poisons, including any vaccines, his immune system will work fine, as it has been designed, and the chances of his developing this illness are next to none. Your fear has been created by the pharmaceutical industry's very powerful and effective marketing machine. Do not let them exploit you. Learn the true causes of health and sickness, and then your knowledge and understanding can overcome the fear.

Regards,
Bronwyn
Vaccination Information Service
http://www.vaccination.inoz.com
 

Vexing Over Vaccines
Are Vaccines Causing More Disease Than They Are Curing?
1999 by Alan Cantwell, Jr., M.D.

Vaccines help keep us safe from infectious diseases. Smallpox and polio epidemics have been wiped out by mass vaccine programs. People rush to get flu shots every fall, and kids are bombarded with a barrage of 22 required vaccinations before the age of six. Even pets need their shots. The manufacture of vaccines is a giant industry and what you
pay for inoculations and doctor visits is big business for pediatricians, family practitioners and veterinarians. So why are more and more people worried about vaccines, especially the ones for kids?

Vaccine-induced Illness

Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center, a consumer’s group based in Vienna, Virginia, claims vaccines are responsible for the increasing numbers of children and adults who suffer from immune system and neurologic disorders, hyperactivity, learning disabilities, asthma, chronic fatigue syndrome, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and seizure disorders. She calls for studies to monitor the long-term effects of mass vaccination and Fisher wants physicians to be absolutely sure these vaccines are safe and not harming people. No one can deny the dangers of vaccines. The measles, mumps, rubella (German measles) and polio vaccines, all contain live but weakened viruses. Although health officials tell you that polio has been wiped out in the U.S. since 1979, they often fail to mention that all recorded cases of polio since that time are actually caused by the polio vaccine. Vaccine investigator Neil Z. Miller questions whether we still need need the polio vaccine when it causes every new case of polio in this country. Before mass vaccinations programs began fifty years ago, Miller insists we didn’t have cancer in epidemic numbers, that autoimmune ailments were barely known, and childhood autism did not exist.

Vaccine Contamination

There is also the problem of contamination that has always plagued vaccine makers. During World War II a yellow fever vaccine manufactured with human blood serum was unknowingly contaminated with hepatitis virus and given to the military. As a result, more than 50,000 cases of serum hepatitis broke out among American troops injected with the vaccine. In the 1960s it was discovered that polio vaccines manufactured in monkey kidney tissue between 1955 and 1963 were contaminated with a monkey virus (Simian Virus, number 40). Although this virus causes cancer in experimental animals, health authorities insist it does not cause problems in humans. But evidence of SV40 genetic material has been popping up in human cancers and normal tissue. Researchers are now connecting SV40-contaminated polio vaccines to an increasing number of rare cancers of the lung (mesothelioma) and bone marrow (multiple myeloma). In a 1999 report, SV40 DNA was detected in tissue samples from four children born after 1982. Three were kidney transplant patients, and a fourth had a kidney tumor. Could SV40 be passed on from parents to their children? No one knows for sure.

Covert Vaccine Experiments

Using kids as guinea pigs in potentially harmful vaccine experiments is every parents’ worst nightmare. This actually happened in 1989-1991 when Kaiser Permanente of Southern California and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) jointly conducted a measles vaccine experiment. Without proper parental disclosure, the Yugoslavian-made “high titre” Edmonston-Zagreb measles vaccine was tested on 1,500 poor, primarily black and Latino, inner city children in Los Angeles. Highly recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), the high-potency experimental vaccine was previously injected into infants in Mexico, Haiti, and Africa. It was discontinued in these countries when it was
discovered that the children were dying in large numbers. Unbelievably, the measles vaccine caused long-term suppression of the children’s immune system for six months up to three years. As a result, the immunodepressed children died from other diseases in greater numbers than children who had never received the vaccine. Tragically, African girl babies in the experiment were given twice the dose of boys, and therefore suffered a higher death rate. The WHO pulled the vaccine off the market in 1992. Ironically, the E-Z measles vaccine tested by Kaiser on minority babies was supposed to increase immunity in younger infants. Instead, the vaccine produced the opposite effect. A Los Angeles Times editorial (June 20, 1996) assured readers that “none of the 1,500 was injured by the unlicensed vaccine” and called upon the CDC to ensure that experiments like the E-Z measles vaccine could never occur again.

One wonders how many secret vaccine experiments are conducted by  health authorities that never come to the attention of the public. During the two-year measles experiment I was employed by Kaiser and I never knew anything about it until I read the report in The Times five years later, in 1996. In the poor inner cities across the country the number of asthma cases is exploding and health officials don’t know why. According to the CDC, 5000 asthma deaths occur annually; and it is estimated that 17.3 million people (4.8 are children) suffer from the disease, up from 6.7 million in 1980. Asthma usually begins before age 6, and blacks are two to three times more likely to die from asthma than whites. In the Bronx and Harlem sections of New York City, the hospitalization rate for asthma is 21 times higher than in the more affluent areas of the city. Could the sharp rise in asthma in poor children be connected with immunosuppression caused by by a barrage of vaccines, as well as a lack of quality medical care and insurance, poor diet, and environmental factors? The possible connection of immunosuppressive vaccines to diseases like asthma has never been raised by health officials .With vaccine experiments frequently performed in Africa and now on black Americans, no wonder one out of every four African-Americans believes AIDS was developed as a genocide program by the U.S. government to exterminate the black population. But vaccine experiments in the 1990s have not been limited to blacks. Millions of female Mexicans, Nicaraguans and Filipinos have been duped into taking tetanus vaccines, some of which contained a female hormone that could cause miscarriage and sterilization. In 1995, a Catholic  human rights organization called Human Life International accused the WHO of promoting a Canadian-made tetanus vaccine laced with a pregancy hormone called human choriogonadotropic hormone (HCG). Suspicions were aroused when the tetanus vaccine was prescribed in the unusual dose of five multiple injections over a three month period, and recommended only to women of reproductive age. When an unusual number of women experienced vaginal bleeding and miscarriages after the shots, a hormone additive was uncovered as the cause. Apparently the WHO has been developing and testing anti-fertility vaccines for over two decades. Women receiving the laced tetanus shot not only developed antibodies to tetanus, but they also developed dangerous antibodies to the pregnancy hormone as well. Without this HCG hormone the growth of the fetus is impaired. Consequently, the laced vaccine served as a covert contraceptive device. Commissioned to analyze the vaccine, the Philippines Medical Association found that 20 percent of the WHO tetanus vaccines were contaminated with the hormone. Not surprisingly, the WHO has denied all accusations as “completely false and without basis,” and the major media have never reported on the controversy. For futher details on this issue, consult the Human Life International website (www.hli.org).Newly approved vaccines may also pose serious risks. In October 1999 a vaccine against “rotavirus” infection (which causes most cases of childhood diarrhea) was pulled off the market. One year after the RotaShield vaccine was inoculated into over a million infants, it was found to increase the risk of bowel obstruction. Almost 100 cases of bowel obstruction were reported to the government, and twenty infants developed bowel obstructions within one or two weeks after receiving the vaccine.

Vaccine Manufacture and Associated Dangers

Although the public has heard about side effects of vaccines, most people are clueless about the manufacture of vaccines. Few people know that viruses used in vaccine production need to be grown on animal parts like monkey kidneys, or in chicken embryos, or in human and fetal “cell lines.” Harvesting viruses in human cell-lines can be perilous because some human cell lines are derived from cancer cells. In AIDS & The Doctors of Death I wrote about the development of the first human “HeLa” cell line — an “immortal” cell line used extensively in cancer and vaccine research for decades. Henrietta Lacks was a young black woman from Baltimore who died from a highly malignant cervical cancer in 1951. Small pieces of her tumor were donated to a laboratory specializing in tissue cell culture. In those days most attempts to grow human cells outside the body failed. But for some unknown reason Henrietta’s cancer cells grew vigorously and became known as the first successful human tissue cell line in history — the now famous HeLa cell line commemorating the legendary HEnrietta LAcks.

Henrietta’s cells were kept alive by feeding them a witches’ brew of beef embryo extract (the ground-up remains of a three-week-old, unborn cattle embryo); fresh chicken plasma obtained from the blood of a live chicken heart; and blood from human placentas (the placenta is the sac that nurtures the developing fetus and contains powerful hormones).It is now suspected that a sexually-transmitted papilloma virus is the cause of cervical cancer. And it is anybody’s guess how many other chicken, cattle, and human viruses are incorporated into the HeLa cell line, but none of this possible viral contamination seems to bother scientists who have extensively used the cells in cancer research. What laboratory scientists did eventually discover was that HeLa cells proved so hardy that they frequently contaminated other tissue celllines used in cancer and cancer virus research. In the late 1960s when widespread HeLa cell contamination problems were uncovered, scientists were shocked and embarrassed to learn that millions of dollars worth of published cancer experiments were ruined.

“Liver cells” and “monkey cells” that were used in cancer experiments turned out to be Henrietta’s cancer cells in disguise. Benign cells which supposedly “spontaneously transformed” into malignant cells were found to be cells contaminated with cancerous HeLa cells. The serious problem of HeLa cell contamination in cancer and vaccine research is revealed in Michael Gold’s A Conspiracy of Cells: One Woman’s Immortal Legacy and the Medical Scandal It Caused. Even Jonas Salk, who developed the legendary Salk polio vaccine, was fooled when HeLa cells contaminated his animal cell lines. He admitted this years later in 1978 before a stunned audience of cell biologists and vaccine makers. In experiments performed in the late 1950s on dying cancer patients, Salk tried injecting them with a cell line of monkey heart  tissue — the same cell line he used to harvest polio virus for his famous vaccine. He hoped the monkey cell injections would stimulate the immune system to fight cancer. However, when abcesses developed at the site of injections Salk began to suspect that he might be injecting HeLa cells rather than monkey cells, and he stopped the experiment. Mark Nelson-Rees, a HeLa cell expert and one of the 1978 conference attendees, offered to test Salk’s line if it was still available. Salk graciously agreed and the monkey cells indeed proved to be HeLa cells which had invaded and taken over the monkey cell line. According to author Gold, Salk thought there were adequate ways to separate viruses from the tissue cell lines they were harvested in, so that it really didn’t matter what kind of cells were used. Even if vaccines weren’t filtered, and even if whole cancer cells were injected directly into a human, Salk believed they would be rejected by the body and cause no harm. In those days doctors didn’t much believe in cancer-causing viruses. Nowadays, no researcher would dare try injecting cancer cells into a human being. But in the 1950s Salk had done it accidently. He had injected HeLa cells into a few dozen patients and it hadn’t  bothered him a bit.

Is There a Vaccine Contamination Connection to AIDS?

Most people assume vaccines are “sterile” and germ free. But sterilizing a vaccine can destroy the necessary immunizing protein that makes it work. Thus, contaminating viruses or viral “particles” can sometime survive the vaccine process. Animal viruses are also contained in fetal calf serum, a blood product commonly used as a laboratory nutrient to feed various tissue cell cultures. Vaccine contamination by fetal calf serum and its possible reationship to HIV was the subject of a letter by J. Grote, published in the Journal of the Royal (London) Society of Medicine in October 1988. Bovine visna virus (which looks similar to HIV) is a known contaminant of fetal calf serum used in vaccine production and virus-like particles have been detected in vaccines certified for clinical use. Grote warns that “It seems absolutely vital that all vaccines are screened for HIV prior to use, and that bovine visna virus is further investigated as to its relationship to HIV and its possible role in progression towards AIDS .”

Could virus-contaminated vaccines lie at the root of AIDS? A few researchers, including myself, who believe HIV was “introduced” into gays during the experimental hepatitis B vaccine trails when thousands of homosexuals were injected in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, during the years 1978-1981. The AIDS epidemic first erupted in gays living in those cities in 1981. In 1980, one year before, already 20% of the gays inoculated in Manhattan with the experimental vaccine were already HIV-positive. This was several years before definite AIDS cases were diagnosed in Africa. In the early 1970s the hepatitis B vaccine was developed in chimpanzees, now wildly accepted as the animal from which HIV supposedly evolved. Hepatitis B vaccine was developed to protect people from the sexual spread of the hepatitis B virus. Now the government recommends that all newborn babies be given the vaccine. Such recommendations do not make sense to many parents. And people are still fearful of the hepatitis B vaccine because of its original connection to gay men and AIDS. The original experimental vaccine was made from the pooled blood serum of hepatitis-infected homosexuals and, as mentioned, serum-based vaccines cannot be sterilized.

Another theory of AIDS is that HIV originated from polio vaccines contaminated with chimp and monkey viruses, and administered to Africans in the late 1950s. In The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS , published in 1999, Edward Hooper details how polio vaccine was made using monkey (and possibly chimp) kidneys and how the ancestor virus of HIV could have jumped species (via the vaccine) to produce the outbreak of AIDS in Africa. Hooper’s well-researched book greatly expands the polio vaccine theory of AIDS first reportedby Tom Curtis in Rolling Stone magazine in 1992, and The River is a must-read for anyone interested in the possible man-made origin of AIDS.

Other researchers think it more likely that the various WHO-sponsored vaccine programs (particularly the smallpox program) in Africa in the 1970s are responsible for unleashing AIDS in Africa in the 1980s. Hooper, who has worked as a United Nations official, has discounted the research pointing to AIDS as a man-made disease, as proposed by Dr. Leonard Horowitz in Emerging Viruses, and in my two books AIDS & The Doctors of Death: An Inquiry into the Origin of the AIDS Epidemic: and Queer Blood: The Secret AIDS Genocide Plot. Horowitz and I both suspect contaminated smallpox vaccines as the source of HIV In Africa. Certainly the smallpox (vaccinia-cowpox) virus is an excellent virus to use for the genetic engineering of new, multipurpose vaccines. By splicing into the DNA genes of the vaccinia virus, scientists can add on parts of disease-producing viruses like influenza, hepatitis, and other viruses. The safety of this technique has not been fully evaluated, prompting one vaccine maker at a Vaccinia Virus Workshop in 1984 to ask if this could lead to another form of AIDS.

The Vaccine Connection to Gulf War Illness and Huntsville Mystery Illness

The cause of Gulf War Illness (GWI) is unknown. For years this debilitating illness (which now affects one-half of the Gulf War vets) has been ignored by Pentagon officials who claim the disease does not exist and that vets are simply reacting to stress. GWI is also thought to be contagious. Vets insist their disease has been passed on to
spouses, other family members, and even pets. Some people suspect multiple vaccines, particularly the experimental anthrax vaccine, are implicated in the disease. Currently, soldiers who refuse to take the mandatory anthrax vaccine are being courtmartialed and dismissed from the service. Researchers Dr. Garth Nicolson and his wife Nancy have found a tiny bacterial microbe (a “mycoplasma”) in the blood of nearly half the ill vets with GWI.Amazingly, this infectious agent has a piece of HIV (the AIDS virus) attached to it. This microbe could never have occured naturally. On the contrary, the composition of the microbe suggests a man-made and genetically-engineered biological warfare agent. Garth Nicolson’s scientific credentials are impeccable. For 16 years he was a professor of medicine at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, as well as professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Texas Medical School, also in Houston. Nancy Nicolson, a molecular biophysicist, was on the faculty at Baylor College of Medicine. Six months after returning home from the Gulf war, the Nicolson’s daughter contracted GWI. Her mother Nancy had contracted a similar illness in 1987 when she was working with Mycoplasma incognitus in infectious disease research. Finally suspecting that this research had biowarfare implications, Nancy Nicolson became a whistle-blower and angered officials. As a result, she believes she was deliberately infected with the mycoplasma. After partial paralysis and a long illness, she finally regained her health with the antibiotic Doxycycline. The Nicolson’s discovery of a similar mycoplasma (but without the attachment of HIV) in a mysterious illness that erupted in the Huntsville, Texas area among prison guards and their families has all the drama of a The Movie of the Week. Although the Huntsville disease broke out in the late 1980s (shortly before the Gulf War), it has many of the same signs and symptoms of GWI. Many locals are convinced the sometimes deadly disease originally spread from prisoners incarcerated in several large prisons around Huntsville. In experiments conducted during the 1970s and 80s, the prisoners were inoculated with flu vaccines containing genetically engineered viruses and mycoplasma . It is suspected that vaccines were being covertly developed and deployed as biological warfare weapons. Nobel prize winner James Watson, world famous for his discovery of the molecular structure of DNA and a leading researcher of the still ongoing Human Genome Project, was involved in these prison experiments. The guards are convinced the Huntsville mystery illness is intimately connected to these experiments, jointly conducted by the Medical School and the military. Like GWI, health officials deny the disease exists. The Nicolsons continue to developed antibiotic treatments, which have helped some vets. But they have paid a heavy price for their controversial research and unprecedented discoveries. Garth Nicolson was forced to resign from M.D. Anderson in 1996. His career and reputation destroyed, the Nicolsons have since moved to California and head The Institute for Molecular Medicine in Huntington Beach.

Dangerous Animal and Human Cell Lines in Vaccine Manufacture

In an effort to quell concerns about the safety of vaccines, scientists are finally taking another look at the “non-infectious” particles of bird-cancer viruses (avian leukosis virus) in the mumps/measles/rubella vaccines routinely given to kids. Could this be the reason the FDA held a meeting in September, 1999, to reconsider using human tumor cell lines (like HeLa) rather than monkey kidneys and chicken embryos which are no longer guaranteed 100% safe?Writing in Science, Gretchen Vogel admits public trust in vaccines is a bit shaky. In Wales anti-vaccine parents are holding “measles parties” to infect their children with the disease rather than vaccinate them. She cites the danger of using immortal cell lines for live vaccine production because cancer genes or other hazardous factors might be transferred to people receiving vaccines. But manufacturers also realize vaccine critics are becoming more wary of vaccines made in animal and bird tissue. And vaccine makers want to use immortal cell lines to grow their viruses because obviously viruses can’t grow on their own. The big question everyone seems to avoid is: Can vaccines cause cancer? There is certainly evidence connecting contaminated vaccines to AIDS. And HIV is a cancer-causing virus. Robert Gallo, the co-discoverer of HIV in 1984, has clearly stated AIDS is an epidemic of cancer. Animal and avian viruses can contaminate vaccines and have all been studied as cancer-causing agents. And cancer and vaccine research would be much more difficult without the use of cell lines, some of which are derived from cancer.

Vaccines and Public Paranoia

Is the fear of vaccines justified? It is clear that vaccines can be dangerous. The contamination of vaccines is a reality, and vaccine experiments can be hazardous to one’s health. AIDS, unknown two decades ago, is now an increasing worldwide epidemic with millions of death predicted for the next decade. Could vaccines contaminated with cancer-causing and immunosuppressive viruses unleash new plagues in the New Millennium? If so, the new plagues may be far worse than the diseases we eradicated by vaccine programs in the twentieth century.

References

“Anti-diarrheal vaccine for babies recalled,” Los Angeles Times, October 16, 1999.
Butel JS, Arrington AS, Wong C, et al.: Molecular evidence of simian virus 40 infections in children. J Infect Dis 180:884-887, 1999.
Cantwell A: AIDS & the Doctors of Death. Aries Rising Press, LosAngeles, 1988.
Cantwell A: Queer Blood. Aries Rising Press, Los Angeles, 1993.
Gold M: A Conspiracy of Cells. State University of New York Press,Albany, 1986.
Hooper E: The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS. Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1999.
Horowitz L: Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola. Tetrahedron, Inc, Rockport, MA, 1996.
Jaroff Leon: “Vaccine Jitters,” TIME, September 13, 1999.
Likoudis P: “Gulf war illness probe to advance with new study,” The Wanderer, January 21, 1999.
“Measles, government and trust “ (Editorial), Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1996.
Miller NZ: Immunization: Theory vs Reality. New Atlantean Press, Santa Fe, 1996.
Miller NZ: Immunizations: The People Speak! New Atlantean Press, Santa Fe, 1996.
Quinnan GV: Vaccinia Viruses as Vectors for Vaccine Antigens.Elsevier, New York, 1985.
Stolberg SG: “Poor fight baffling surge in asthma,” New York Times, October 18, 1999.

[Alan Cantwell is a physician and AIDS researcher. His book on the man-made epidemic of AIDS entitled AIDS & The Doctors of Death: An Inquiry into the Origin of the AIDS Epidemic, is available on the Internet through Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, or through Book Clearing House at 1-800-431-1579].
 

Vaccines//A interview with Jon Rappoport


This would apply to animal vaccines as well I presume?

Q: You were once certain that vaccines were the hallmark of good medicine. A: Yes I was. I helped develop a few vaccines. I won't say which ones.

Q: Why not?

A: I want to preserve my privacy.

Q: So you think you could have problems if you came out into the open?

A: I believe I could lose my pension.

Q: On what grounds?

A: The grounds don't matter. These people have ways of causing you problems, when you were once part of the Club. I know one or two people who were put under surveillance, who were harassed.

Q: Harassed by whom?

A: The FBI.

Q: Really?

A: Sure. The FBI used other pretexts. And the IRS can come calling too.

Q: So much for free speech.

A: I was "part of the inner circle." If now I began to name names and make specific accusations against researchers, I could be in a world of trouble.

Q: What is at the bottom of these efforts at harassment?

A: Vaccines are the last defense of modern medicine. Vaccines are the ultimate justification for the overall "brilliance" of modern medicine.

Q: Do you believe that people should be allowed to choose whether they should get vaccines?

A: On a political level, yes. On a scientific level, people need information, so that they can choose well. It's one thing to say choice is good. But if the atmosphere is full of lies, how can you choose? Also, if the FDA were run by honorable people, these vaccines would not be granted licenses. They would be investigated to within an inch of their lives.

Q: There are medical historians who state that the overall decline of illnesses was not due to vaccines.

A: I know. For a long time, I ignored their work.

Q: Why?

A: Because I was afraid of what I would find out. I was in the business of developing vaccines. My livelihood depended on continuing that work.

Q: And then?

A: I did my own investigation.

Q: What conclusions did you come to?

A: The decline of disease is due to improved living conditions.

Q: What conditions?

A: Cleaner water. Advanced sewage systems. Nutrition. Fresher food. A decrease in poverty. Germs may be everywhere, but when you are healthy, you don't contract the diseases as easily.

Q: What did you feel when you completed your own investigation?

A: Despair. I realized I was working a sector based on a collection of lies.

Q: Are some vaccines more dangerous than others?

A: Yes. The DPT shot, for example. The MMR. But some lots of a vaccine are more dangerous than other lots of the same vaccine. As far as I'm concerned, all vaccines are dangerous.

Q: Why?

A: Several reasons. They involve the human immune system in a process that tends to compromise immunity. They can actually cause the disease they are supposed to prevent. They can cause other diseases than the ones they are supposed to prevent.

Q: Why are we quoted statistics which seem to prove that vaccines have been tremendously successful at wiping out diseases?

A: Why? To give the illusion that these vaccines are useful. If a vaccine suppresses visible symptoms of a disease like measles, everyone assumes that the vaccine is a success. But, under the surface, the vaccine can harm the immune system itself. And if it causes other diseases-say, meningitis-that fact is masked, because no one believes that the vaccine can do that. The connection is overlooked.

Q: It is said that the smallpox vaccine wiped out smallpox in England.

A: Yes. But when you study the available statistics, you get another picture.

Q: Which is?

A: There were cities in England where people who were not vaccinated did not get smallpox. There were places where people who were vaccinated experienced smallpox epidemics. And smallpox was already on the decline before the vaccine was introduced.

Q: So you're saying that we have been treated to a false history.

A: Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying. This is a history that has been cooked up to convince people that vaccines are invariably safe and effective.

Q: Now, you worked in labs. Where purity was an issue.

A: The public believes that these labs, these manufacturing facilities are the cleanest places in the world. That is not true. Contamination occurs all the time. You get all sorts of debris introduced into vaccines.

Q: For example, the SV40 monkey virus slips into the polio vaccine.

A: Well yes, that happened. But that's not what I mean. The SV40 got into the polio vaccine because the vaccine was made by using monkey kidneys. But I'm talking about something else. The actual lab conditions. The mistakes. The careless errors. SV40, which was later found in cancer tumors--that was what I would call a structural problem. It was an accepted part of the manufacturing process. If you use monkey kidneys, you open the door to germs which you don't know are in those kidneys.

Q: Okay, but let's ignore that distinction between different types of contaminants for a moment. What contaminants did you find in your many years of work with vaccines?

A: All right. I'll give you some of what I came across, and I'll also give you what colleagues of mine found. Here's a partial list. In the Rimavex measles vaccine, we found various chicken viruses. In polio
vaccine, we found acanthamoeba, which is a so-called "brain-eating" amoeba. Simian cytomegalovirus in polio vaccine. Simian foamy virus in the rotavirus vaccine. Bird-cancer viruses in the MMR vaccine. Various micro-organisms in the anthrax vaccine. I've found potentially dangerous enzyme inhibitors in several vaccines. Duck, dog, and rabbit viruses in the rubella vaccine. Avian leucosis virus in the flu vaccine. Pestivirus in the MMR vaccine.

Q: Let me get this straight. These are all contaminants which don't belong in the vaccines.

A: That's right. And if you try to calculate what damage these contaminants can cause, well, we don't really know, because no testing has been done, or very little testing. It's a game of roulette. You take your
chances. Also, most people don't know that some polio vaccines, adenovirus vaccines, rubella and hep A and measles vaccines have been made with aborted human fetal tissue. I have found what I believed were bacterial fragments and poliovirus in these vaccines from time to time-which may have come from that fetal tissue. When you look for contaminants in vaccines, you can come up with material that IS puzzling. You know it shouldn't be there, but you don't know exactly what you've got. I have found what I believed was a very small "fragment" of human hair and also human mucus. I have found what can only be called "foreign protein," which could mean almost anything. It could mean protein from viruses.

Q: Alarm bells are ringing all over the place.

A: How do you think I felt? Remember, this material is going into the bloodstream without passing through some of the ordinary immune defenses.

Q: How were your findings received?

A: Basically, it was, don't worry, this can't be helped. In making vaccines, you use various animals' tissue, and that's where this kind of contamination enters in. Of course, I'm not even mentioning the standard chemicals like formaldehyde, mercury, and aluminum which are purposely put into vaccines.

Q: This information is pretty staggering.

A: Yes. And I'm just mentioning some of the biological contaminants. Who knows how many others there are? Others we don't find because we don't think to look for them. If tissue from, say, a bird is used to make a vaccine, how many possible germs can be in that tissue? We have no idea. We have no idea what they might be, or what effects they could have on humans.

Q: And beyond the purity issue?

A: You are dealing with the basic faulty premise about vaccines. That they intricately stimulate the immune system to create the conditions for immunity from disease. That is the bad premise. It doesn't work that way. A vaccine is supposed to "create" antibodies which, indirectly, offer protection against disease. However, the immune system is much larger and more involved than antibodies and their related "killer cells."

Q: The immune system is?

A: The entire body, really. Plus the mind. It's all immune system, you might say. That is why you can have, in the middle of an epidemic, those individuals who remain healthy.

Q: So the level of general health is important.

A: More than important. Vital.

Q: How are vaccine statistics falsely presented?

A: There are many ways. For example, suppose that 25 people who have received the hepatitis B vaccine come down with hepatitis. Well, hep B is a liver disease. But you can call liver disease many things. You can change the diagnosis. Then, you've concealed the root cause of the problem.

Q: And that happens?

A: All the time. It HAS to happen, if the doctors automatically assume that people who get vaccines DO NOT come down with the diseases they are now supposed to be protected from. And that is exactly what doctors assume. You see, it's circular reasoning. It's a closed system. It admits no fault. No possible fault. If a person who gets a vaccine against hepatitis gets hepatitis, or gets some other disease, the automatic assumption is, this had nothing to do with the disease.

Q: In your years working in the vaccine establishment, how many doctors did you encounter who admitted that vaccines were a problem?

A: None. There were a few who privately questioned what they were doing. But they would never go public, even within their companies.

Q: What was the turning point for you?

A: I had a friend whose baby died after a DPT shot.

Q: Did you investigate?

A: Yes, informally. I found that this baby was completely healthy before the vaccination. There was no reason for his death, except the vaccine. That started my doubts. Of course, I wanted to believe that the baby had gotten a bad shot from a bad lot. But as I looked into this further, I found that was not the case in this instance. I was being drawn into a spiral of doubt that increased over time. I continued to investigate. I found that, contrary to what I thought, vaccines are not tested in a scientific way.

Q: What do you mean?

A: For example, no long-term studies are done on any vaccines. Long-term follow-up is not done in any careful way. Why? Because, again, the assumption is made that vaccines do not cause problems. So why should anyone check? On top of that, a vaccine reaction is defined so that all bad reactions are said to occur very soon after the shot is given. But that does not make sense.

Q: Why doesn't it make sense?

A: Because the vaccine obviously acts in the body for a long period of time after it is given. A reaction can be gradual. Deterioration can be gradual. Neurological problems can develop over time. They do in various conditions, even according to a conventional analysis. So why couldn't that be the case with vaccines? If chemical poisoning can occur gradually, why couldn't that be the case with a vaccine which contains mercury?

Q: And that is what you found?

A: Yes. You are dealing with correlations, most of the time. Correlations are not perfect. But if you get 500 parents whose children have suffered neurological damage during a one-year period after having a vaccine, this should be sufficient to spark off an intense investigation.

Q: Has it been enough?

A: No. Never. This tells you something right away.

Q: Which is?

A: The people doing the investigation are not really interested in looking at the facts. They assume that the vaccines are safe. So, when they do investigate, they invariably come up with exonerations of the vaccines. They say, "This vaccine is safe." But what do they base those judgments on? They base them on definitions and ideas which automatically rule out a condemnation of the vaccine.

Q: There are numerous cases where a vaccine campaign has failed. Where people have come down with the disease against which they were vaccinated.

A: Yes, there are many such instances. And there the evidence is simply ignored. It's discounted. The experts say, if they say anything at all, that this is just an isolated situation, but overall the vaccine has been shown to be safe. But if you add up all the vaccine campaigns where damage and disease have occurred, you realize that these are NOT isolated situations.

Q: Did you ever discuss what we are talking about here with colleagues, when you were still working in the vaccine establishment?

A: Yes I did.

Q: What happened?

A: Several times I was told to keep quiet. It was made clear that I should go back to work and forget my misgivings. On a few occasions, I encountered fear. Colleagues tried to avoid me. They felt they could be labeled with "guilt by association." All in all, though, I behaved myself. I made sure I didn't create problems for myself.

Q: If vaccines actually do harm, why are they given?

A: First of all, there is no "if." They do harm. It becomes a more difficult question to decide whether they do harm in those people who seem to show no harm. Then you are dealing with the kind of research which should be done, but isn't. Researchers should be probing to discover a kind of map, or flow chart, which shows exactly what vaccines do in the body from the moment they enter. This research has not been done. As to why they are given, we could sit here for two days and discuss all the reasons. As you've said many times, at different layers of the system people have their motives. Money, fear of losing a job, the desire to win brownie points, prestige, awards, promotion, misguided idealism, unthinking habit, and so on. But, at the highest levels of the medical cartel, vaccines are a top priority because they cause a weakening of the immune system. I know that may be hard to accept, but it's true. The medical cartel, at the highest level, is not out to help people, it is out to harm them, to weaken them. To kill them. At one point in my career, I had a long conversation with a man who occupied a high government position in an African nation. He told me that he was well aware of this. He told me that WHO is a front for these depopulation interests. There is an underground, shall we say, in Africa, made up of various officials who are earnestly trying to change the lot of the poor. This network of people knows what is going on. They know that vaccines have been used, and are being used, to destroy their countries, to make them ripe for takeover by globalist powers. I have had the opportunity to speak with several of these people from this network.

Q: Is Thabo Mbeki, the president of South Africa, aware of the situation?

A: I would say he is partially aware. Perhaps he is not utterly convinced, but he is on the way to realizing the whole truth. He already knows that HIV is a hoax. He knows that the AIDS drugs are poisons which destroy the immune system. He also knows that if he speaks out, in any way, about the vaccine issue, he will be branded a lunatic. He has enough trouble after his stand on the AIDS issue.

Q: This network you speak of.

A: It has accumulated a huge amount of information about vaccines. The question is, how is a successful strategy going to be mounted? For these people, that is a difficult issue.

Q: And in the industrialized nations?

A: The medical cartel has a stranglehold, but it is diminishing. Mainly because people have the freedom to question medicines. However, if the choice issue [the right to take or reject any medicine]does not gather steam, these coming mandates about vaccines against biowarefare germs are going to win out. This is an important time.

Q: The furor over the hepatits B vaccine seems one good avenue.

A: I think so, yes. To say that babies must have the vaccine-and then in the next breath, admitting that a person gets hep B from sexual contacts and shared needles-is a ridiculous juxtaposition. Medical authorities try to cover themselves by saying that 20,000 or so children in the US get hep B every year from "unknown causes," and that's why every baby must have the vaccine. I dispute that 20,00 figure and the so-called studies that back it up.

Q: Andrew Wakefield, the British MD who uncovered the link between the MMR vaccine and autism, has just been fired from his job in a London hospital.

A: Yes. Wakefield performed a great service. His correlations between the vaccine and autism are stunning. Perhaps you know that Tony Blair's wife is involved with alternative health. There is the possibility that their child has not been given the MMR. Blair recently side-stepped the question in press interviews, and made it seem that he was simply objecting to invasive questioning of his "personal and family life." In any event, I believe his wife has been muzzled. I think, if given the chance, she would at least say she is sympathetic to all the families who have come forward and stated that their children were severely damaged by the MMR.

Q: British reporters should try to get through to her.

A: They have been trying. But I think she has made a deal with her husband to keep quiet, no matter what. She could do a great deal of good if she breaks her promise. I have been told she is under pressure, and not just from her husband. At the level she occupies, MI6 and British health authorities get into the act. It is thought of as a matter of national security.

Q: Well, it is national security, once you understand the medical cartel.

A: It is global security. The cartel operates in every nation. It zealously guards the sanctity of vaccines. Questioning these vaccines is on the same level as a Vatican bishop questioning the sanctity of the sacrament of the Eucharist in the Catholic Church.

Q: I know that a Hollywood celebrity stating publicly that he will not take a vaccine is committing career suicide.

A: Hollywood is linked very powerfully to the medical cartel. There are several reasons, but one of them is simply that an actor who is famous can draw a huge amount of publicity if he says ANYTHING. In 1992, I was present at your demonstration against the FDA in downtown Los Angeles. One or two actors spoke against the FDA. Since that time, you would be hard pressed to find an actor who has spoken out in any way against the medical cartel.

Q: Within the National Institutes of Health, what is the mood, what is the basic frame of mind?

A: People are competing for research monies. The last thing they think about is challenging the status quo. They are already in an intramural war for that money. They don't need more trouble. This is a very insulated system. It depends on the idea that, by and large, modern medicine is very successful on every frontier. To admit systemic problems in any area is to cast doubt on the whole enterprise. You might therefore think that NIH is the last place one should think about holding demonstrations. But just the reverse is true. If five thousand people showed up there demanding an accounting of the actual benefits of that research system, demanding to know what real health benefits have been conferred on the public from the billions of wasted dollars funneled to that facility, something might start. A spark might go off. You might get, with further demonstrations, all sorts of fall-out. Researchers-a few-might start leaking information.

Q: A good idea.

A: People in suits standing as close to the buildings as the police will allow. People in business suits, in jogging suits, mothers and babies. Well-off people. Poor people. All sorts of people.

Q: What about the combined destructive power of a number of vaccines given to babies these days?

A: It is a travesty and a crime. There are no real studies of any depth which have been done on that. Again, the assumption is made that vaccines are safe, and therefore any number of vaccines given together are safe as well. But the truth is, vaccines are not safe. Therefore the potential damage increases when you give many of them in a short time period.

Q: Then we have the fall flu season.

A: Yes. As if only in the autumn do these germs float in to the US from Asia. The public swallows that premise. If it happens in April, it is a bad cold. If it happens in October, it is the flu.

Q: Do you regret having worked all those years in the vaccine field?

A: Yes. But after this interview, I'll regret it a little less. And I work in other ways. I give out information to certain people, when I think they will use it well.

Q: What is one thing you want the public to understand?

A: That the burden of proof in establishing the safety and efficacy of vaccines is on the people who manufacture and license them for public use. Just that. The burden of proof is not on you or me. And for proof you need well-designed long-term studies. You need extensive follow-up. You need to interview mothers and pay attention to what mothers say about their babies and what happens to them after vaccination. You need all these things. The things that are not there.

Q: The things that are not there.

A: Yes.

Q: To avoid any confusion, I'd like you to review, once more, the disease problems that vaccines can cause. Which diseases, how that happens.

A: We are basically talking about two potential harmful outcomes. One, the person gets the disease from the vaccine. He gets the disease which the vaccine is supposed to protect him from. Because, some version of the disease is in the vaccine to begin with. Or two, he doesn't get THAT disease, but at some later time, maybe right away, maybe not, he develops another condition which is caused by the vaccine. That condition could be autism, what's called autism, or it could be some other disease like meningitis. He could become mentally disabled.

Q: Is there any way to compare the relative frequency of these different outcomes?

A: No. Because the follow-up is poor. We can only guess. If you ask, out of a population of a hundred thousand children who get a measles vaccine, how many get the measles, and how many develop other problems from the vaccine, there is a no reliable answer. That is what I'm saying. Vaccines are superstitions. And with superstitions, you don't get facts you can use. You only get stories, most of which are designed to enforce the superstition. But, from many vaccine campaigns, we can piece together a narrative that does reveal some very disturbing things. People have been harmed. The harm is real, and it can be deep and it can mean death. The harm is NOT limited to a few cases, as we have been led to believe. In the US, there are groups of mothers who are testifying about autism and childhood vaccines. They are coming forward and standing up at meetings. They are essentially trying to fill in the gap that has been created by the researchers and doctors who turn their backs on the whole thing.

Q: Let me ask you this. If you took a child in, say, Boston and you raised that child with good nutritious food and he exercised every day and he was loved by his parents, and he didn't get the measles vaccine, what would be his health status compared with the average child in Boston who eats poorly and watches five hours of TV a day and gets the measles vaccine?

A: Of course there are many factors involved, but I would bet on the better health status for the first child. If he gets measles, if he gets it when he is nine, the chances are it will be much lighter than the measles the second child might get. I would bet on the first child every time.

Q: How long did you work with vaccines?

A: A long time. Longer than ten years.

Q: Looking back now, can you recall any good reason to say that vaccines are successful?

A: No, I can't. If I had a child now, the last thing I would allow is vaccination. I would move out of the state if I had to. I would change the family name. I would disappear. With my family. I'm not saying it would come to that. There are ways to sidestep the system with grace, if you know how to act. There are exemptions you can declare, in every state, based on religious and/or philosophic views. But if push came to shove, I would go on the move.

Q: And yet there are children everywhere who do get vaccines and appear to be healthy.

A: The operative word is "appear." What about all the children who can't focus on their studies? What about the children who have tantrums from time to time? What about the children who are not quite in possession of all their mental faculties? I know there are many causes for these things, but vaccines are one cause. I would not take the chance. I see no reason to take the chance. And frankly, I see no reason to allow the government to have the last word. Government medicine is, from my experience, often a
contradiction in terms. You get one or the other, but not both.

Q: So we come to the level playing field.

A: Yes. Allow those who want the vaccines to take them. Allow the dissidents to decline to take them. But, as I said earlier, there is no level playing field if the field is strewn with lies. And when babies are involved, you have parents making all the decisions. Those parents need a heavy dose of truth. What about the child I spoke of who died from the DPT shot? What information did his parents act on? I can tell you it was heavily weighted. It was not real information

Q: Medical PR people, in concert with the press, scare the hell out of parents with dire scenarios about what will happen if their kids don't get shots.

A: They make it seem a crime to refuse the vaccine. They equate it with bad parenting. You fight that with better information. It is always a challenge to buck the authorities. And only you can decide whether to do it. It is every person's responsibility to make up his mind. The medical cartel likes that bet. It is betting that the fear will win.

JON RAPPOPORT

Comment
A pox on vaccines

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4336182,00.html

Parents who refuse to have children immunised are regarded as dangerous cranks - in defiance of the facts

Anne Karpf
Guardian

Wednesday January 16, 2002


We call it propaganda when governments peddle "facts" which are demonstrably untrue. And yet the claim that without vaccination measles is a stalking killer is disseminated by both the Department of Health and most medical journalists, despite strong counter-evidence. In 1976, Professor Thomas McKeown, investigating trends in mortality, compared declining death-rates from infectious diseases with medical interventions since the cause of death was first registered in 1838. He found that immunisation had no significant effect on the trend of the death-rate from measles, which had fallen to a low level before mass vaccination was introduced, because of major improvements in sanitation and nutrition. So too had morbidity, the incidence of the disease.

Those of us who haven't had our children vaccinated aren't cranky obsessives or zealous Jehovah's Witnesses. On the contrary, we're mostly pretty well-informed, as you have to be if you refuse the orthodoxy of vaccination. We do so for two main reasons, neither of them specifically to do with autism, which most people would agree is dreadful but only affects a small number of children.

The first, and most shocking one, is that vaccination simply can't sustain the claims made for it. In the US immunisation rates are as high as 98% is some areas, and yet there are still regular measles epidemics. The Centres for Disease Control in Atlanta found that 80% of measles cases in 1985 occurred in children who had been vaccinated, while a 1987 outbreak affected a secondary school more than 99% of whose pupils had had live measles vaccine. In Italy there were just 10 deaths from measles between 1989-91, even though they had only 40% coverage from the vaccine. In the following two years coverage from the vaccine grew, as did deaths from measles (to 28). So much for "herd immunity".

Second, we believe that in the case of infectious diseases, Pasteur's germ theory has been oversold. Pasteur, Robert Koch and others focused on the bacteria that caused infections, which medicine then tried to zap. Most anti-vaccinators argue that the host, ie the body, is as important as the infecting germ. Starting from a quite different paradigm, they prefer to nourish the body's own immune system, which vaccination (they maintain) impairs.

Opponents of immunisation feel vindicated by epidemiology, for measles isn't a disease that strikes randomly unless routed by vaccination. On the contrary, it turns out to be depressingly class-conscious and poverty-aware. Those most debilitated by it are the least well fed - there's a tragic synergy between malnutrition and infectious diseases. According to a 1973 World Health Organisation report, "ordinary measles or diarrhoea - harmless and short-lived diseases among well fed children - are usually serious and often fatal to the chronically malnourished.

"Before vaccines existed, practically every child in all countries caught measles, but 300 times more deaths occurred in the poorer countries than in the richer ones. The reason was not that the virus was more virulent, nor that there were fewer medical services; but that in poorly nourished
communities the microbes attack a host which, because of chronic malnutrition, is less able to resist". Given that there's no vaccination against poverty, governments prefer the quicker fix of vaccination. Vaccine producers like it too: there's gold in them thar jabs.

This isn't a sphere where conscientious objections are tolerated, either among doctors or patients. Each GP gets a "target payment" (did someone say "bribe"?) of £2,730 for vaccinating 90% of two-year-olds on their list. Some practices are now considering dropping unvaccinated families from their lists. When my first child was newborn, my GP asked why I was risking her life by refusing to have her vaccinated. I changed practices soon after. Journalists, too, are expected to toe the public health line and are labelled irresponsible (as I will be) if they don't, even though accusations of "inaccuracy" often mask genuine disagreements.

Alternative health practitioners argue that measles and other infectious illnesses, far from damaging children, actually improve their overall health. But a child suffering from the disease needs proper, labour-intensive care. Nursing used to be an essential part of the job-description of motherhood: our mothers (for it was mostly them) knew how to nurse an infected child - drawn curtains, cold drinks, and wet flannels. We now think of nursing almost entirely in professionalised terms, as something we pay others to do.

Above all nursing is slow, but life is fast. What child, today, can afford to miss a week of the national curriculum, and what mother can take a week off work? I don't usually admit it in public lest a passing doctor burst a blood-vessel, but I want my children to contract measles. Yet whenever I hear of someone from whom they could catch it, it's never the right time - an exam or deadline is always looming.

One consequence of the mass vaccination of children is to turn measles into an adult (or adolescent) disease, when it's far more dangerous. And now the government is considering the introduction of a chickenpox vaccine - thus does the vaccination cocktail grow. We're familiar with the concept of informed consent. On vaccination, increasing numbers of people are turning
towards the concept of informed refusal.

Meryl W. Dorey,

President

The Australian Vaccination Network, Inc.

June 27, 2002

MEDICAL QUACKERY:

THE JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, A LYNCH MOB, AND VACCINES

By Nicholas Regush
http://www.redflagsweekly.com/regush/2002_june27.html

My plan for today's column was to write about how some medical students are beginning to resist free lunches provided by the drug industry. Yes, free lunches to the presumably naive, silly little girls and boys that will one day become big, devoted drug pushers.

But I'll keep that one for another day because this week, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study that will rank with the "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes." Ever see that movie? You should because it was so bad that it became a legend. Now, we have a hummer in medicine that we can all go back to, time and again, for quiet reference, or zip out of the closet for angry demonstration. It will work for us either way.

The study (dare I call it that?) is really about how some grown-ups (maybe some naive, silly little boys who got free lunches at some point in their lives) are now big grownups, are doctors and are into what I call lynching. No, I didn't say surgery, I said lynching.

Here is what the team did. They hovered around the internet and did a "content analysis" of what 22 vaccine-related sites were offering their visitors. I guess the whole idea was to do some bad sociology, throw science down the tubes for a while and have a grand time. Wow, look at this site, they are using little girls and boys and tearful mothers to create high drama for their gullible visitors. The visitors may actually even listen to some of what is being said by the people in the high drama, such as notions about children being hurt by vaccines.

Do children not get hurt from vaccines? Probably a ton of children, only there is a crappy surveillance system run by the government that gets a slow voluntary stream of reports.

The team also called the sites "anti-vaccination." Why? Because some people are opposed to the unbelievably bad research that passes for science. Quick, dirty studies that do not last long enough to determine much at all about the vaccine. Oh sure, the surveillance system will pick up the rest of the problems.

Most people I know are not opposed to vaccines per se - and I'm certainly not - but they are opposed to conflicts of interest, big money grabs by industry, forceful vaccination, and helter-skelter use of poorly-tested vaccines.

And there is a movement growing in America that will not be held back on any of these issues now.

At this time, when there are hundreds of vaccines in the pipeline and drug companies are looking to inject just about anything into a young child, here we have the "team" consisting of Robert Wolfe, Lisa Sharp, and Martin Lipsky conducting the dumbest research that I have ever personally come across in 30 years of medical reporting. It says a lot for the Journal of the American Medical Association for publishing such bilge.

Their conclusion in the study? Are you ready for this? "Anti-vaccination Web sites express a range of concerns related to vaccine safety and varying levels of distrust in medicine. The sites rely heavily on emotional appeal to convey their message.

Well here's a message to Wolfe, Sharp and Lipsky from me:
Here's my conclusion: You've created a true classic. My guess is that it will hang in there for a while.


Hi, I've just done some reasons why I don't vaccinate
john http://www.whale.to/vaccines.html
ps he may change personality if you tell him you don't want to vaccinate.

1. Believe it or not, there isn't any convincing evidence that vaccination reduced the death rate for any disease such as measles, smallpox, polio, etc. So, where is the benefit? If vaccination suppresses one disease another one increases.

Now 1 in 86 children have autism, 1 in 5 asthma, 1 in 10 dyslexia....... and the number one suspect is vaccination. The Government/Vaccine Industry is going to carry on vaccinating, and claiming vaccines are safe, until every other child has a vaccine induced disease, so only parent awareness is going to stop that.

2. The vaccines aren't safe unless you stretch the definition of "safe" to include the risk of death, numerous diseases, and serious brain damage. Some vaccines are less dangerous than others. Safe is breastfeeding. The safety tests were two weeks in the case of the MMR, and conducted by the makers.

3. Governments (and the mainstream media) are run by the Corporations, for the Corporations, so don't expect much light from that direction. The two main government spokesman for MMR receive funding from the makers.

4. Vaccination, from top to bottom is run by the drug Corporation/Industry, so it's self-policing, and its hard not to conclude that parent groups like the NVIC are the only independent watchdogs on vaccine safety, and because of them that any vaccine injury payments exist at all. The medical doctors are not in the inner "knowledge loop".

5. Knowledge of vaccine ingredients and their toxicity, eg mercury. Mercury poisoning symptoms almost mimic autism symptoms.

6. Knowledge of vaccine contaminants like cancer causing SV40 virus. No real effort is being made to screen vaccines for all contaminants and its left to the makers. Now we have stealth viruses.

"FDA virologist Peter Reeve........ acknowledged that the FDA suspended its own independent tests of vaccine purity 15 years ago, leaving it entirely up to the manufacturers to ensure the vaccine is contaminant free."--'The Virus and the Vaccine': Atlantic Monthly

7. Knowledge of medical politics. Vaccines are the medicine of one group of medical doctors--the allopaths (drug using medical doctors). Many medical doctors (usually ones knowledgeable in non-drug/alternative medicine) advise against using vaccines. The allopaths have a medical monopoly-----this explains many, many "mysteries" such as the "unknown" cause of numerous diseases such as Alzheimer's, SIDS, & autism, and the "uncurable" nature of all diseases with drugs (apart from bacterial infections), such as alzheimer's, AIDS, cancer, arthritis, heart disease etc, and why you can only get drug medicine "free" on the NHS.

"Society today is paying a heavy price in disease and death for the monopoly granted the medical profession in the 1920's. In fact, the situation peculiarly resembles that of the 1830s when physicians relied on bloodletting, mercurial medicines, and quinine, even though knowing them to be intrinsically harmful. And precisely the same arguments were made in defense of these medicines as are employed today, namely, that the benefits outweigh the risks. In truth, the benefits accrue to the physician, while the patient runs the risks."-Harris Coulter

"We know the cause of SIDS. We can and have prevented them. It's all done with a compound called ascorbate. Not to use it means deaths will continue. There is no other answer. There never will be. For our findings are based on scientific facts. Not medical opinion."---Dr Kalokerinos MD.

8. Even if you run the risk of vaccinating your child can still get the disease.

9. The Bechamp disease model makes more sense than the Pasteurian disease model of vaccinators which appears tailor made for a Corporation selling vaccines and drugs. Pasteur's real character didn't do much for that model either--fraud, plagarism etc. That means the naturopathic disease model makes more sense than the allopathic one, and if you study the results of natural healing (naturopathy, homeopathy, metabolic, nutritional) over allopathy you can see the results are far more successful, and more capable of dealing with disease. And look at allopathic iatrogenic disease, now officially the third cause of death, costing about £4 Billion in compensation every year (UK).

10. No research is being conducted into the long term effects of vaccines (for obvious reasons) so vaccination is still an experiment, and no research has ever been done using non-vaccinated children (apart from a few done by parents, and Dr Odent using Steiner children).

11. Vaccine income world wide costs taxpayers around $8 billion, plus the income for treating vaccine induced disease. This could be 10 times as much, all paid for by the taxpayer. Much of this money comes back down the money chain to the allopaths, who, in reality, market the products of the drug industry, eg vaccines.

"At least half of all U.S children have had otitis media by their first birthday. By age 6 90% have had them. This condition accounts for 26 million visits to physicians every year. In addition, about 1 million children have tubes inserted in their ears every year, at a cost of $1000/operation. Thus $1 billion is spent each year on this operation. Just imagine what it means if this is all, or mostly all, caused by the pertussis vaccine. This particular "glue ear" type of otitis was not known in American medical practice before the late 1940's or early 1950's -- in other words, the time when the pertussis vaccine was being introduced."--Harris Coulter Ph.D.

THERE'S MORE TO VACCINATION THAN THE SHOT

by Sharon Kimmelman

Most people give more time and consideration to buying a car than to the vaccines their children are given. Although volumes of books, medical journals, U.S. Congressional Record testimonies, and international health statistics spanning more than a hundred years question, challenge, discredit and condemn the practice of vaccination as an unproven pseudo-scientific theory, it remains in widespread use. The cry for a hearing of the facts is rising once again, as the highly financed massive campaign is stepping up its mandatory drugging; it is misleading the public with unsubstantiated claims of safety, efficacy and necessity of vaccination. One need not be a licensed "expert" to approach and comprehend this subject. An open mind, a focused commitment to good health, and common sense will do.

As Ethly Douglas Hume explains in her classic book Bechamp or Pasteur(1923),
"The whole theory [of vaccination] is rooted in a belief in the immunity conferred by a non-fatal attack of a disease. The idea arises from the habit of regarding disease as an entity, a definite thing, instead of a disordered condition due to complex causes; the germ theory of disease, in particular, being the unconscious offspring of the ancient Eastern faith in specific demons, each possessed of his own special weapon of malignity. Thus the smallpox inoculation introduced into England from Turkey by Lady Mary Wortley Montague in the eighteenth century [1717] and its substitute of cowpox inoculation were based on the ancient Indian rite of subjecting people to an artificially induced attack of smallpox to propitiate Sheetula-Mata, the goddess of that torment."

The modern version substitutes "germs" for "demons." An organized destruction of natural health care escalated around 1850, when chemist Louis Pasteur grossly misinterpreted the brilliant and revolutionary work of Prof. Antoine Bechamp (chemist, physician, naturalist, and biologist) on the essential role of "germs" in life processes. We literally have been suffering under that delusion ever since.

Vaccines Are Not Harmless

Vaccines are immunosuppressive. They are produced from and contain cells from sickened animals (calf lymph, monkey kidney, chick embryo, etc.), human fetus tissue, viruses, heavy metals (mercury, aluminum), antibiotics and a host of chemical propellants and solutions (formaldehyde, exc.). These substances are acknowledged poisons. Injecting foreign matter into the blood stream results in a wide range of diseases of the blood, brain, nerves and skin (cancer, leukemia, MS, arthritis, immune deficiency) and death. Does putting these toxic substances into a pure and healthy newborn and continuing to administer booster shots throughout childhood (and now adulthood) prevent disease? The immune system is simply doing its job when it expels material from the body (rash, diarrhea, nausea, fever, etc.). What are we really preventing when we quell the cough, break the fever, drug or suppress the symptoms? Are we promoting perhaps the sharp rise in degenerative disease (leukemia, arthritis, and cancer) among children three to twelve years old?

 A Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (July 1985) table shows a long list of adverse reactions to DPT vaccination occurring within 48 hours. One in two doses resulted in pain, one in three redness, two in five swelling. Although some symptoms of vaccine damage appear as mild, local reactions (up to 50%), this does nor deny internal system damage. High-pitched screaming and inconsolable crying (encephalitis or brain inflammation) occurs in one percent of doses. Since every child gets five doses, this occurs to one in twenty babies. The DPT vaccination is given to 67,000 U.S.children each week. Does this relate to the steady rise in children with hyperactivity and brain dysfunction? Some babies fall into a coma for the two-day observation period. So, it, other damage and death which follow are not acknowledged as "vaccine related," noted on the child's medical record, nor reported to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which compiles and reports statistics like incidence of adverse reaction to vaccines.

The patient vaccine information insert for the DPT (Diphtheria/Pertussis/Tetanus) triple vaccine reads: "Sudden infant death syndrome has been reported following administration of DPT. The significance is unclear...85% of SIDS cases occur in the period 1 through 6 months of age, with the peak incidence at age 2 to 4 months."The vaccine is given at 2, 4 and 6 months. It is clear that death in infants from vaccination is being called many things including SIDS to obscure the actual cause(s). We've spoken with hundreds of parents: Not one was ever shown this patient insert by a doctor. What happened to the threat of swine flu? As of 1978, more than 3000 lawsuits for deaths and paralysis resulting from the swine flu vaccine injections were filed against the U.S. government totaling 51.5 billion in compensation. The vaccine was withdrawn. How did the disease disappear? Perhaps it never existed?

Vaccines Are Not Effective

"Immunity" is a grand medical delusion. Immune function, though, like all other body processes, responds to and is the direct result of changing beneficial and detrimental health practices and factors. There is no magic pill or potion which will lock us into a state of "protection" in spite of our actions. We are biologically accountable for our behavior. Technology cannot trick nature without serious repercussions. In 1950, the British Medical Society conducted exhaustive studies on the relation of the incidence of diphtheria to the presence of antibodies. Their conclusion: there is absolutely no relation between the two. More recently, Dr. Wendell Belfield of San Jose, California has stated that when primary immune defense (leukocytes, interferon, etc.) is intact, antibodies are not needed or produced. If vaccine toxicity destroys the first line of defense of immune function to create antibodies, what do we gain in their pursuit?

Polio and paralysis are not synonymous. Dr. Ralph Scoby, president of the Polio Research Institute, published (Archives of Pediatrics, 1950) a list of 170 diseases with 'polio-like symptoms and effects but with different names." Paralysis is the result of the diphtheria (and other) vaccination, tonsillectomies and malnutrition (sugar ingestion). Yet the public was rallied to accept the Salk anti-polio vaccine for a disease diagnosed without viral confirmation, the medical standard. The result: paralysis increased up to 600% and 17 states banned its use. Also, government agencies knew that 350 million vaccine doses contained cancer-causing SV 40 virus, yet refused to recall them to keep public confidence in vaccines high. If the Salk vaccine wiped out polio, why did the Sabin oral vaccine replace it? It was called "superior." It is not. Taken by mouth, it is only less
lethal.

A State Communicable Disease Report for California (1971) shows that between 1955 and 1966 the reported number of polio cases dropped from 273 to 50 while viral meningitis rose from 5 to 256 cases. Another California report lists "0" polio cases. An asterisk leads the reader to this statement:
"All such cases now reported as meningitis." The media is playing Meningitis (Hib), a "polio twin," exactly as it played polio in the 50s. Coincidentally, it has its own vaccine. What's the best way to wipe out a disease? Rename it!

Date Viral or Aseptic Meningitis Polio

July 1955 50 273

July 1961 161 65

July 1963 151 31

Sept.1966 256 5


Vaccines Are Not Responsible for the Eradication of Disease

The Presidential Address of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1971) and Scientitic American (1973) presented records which document that 90% of all "contagious" disease was eliminated as the result of vastly improved sanitation, water systems, nutrition and living/working conditions. Mass vaccination (and antibiotics) was introduced about a century after that period of enormous decline (1850-1940) and yet is given full credit for it. The U.S. Congress' Office of Technology Assessment's report entitled "Assessing the Efficacy and Safety of Medical Technologies" states: "It has been estimated that only 10 to 20% of all procedures currently used in medical practice have been shown to be efficacious by controlled trial." Of all drugs, devices and surgeries in daily use, 80-90% are unproven. It adds that almost every surgery which was subjected to controlled medical study has been abandoned. Vaccination (technically surgery) remains unproven because authorities consider it unethical to not do it. Vaccinating the entire population would destroy the evidence for proving or disproving the theory. Dr. Leon Chaitow has reported that in testimony given under oath, British army medical personnel were instructed by their authorities to re-diagnose any disease which occurred (and was not supposed to) as a result of the mandatory vaccinations. Statistics are used to manipulate the public trust.


Vaccination Does Not Prevent Disease

World health records (England, Germany, Italy, Mexico, the Philippines,British India, etc.) document the devastating epidemics which followed mass vaccination. The worst smallpox disaster occurred in the Philippines, after 10 years (1911-1920) of a compulsory U.S. program which administered 25 million vaccinations to its population of 10 million. The result: 170,000 cases and more than 75,000 deaths from smallpox. History past and present is replete with similar tragedies. "Public education" by vaccine producers and their supporters always omits self-incriminating facts.

The Times of London began three weeks of coverage with a front-page article entitled "Smallpox Vaccine triggered AIDS viruses" (5/11/87). Newsworthy enough, but the U.S. media reported nothing. In Africa, the greatest amount of people with immune deficiency are located in areas where the WHO vaccination programs are most intense. It is nor at all surprising that the combination of poor living conditions and immune suppression via vaccination has resulted in mass illness, call it what you will.

Good health is the result of managing multiple stress factors well: nutrition, personal hygiene, environment, nurturing social relationships, etc. As we build up and break down, the body builds up waste materials (through lungs, skin pores, bowels, kidneys, tonsils, etc.). The less well people are, or the more waste products produced (from overtaxing the body's systems), the more discomfort they may feel from these processes. When needed, bacteria are "called" out of their natural balance to where waste materials have accumulated, to decompose and recycle them and sanitize the area. Wastes are there BEFORE the bacteria arrive. Bacteria are present in great numbers in the second and third stages of disease. Bacteria do not cause disease. Dis-ease creates an environment favorable to the proliferation of bacteria; it demands that they multiply. Dis-ease is not something to be cured; it is the cure.

It is "normal" for vaccinated children to live their lives plagued with earaches and sore throats. Even with lowered vitality their bodies seek the quickest route out (skin, ears, tonsils) to expel toxic vaccine material and resulting waste from the vaccines' damage. Antibiotics suppress symptoms and drive the toxins deeper into the body, complicating elimination. Vaccines lower immune response but the absence of medically acknowledged symptoms is not a sign of better health. Conversely, lowered vitality, the norm in vaccinated children, is never called a symptom. Children injured "by dis-ease" are malnourished, force-fed, medicated, vaccinated and already have degenerative disease. It is not the dis-ease which is dangerous, it is the prior and continued mis-treatment which weakens the child to such degree that a simple detoxification can threaten his life. The view that elimination of wastes kills is what we call "The Last Straw" Theory of Disease. It negates the essential factors which influence health. With all the new iatrogenic (doctor-caused) diseases, we've decided to name one, too: PFLS-Patient for Life Syndrome begins when a healthy 8-week-old is given the first vaccination which sickens him and initiates the cycle of vaccination, earache, antibiotic, vaccination, sore throat, antibiotic, vaccination ...ad mortem. Each additional vaccine further weakens the child, setting up the condition for a lifetime of medical intervention. Is it any wonder so many of us are suffering with allergies, asthma, skin, immune, nerve (vision), and brain disorders?

Dr. Rosenow (Journal of Infectious Diseases, 1914) published his experiments with bacteria in which he took strains from different disease sources and put them in a uniform medium. Soon, there was no difference between them. He concluded that bacteria are not different species but that they have the capacity to transmute, to adapt to their environment. Fifty years earlier, in "Notes on Nursing", Florence Nightengale wrote this enlightened statement: "There are no specific diseases. There are specific disease conditions."

The rubella vaccine is particularly crippling in adult women, causing rheumatoid arthritis, chronic rubella, immune deficiency, etc. Yet the New York state legislature just passed a law to require revaccination with measles, mumps and rubella of all college students born after 1956. We are
now told that those vaccines which eliminated disease were "relatively ineffective" ... Well, which is it?

Medical schools are funded by drug companies which are profit-making businesses. Why do we expect to get unbiased information from their students and promoters? Would you go to a butcher to find out about vegetarianism? Even caring doctors, if they have not thought out this issue for themselves, continue to mislead people to believe that medical theories are facts. The medical mainstream influences with FEAR which can overshadow our logic, intelligence and protective instinct. Vaccine proponents insinuate that without them and their "miracles" we will perish. It takes emotional support to withstand the indoctrination. But more parents are making an informed choice, even with the tremendous pressure from authorities and well-meaning friends and family. It is sad that most parents are bullied, sweet-talked or intimidated into giving uninformed consent and getting it done in a hurry.

Vaccination is non-emergency care. Responsible informed choice requires taking time to find out the facts, acknowledging our feelings and getting moral support through meeting unvaccinated children, adults and their families. This can offer parents a fuller picture of humanity's natural
abilities to use dis-ease in attaining better health.

Editor's Note: Sharon Kimmelman is director of
Vaccination Alternatives
PO Box 346
New York, NY 10023

She is also editor of the Well Beings newsletter of
the Natural Immunity Information Network.
You can send email to her at va-sk@juno.com.


Welcome! You sound so much like I did when I first started researching vaccinations. I read about the dangers of vaccinations from so many sources (some that I trusted very much - like Mothering Magazine), but just couldn't believe that something that was so accepted and recommended by society at large could really be that bad. The more research I did, the more disillusioned I became. It's a hard thing to find out that the medical system that is supposed to take care of us could go so wrong.

Congratulations on finding this group! This, plus research on your own will help you come to your own decision. It's a big and scary step to take charge of your own and your family's well being and health - but it's something that we as parents must do. I'm glad you thought to do some research on the subject of vaccinations. I wish I could say it will be an easy road for you, but it probably won't be. There isn't much support for a self-educated parent in the world of vaccines. My Dr. and I have parted company over this issue.

If I had to offer you one piece of advice as you start out on the path of taking charge of your family's health, it would be to consider this, do your research and be sure of your decision before you take your son in for his second set of shots. The shots can always be given, but they can never be reversed. Go on to to the Center for Disease Control's website to get the statistics on your son's chances of contracting the diseases that vaccines address for his age and your area. When I did this for my son, I felt much better about waiting until I was better informed.

In all the research I've done, I've always hoped that I will find credible evidence that vaccines are safe and really are effective. I'm sad to say that in all the books I've read and research I've done, all I've found is more evidence to the contrary. Our children are so precious and so dependent on us to make the right decision. At the end of the day, it's our families that have to live with the decisions our Dr's make on our behalf. The crucial thing to realize is that the Dr. doesn't have the same vested interest. Take some time and look around you. Learn what a vaccine damaged child looks like, then look at your family and friends' children... you may notice some things that you hadn't noticed before.

Good luck in your journey!

Also, to say at this point that the shots didn't have any effect is like planting a seed in the ground and then coming back the next day and saying, after you couldn't find any growth above ground, "I guess the seed was no good." It doesn't work like that. That kind of judgment is very superficial. Actions have consequences. They may be minor. They may not. Lots of things go on that you can't see. Poison was sowed into the child's tissues. I wouldn't take it for granted they have all been eliminated.

Good diet (not the kind recommended by the medical establishment) and good hygiene is the way to grow a healthy child. Put a little poison on your new garden and see how it does. The point is, it doesn't (or if it does, it does it with less than it would have). You grow healthy plants, animals, and human beings with good nutrition and cleanliness, not poison.

Disease (and germs) is/are nothing to be afraid of when you are healthy (unless you do something stupid [I'm not calling you stupid] like unnaturally inject them directly into the blood stream).
 
God bless, your friend,


Don't get scared XXXXX, just get educated. You have to find the information yourself cause you'll get sweet FA from a doctor. We all know that most doctors (GPs)are nobs and are nothing more than the middle man in what is a legalised drug ring. Most just go to med school, agree with everything, get a degree, an impressive office, speak down to everyone so as to appear superior and BINGO!!!!!! an expert.

When I go to the medical library I am amazed at how young and unhealthy looking many of the med students are. I had a conversation with a sixth year med student on vaccines the other day, he knew zip.

Same as these 'caring people' on these new mother sites and baby sites, I am amazed at the dippy information they hand out to unsuspecting, trusting first time mums. The site I visited once with endorsements from J & J, and all these cute pics of smiling babies, with these 'caring people' telling young pregnant scared women to 'go vaccinate', may as well tell them to go play Russian Roulette with their baby...........

And the reason you are scared is that vaccination is a superstition and superstition is ruled by fear. You vaccinated your child because you thought it was the right thing to do, and that's all very commendable, but the truth is you did it cause you were scared.

And now you have had second thoughts (which is great) and opened a door and peeked inside, and guess what, it's scary too.....the truth often is, but now that you have had the courage to come so far, keep going........

Good Luck

Suzanne O'Mullan

I will share a speech with you that I gave in front of the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia...needless to say.... I have a lot of enemies now:

My name is Suzanne O'Mullan. I wanted my words for you to be so profound, but instead I only have questions.

Why is there such a CODE OF SILENCE when a parent speaks of "the autism-vaccine connection" in the medical and pharmaceutical communities?

Only 5 short years ago, Autism was told to be "very rare, 1 in every 10,000". Today, the statistics are now 1 in every 150 with some studies showing 1 in every 63... The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has now admitted that the increase is an epidemic and so far impossible to explain. Why do other authorities continue to deny increases in autism when every school department is going bankrupt trying to educate "our" children? There were 6 new cases of autism a day 7 days a week in 1999 in just one state? The past 90 days, there were 556 new cases of DSM IV autism alone. The statistics read as follows: The past 25 years between 1969-1994 there were approx 5,100 cases of autism. The past 5 years between 1994-1998 there were approx 5,100 new cases of autism. The past 2 1/4 years between January 1999 and March 2001 there are over 5,100 new cases of autism. The cost of autism over a lifetime per child is $2 million. To give you a recent figure for the new 556 children in the last 90 days that totals $1.132 billion. In line with the increase of autism, the vaccine numbers also rose. Vaccinations given to children from birth to age 2, rose from 8 in 1980, to 21 in 2001 (some as you know containing combined antigens or 3 live viruses). Before 1980: there was mostly infantile autism (symptoms in infancy and often at birth); after 1980: there is now what is called a "New Autism" with symptoms occurring after 18 months. Why does autism now start in the 2nd or 3rd year of life when it was described as Infantile Autism for years by Kanner? Why?

Why isn't anyone told that there is a vaccine compensation fund for those whose children have experienced an adverse vaccine reaction? How many adverse reactions could there be to warrant a fund to pay for damages by our government? Why are vaccines mandated without proper safety studies? Why are a few weeks of follow-up considered adequate? Why do the vaccine manufacturer's finance safety studies when they are the very companies, which profit from sales? Safety trials not looking beyond 3 weeks post-vaccination doesn't convince me as a parent. Why do parents have to prove that a vaccine causes a problem when the manufacturer - has no studies to prove that it does not? If all of the testing is supposedly done for exploring every angle of safety and concern, why do vaccine schedules change? Why are things taken out and why are some vaccines reformulated?

Why won't the medical community listen to findings such as when Dr. Wakefield found the measles virus in the gut wall of children with autism (which was also independently confirmed by Dr. O'Leary and then again by Kawashima) instead of attacking Dr. Wakefield?

Why is every other drug administered to a person calibrated by weight when vaccines are "One size fits all?" Why do we give a 6 lb at-no-risk newborn half of the same dose of the same Hep B vaccine that we give to a 400lb at risk Sumau wrestler?

Why does it take less time to approve a vaccine than a shampoo for lice? It took the FDA 5 months to approve the Recombinant Hep B vaccine and 13 months to approve NIX lice Shampoo.

What Safety and Efficacy studies have been before recommending the administration of vaccines together?

Why do we have to give so many vaccines together when we know that they work better singly? If you are going to say that: parents aren't likely to return for a visit if a shot is needed, or if you want to spare the children the pain of repeated injections... just ask a mom of a child with autism who wouldn't have gladly returned to get one vaccine at a time.

When the combination of three vaccines Measles Mumps and Rubella (previously given singly) occurred into one triple vaccine, the MMR, the prevalence of autism also increased. The MMR was introduced in the US in 1972-1973 but its wide use really started in around 1978 and was clearly followed by an increase in autism. A parallel increase was noted in the UK starting in 1988 when the MMR was introduced over there. Was that just some coincidence?

Why does Japan have so little autism now after stopping the MMR. "Of the 3,969 medical compensation claims relating to vaccines in the last 30 years, a quarter had been made by those badly affected by measles, mumps and rubella." Dr. Hiroki Nakatani, director of the Infectious Disease Division at Japan's Ministry of Health and Welfare said that giving individual vaccines cost twice as much as MMR, "but we believe it is worth it".

During the Congressional hearings on the autism-vaccine connection in April of 2000, why were there responses such as: Congressman Dan Burton asking the same question to Dr. Wakefield, Prof O'Leary, Dr. Singh, Dr. Taylor: "Would you be willing to release your methodology and data to an independent panel of researchers?" Dr Andrew Wakefield "Yes of course" Prof. O'Leary "Without hesitation" Dr. Vijendra Singh "Absolutely" Dr. Brent Taylor "Uhhhh, I'd have to check with my superiors." By the way, he is the first author in the history of the Lancet to refuse to let anyone see his raw data.

How confident would parents and pediatricians be if they learned that: Members, including the Chair of the FDA and CDC advisory committees who make decisions to approve a vaccine own stock in drug companies that make the vaccines; -Individuals on both advisory committees own patents for vaccines under consideration or affected by the decisions of the committee; -Three out of five of the FDA's advisory committee who voted for the rotavirus vaccine had their "conflicts of interest" waived; -Seven of the 15 member FDA advisory committee were not present at the meeting, two others were excluded from the vote, and the remaining five were joined by five temporary voting members who all voted to license the product; -CDC grants "conflict of interest" waivers to every member of their advisory committee a year at a time, and allows full participation in the discussions leading up to a vote by every member, whether they have financial state in the decision or not; -CDC's advisory committee has no public members-no parents have a vote in whether or not a vaccine belongs on the childhood immunization schedule. The FDA's committee has only one public member.

Why don't you have independent researchers on your approval and development panel concerning vaccines? Why not invite Dr. Singh, Dr. Wakefield, Dr. O'Leary?

Where was the information on the vaccine information sheet that lists the levels of Mercury (the 2nd most deadly substance on this earth) that my child is being exposed to, among other questionable ingredients? There are ingredients on every bit of food that goes into our bodies, why not on the vaccine information sheet? If I had known that my child was being exposed to a level of Mercury that exceeded the EPA guidelines, I would have questioned the vaccine. Some infants have received in one day as much as 100 times the amount of mercury the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says is the maximum allowable daily exposure for an adult. Mercury damages the immune system so the child becomes unable to protect itself against the damage from the viruses in the vaccines.

HEPB: Where was it listed on the vaccine information sheet that my child would only be exposed to Hepatitis sexually or by IV drug use (dirty need les)? And if my child wasn't exposed, the vaccination would be unnecessary at just 4 hours of life? So that I might have had the chance to say, "no, I don't think this is necessary at this time". How can you justify the mandatory Hep. B vaccine to infants and children when there has been no risk/benefit analysis? Why isn't the Hep. B vaccine mandatory for teachers, other school workers, day care staff employees when it is mandatory for school kids? If HepB Vaccine is safe then why has it been investigated by the US House? (Rep Mica; May'99)? Why is HepB vaccine given to an infant or child when we know that it is ineffective after 10-11 years and the average age of diagnosis of hepatitis B is 30-35 years? Why was the HepB vaccine tested on only 37 Merck employees before recommending it for all no risk children? How come the vaccines in later studies were only observed for 5 days? Are their any peer reviewed studies on the safety of the Recombinant HepB vaccine?

POLIO: Why is the reason that polio vaccines manufactured between 1955-1964 may be linked with certain kinds of cancer? What is SV40 and does it belong in vaccines?

PREVNAR: The only testing for Prevnar is by an HMO group financed by the manufacturer who compared the Prevnar group to another group receiving another vaccine (which is very unusual)? The Prevnar group had four times more seizures, four times more gastritis than the control group, significantly more developed asthma, and one death. The big push for Prevnar came from its supposed prevention of otitis media, even though it had not been approved for this use. Otitis media is viral in 60% of the cases and bacterial in less than 40% In only 20-25% it is due to pneumococcus (there are 90+ serotypes of pneumococcus and Prevnar has only 7; even in theory, it would not affect more than 2-3% of cases); In two days, 90% of the otitis cases resolve by itself without treatment.

MMR: Why did my child have another MMR vaccination 18 months after the first MMR? Why aren't a titres offered first? Why would a simple titre not be performed to check the status of my child's immunity? Titre testing only costs about $3.00. Testing titre levels after a first vaccination may show an additional vaccine is NOT needed - so why give a repeat triple vaccine when 95% of the recipients are already immune?

If there is scientific evidence showing that:1. Measles virus can cause brain inflammation, encephalitis. 2. The vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) is known to have caused encephalitis. And Then, couldn't it be quite true that #3. Infantile autism might be the chronic continuation of the acute inflammation and damage of the brain?

Is it true that a Japanese author reported culturing rotavirus in children with intussusception in 1978? Why was the first rotavirus vaccine released when it was known that there were several cases of intussusception during the clinical trials? Why did you abstain from voting on its withdrawal?

Where are the statistics of exactly how many children in the last decade have died from Measles Mumps or Rubella or anything else we are so aggressively vaccinating against? If I had the chance of knowing that this answer would be less than 1:1000, I would have taken the chance of my child being that 1:1000 risk rather than developing Autism (a disease worse than death) which is now 1 in every 150.

By the time children are ready for school we have given them nearly 22 vaccinations with multiple viruses. As the number of vaccinations grows, so do the profits for the pharmaceutical companies who manufacture them. A new vaccine that is added to the universal use list has an assured stable market of 3 ½ to 4 million babies born in this country every year. The manufacturer (as of 1986) has virtually no liability for adverse events that may occur, as do the doctors who administer them. No liability. A stockholders dream. Prevnar is approx $60 per injection. What is the motivation to test safety issues short and long term if you are immune from being held accountable?

If you are sure that your product is safe, that all short and long term testing was done, administration guidelines are appropriate, ingredients aren't harmful, multiple vaccines at once don't knock out a child's immune system for some of them to develop autism, if all the research that needs to be done has been done, and if the government decided to take away the shield that protects you from lawsuits, would you still state that "There is no scientific evidence today that links vaccinations to autism?" THERE IS NO LONG-TERM SAFETY RESEARCH PROVING THAT MMR DOES NOT CAUSE AUTISM, IS THERE? And please do not mention the Finnish studies, which were terminated in 1996 before Wakefield even published his paper on MMR and Autism in 1998. Whose job is it to protect our Nations children? Why doesn't anyone listen to parents and just consider the possibility that vaccines may cause autism?

Why do we give "mad cow disease " our immediate attention when 67,000 new cases of autism (in 1999 alone) aren't comprehensive enough to merit an independent investigation? Is it because you are afraid of what you may find? Is it because vaccines represent a $2 billion industry annually? Is it because vaccines are big business?

I have learned that being left out and ignored your whole life is worse than dead. I have learned that being sick and in pain your whole life while doctors dismiss you is worse than dead. I have learned that a lifetime disability is harder than dying. As bad as death is, and it is often hideous, it is temporary and then there is peace. I do not know how long my autistic child will suffer. No one knows.
 
BTW: If you are going to vaccinate:
Factors to be considered: Family history (immune disease, convulsive disorders, vaccine reactions, maternal vaccination and revaccination,exposures); Child history (prematurity, health status, exposures, prior reactions, seizures); Vaccine history (known risks and reactions, risk-benefit, safety studies); Vaccine timing (bad timing: routine HepB in the newborn period when baby is not at risk, MMR, Chicken pox vaccine and HIB all together at age 1).

This would be a hot lot? I thought they don't exist, Dr Offit tells me.

"The Food and Drug Administration can withdraw a vaccine batch if there is any question about that particular lot's safety or effectiveness. It has not recalled a vaccine lot because of safety concerns since 1955."--Paul Offit MD
"With the exception of an early lot of polio vaccine in 1955, which was not fully inactivated, there has never been a "hot lot." www.immunizationinfo.org

Common Sense on Vaccines !
 Logic One...............

 LOGIC dictates that you research a subject before you  comment on it.

 LOGIC dictates that you do not base arguments on unfounded assumptions (such as the training, knowledge and intelligence of 22 year old public servants).

 LOGIC dictates that you don't assume a claim is true when it is supporting one of the biggest and most powerful industries in the world.

 LOGIC dictates that no matter how often a claim is repeated, it does not make it true, though as Hitler knew, if you repeat it  often enough, the masses will believe it (and ardently so).

 When you do some research and discover that vaccines contain some of the most poisonous compounds and elements known to man (and foreign organic material that is also toxic when injected into anything), i.e. formaldehyde, mercury and aluminium compounds, phenol (carbolic acid), borax (ant killer), methanol, dye, acetone (solvent, polish remover), disinfectant, glycerine, antifreeze, MSG and several other poisons, plus also toxic when injected, animal organ tissue and blood (e.g. monkey, cow, chicken, pig, sheep, dog, etc), contaminant animal viruses (e.g. SV40, which causes cancer in humans), aborted human foetus cells, large foreign proteins, mutated (more virulent) human viruses in high doses, bacterial endotoxins, antibiotics, bacteria, genetically modified yeast, latex, and animal, bacterial and viral DNA, which, when injected, can be incorporated into the recipient's DNA, then LOGIC dictates that you question whether violent poisons, which by definition are very harmful, are really going to be good for any living creature's immune system(?), let alone your tiny infant with its very immature immune and neurological systems.

 LOGIC also dictates that man was not created with an immune system designed not to be able to work until the twentieth century when it only could do so by man's intervention (particularly when the intervention was to poison it!).

 Some people will have enough LOGIC to stop there, but if you want to go further (or have missed discovering the above) and delve into medical research, then LOGIC dictates that you study the pro-vaccination articles properly and not rely on unsupported conclusions of authors paid by vaccine manufacturers.

 LOGIC dictates that if a vaccine was introduced AFTER a decline in the disease, then it was not responsible for that decline.

 LOGIC dictates that because outbreaks occur amongst fully vaccinated populations (often with those not vaccinated not even contracting the disease), vaccines are not protecting people against disease.

 LOGIC dictates that if you have "no previous vaccination" as a guideline in disease diagnosis, supported with teaching doctors that vaccinated people just don't get the disease, then you are likely to get low reported figures of disease cases in vaccinated people, no matter how ineffective, or rather counterproductive, vaccination actually is.

 LOGIC dictates that since the documented effect of vaccines is to "SENSITISE" the immune system, and "sensitise" means "anaphylaxis", which is the opposite of "prophylaxis", which means prevention, then vaccines do the opposite of prevention.

 LOGIC dictates that since sensitisation is such a big problem in highly vaccinated populations (and the problem is confined to these, by the way), asthma alone killing 800 people in this country every year, then without doing any more research, one would already be able to guess that vaccines are quite likely killing a large number of people.

 LOGIC dictates that since only the vaccinated can get the new, more dangerous, atypical forms of diseases (e.g. atypical measles), then vaccination is not terribly protective!

 LOGIC (and indeed medical policy) dictates that if you administer any vaccine or other procedure to a healthy person and a serious event immediately occurs, you have to consider that procedure as the cause of the event, particularly when it is biologically extremely plausible, based on the contents of what is administered (not to mention the invasive mechanism of injection, which, unlike normal skin grazes and cuts, bypasses important defence levels in the body).

 LOGIC dictates that since doctors are refusing to report cases of adverse events, then we cannot rely on government figures telling us how "rare" these events are supposed to be.

 LOGIC dictates that if senior pharmaceutical executives themselves candidly tell us that "natural enthusiasm" in the marketing department causes the companies to exaggerate (i.e. lie) when informing (doctors and others) about threat and occurrence of diseases (BMJ Apr 13, 2002), then it is probably true.

 LOGIC dictates that since whenever doctors go on strike the death rate drops, you can't really rely on anything they do or tell you about how to save lives!
Bronwyn Hancock.