Vaccines

Vaccine Raises Risk of Blood Disorder

2008-04-17T09:54:00.000-07:00

Several studies have suggested that there could be a link between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and an increased risk of immune thrombocytopenic purpura.

Immune thrombocytopenic purpura, or ITP, is an immune system malfunction in which the body reacts to its own platelets as foreign invaders and destroys them.

An analysis of data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink, covering more than a million children who had received at least one MMR vaccination, showed that the proportion of ITP cases attributable to MMR exposure among children less than two years old ranged from 76 percent to 86 percent.

The Autism Disaster: Is it Man Made?

2008-04-08T14:22:00.000-07:00

The Dangers of Excessive Childhood Vaccinations

By Russell L. Blaylock, M.D.

In 1976, children received 10 vaccines before attending school. Today they will receive over 36 injections. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Center for Disease Control assured parents that it was safe to not only give these vaccines, but that they could be given at one time with complete safety.

Is this true? Or are we being lied to on a grand scale?

The medical establishment has created a set of terms, which they use constantly to boost their egos and firm up their authority as the unique holders of medical wisdom -- the mantra is “evidence-based medicine”, as if everything outside their anointing touch is bogus and suspect.

A careful examination of many of the accepted treatments reveals that most have little or no scientific “evidence-based” data to support it. One often repeated study found that almost 80 percent of medical practice had no scientific backing.

I find it interesting that there exist an incredible double standard when it comes to our evidence versus theirs. The proponents of vaccination safety can just say they are safe, without any supporting evidence what-so-ever, and it is to be accepted without question.

Yet, let me, or anyone else, suggest that excessive vaccination can increase the risk of not only autism, but also schizophrenia and neurodegenerative diseases, and they will scream like banshees – Where is the evidence? Where is the evidence?

When we produce study after study, they always proclaim them to be insufficient evidence or unacceptable studies.

More often than not, they just completely ignore the evidence. This is despite the fact that we produce dozens or even hundreds of studies that not only demonstrate the link clinically and scientifically, but also clearly show the mechanism by which the damage is being done -- even on a molecular level. These include cell culture studies, mixed cell cultures, organotypic tissue studies, in vivo animal studies using multiple species and even human studies. To the defenders of vaccine safety -- our evidence is never sufficient and, if we face reality -- never will be.

The Autism Disaster: Is it Man Made?

In the early 1980s, the incidence of autism was 1 in 10,000 births. By 2005, the incidence had leaped to 1 in 250 births, and today it is 1 in 150 births and still climbing.

One of the strongest links to this terrible set of disorders was a drastic change in the vaccine programs of the United States and many other countries, which included a dramatic increase in the number of vaccines being given at a very early age. No other explanation has been forthcoming from the medical elite.

In this paper I shall present evidence, some of which has not been adequately discussed, that provides a connection between excessive vaccination and neurodevelopmental disorders.

Dispelling Vaccination Myths:

2008-04-08T13:30:00.000-07:00

An Introduction to the Contradictions between Medical Science and Immunization Policy

by Rev. Alan Phillips, Director
Citizens for Healthcare Freedom
Last Revision: May 2001

INTRODUCTION

Is there a legitimate controversy?

When my son was set to begin his routine vaccination series at age 2 months, I didn’t know there were any risks associated with immunizations. But the clinic's flyer contained a contradiction: my child’s chances of a serious adverse reaction to the DPT vaccine were one in 1750, while his chances of dying from pertussis were one in several million. When I pointed this out to the physician, he angrily disagreed, and stormed out of the room mumbling, “I guess I should read that [flyer] sometime...” Soon thereafter I learned of a child who had been permanently disabled by a vaccine, so I decided to investigate for myself. My findings have so alarmed me that I feel compelled to share them; hence, this report.

Health authorities credit vaccines for disease declines, and assure us of their safety and effectiveness. Yet these assumptions are directly contradicted by government statistics, published medical studies, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports, and the opinions of credible research scientists from around the world. In fact, infectious diseases declined steadily for decades prior to mass immunizations, doctors in the U.S. report thousands of serious vaccine reactions each year including hundreds of deaths and permanent disabilities, fully vaccinated populations have experienced epidemics, and researchers attribute dozens of chronic immunological and neurological diseases that have risen dramatically in recent decades to mass immunization campaigns.

Decades of studies published in the world’s leading medical journals have documented vaccine failure and serious adverse vaccine events, including death. Dozens of books written by doctors, researchers, and independent investigators reveal serious flaws in immunization theory and practice. Yet, incredibly, most pediatricians and parents are unaware of these findings. This has begun to change in recent years, however, as a growing number of parents and healthcare providers around the world are becoming aware of the problems and questioning mass mandatory immunization. There is a growing international movement away from mass mandatory immunization. This report introduces some of the information that provides the basis for the movement.

My point is not to tell anyone whether or not to vaccinate, but rather, with the utmost urgency, to point out some very good reasons why everyone should examine the facts before deciding whether or not to submit to the procedure. As a new parent, I was shocked to discover the absence of a legal mandate or professional ethic requiring pediatricians to be fully informed of the risks of vaccination, let alone to inform parents that their children risk death or permanent disability upon being vaccinated. I was equally dismayed to see first-hand the prevalence of physicians who are, if with the best of intentions, applying practices based on incomplete—and in some cases, outright mis—information.

This report is only a brief introduction; your own further investigation is warranted and strongly recommended. You may discover that this is the only way to get an objective view, as the controversy is a highly emotional one.

A word of caution: Many have found pediatricians unwilling or unable to discuss this subject calmly with an open mind. Perhaps this is because they have staked their personal identities and professional reputations on the presumed safety and effectiveness of vaccines, and because they are required by their profession to promote vaccination. But in any event, anecdotal reports suggest that most doctors have great difficulty acknowledging evidence of problems with vaccines. The first pediatrician I attempted to share my findings with yelled angrily at me when I calmly brought up the subject. The misconceptions have very deep roots.

VACCINATION MYTH #1:

“Vaccines are safe...”

...or are they?

The Federal government VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System) was established by Congress under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Compensation Act of 1986. It receives about 11,000 reports of serious adverse reactions to vaccinations annually, which include as many as one to two hundred deaths, and several times that number of permanent disabilities. [1] VAERS officials report that 15% of adverse events are “serious” (emergency room trip, hospitalization, life-threatening episode, permanent disability, death). Independent analysis of VAERS reports has revealed that up to 50% of reported adverse events for the Hepatitis B vaccine are “serious.” [2] While these figures are alarming, they are only the tip of the iceberg. The FDA estimates that as few as 1% of serious adverse reactions to vaccines are reported, [3] , [4] and the CDC admits that only about 10% of such events are reported. [5] In fact, Congress has heard testimony that medical students are told not to report suspected adverse events. [6]

The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC, a grassroots organization founded by parents of vaccine-injured and killed children) has conducted its own investigations. [7] It reported: “In New York, only one out of 40 doctor's offices confirmed that they report a death or injury following vaccination.” In other words, 97.5% of vaccine related deaths and disabilities go unreported there. Implications about medical ethics aside (federal law directs doctors to report serious adverse events [8] ), these findings suggest that vaccine deaths and serious injuries actually occurring may be from 10 to 100 times greater than the number reported.

With pertussis (often referred to as “whooping cough”), the number of vaccine-related deaths dwarfs the number of disease deaths, which have been about 10 annually for many years according to the CDC, and only 8 in 1993, one of the last peak-incidence years (pertussis runs in 3-4 year cycles; no none knows why, but vaccination rates have no such cycles). When you factor in under-reporting, the vaccine may be 100 times more deadly than the disease. Some argue that this is a necessary cost to prevent the return of a disease that would be more deadly than the vaccine. But when you consider the fact that the vast majority of disease decline this century preceded the widespread use of vaccinations (pertussis mortality declined 79% prior to vaccines), and the fact that rates of disease declines remained virtually unchanged following the introduction of mass immunization, present day vaccine casualties cannot reasonably be explained away as a necessary sacrifice for the benefit of a disease-free society.

Unfortunately, the vaccine-related-deaths story doesn’t end here. Studies internationally have shown vaccination to be a cause of SIDS [9] , [10] (SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, is a “catch-all” diagnosis given when the specific cause of death is unknown; estimates range from 5,000 to 10,000 cases each year in the US). One study found the peak incidence of SIDS occurred at the ages of 2 and 4 months in the U.S., precisely when the first two routine immunizations are given, [11] while another found a clear pattern of correlation extending three weeks after immunization. Another study found that 3,000 children die within 4 days of vaccination each year in the U.S. (amazingly, the authors reported no SIDS/vaccine relationship), while yet another researcher’s studies led to the conclusion that at least half of SIDS cases are caused by vaccines. [12]

Initial studies suggesting a causal relationship between SIDS and vaccines were quickly followed by vaccine-manufacturer-sponsored studies concluding that there is no relationship between SIDS and vaccines; one such study claimed that there was a slightly lower incidence of SIDS in vaccinees. However, many of these studies were called into question by yet another study that found “confounding” had erroneously skewed the results of these studies in favor of the vaccine. [13] At best, there is conflicting evidence. But shouldn't we err on the side of caution? Shouldn't any credible correlation between vaccines and infant deaths be just cause for meticulous, widespread monitoring of the vaccination status of all SIDS cases? Health authorities have chosen to err on the side of denial rather than caution.

In the mid 1970's Japan raised their vaccination age from two months to two years; their incidence of SIDS dropped dramatically; [14] they went from an infant mortality ranking of 17 to first in the world (i.e., Japan had the lowest infant death rate when infants were not being immunized). England’s vaccination rate temporarily dropped to about 30% at about the same time following media reports of vaccine-related brain damage. Infant mortality dropped substantially for about 2 years, then rose again in close correlation to rising immunization rates in the late 1970’s. Despite these experiences, the medical community maintains a posture of denial. Coroners don’t check the vaccination status of SIDS victims, and unsuspecting families continue to pay the price, unaware of the dangers and denied the right to make an informed choice.

FDA and CDC admissions about the lack of adverse event reporting suggests that the total number of adverse reactions actually occurring each year may actually fall within a range of 100,000 to a million (with “serious” events being approximately 20% of these). This concern is underscored by a study revealing that 1 in 175 children who completed the full DPT series suffered “severe reactions,” [15] and a Dr.'s report for attorneys stating that one in 300 DPT immunizations resulted in seizures. [16]

England actually saw a drop in pertussis deaths when vaccination rates dropped to 30% in the mid 70's. Swedish epidemiologist B. Trollfors’ study of pertussis vaccine efficacy and toxicity around the world found that “pertussis-associated mortality is currently very low in industrialised countries and no difference can be discerned when countries with high, low, and zero immunisation rates were compared.” He also found that England, Wales, and West Germany had more pertussis fatalities in 1970 when the immunization rate was high than during the last half of 1980, when rates had fallen. [17]

Vaccinations cost us more than just the lives and health of our children. The U.S. Federal Government's National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP) has paid out over $1.2 billion since 1988 to the families of children injured and killed by vaccines, [18] with money that comes from a tax on vaccines that vaccine recipients pay. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies have a captive market; vaccines are legally mandated in all 50 U.S. states (though legally avoidable in most; see Myth #9), yet these same companies are “immune” from accountability for the consequences of their products. Furthermore, they have been allowed to use “gag orders” as a leverage tool in vaccine damage legal settlements to prevent disclosure of information to the public about vaccination dangers. Such arrangements are clearly unethical; they force an uninformed American public to pay for vaccine manufacturer's liabilities, while ensuring that this same public will remain ignorant of the dangers of their products. This arrangement also diminishes any incentive that manufacturers might have to produce safer vaccines (after all, when the vaccine causes a death or injury, they don’t have to pay for it; they still get their profit).

It is important to note that insurance companies, who do the best liability studies, refuse to cover vaccine reactions. Profits appear to dictate both the pharmaceutical and insurance companies’ positions.

VACCINATION TRUTH #1:

“Vaccination causes significant death and disability at an astounding personal and financial cost to uninformed families.”

VACCINATION MYTH #2:

“Vaccines are very effective...”

...or are they?

The medical literature has a surprising number of studies documenting vaccine failure. Measles, mumps, small pox, pertussis, polio and Hib outbreaks have all occurred in vaccinated populations. [19] , [20] , [21] , [22] , [23] In 1989 the CDC reported: “Among school-aged children, [measles] outbreaks have occurred in schools with vaccination levels of greater than 98 percent. [24] [They] have occurred in all parts of the country, including areas that had not reported measles for years.” [25] The CDC even reported a measles outbreak in a documented 100% vaccinated population. [26] A study examining this phenomenon concluded, “The apparent paradox is that as measles immunization rates rise to high levels in a population, measles becomes a disease of immunized persons.” [27] A more recent study found that measles vaccination “produces immune suppression which contributes to an increased susceptibility to other infections.” [28] These studies suggest that the goal of complete “immunization” may actually be counter-productive, a notion underscored by instances in which epidemics followed complete immunization of entire countries. Japan experienced yearly increases in small pox following the introduction of compulsory vaccines in 1872. By 1892, there were 29,979 deaths, and all had been vaccinated. [29] In the early 1900’s, the Philippines experienced their worst smallpox epidemic ever after 8 million people received 24.5 million vaccine doses (achieving a vaccination rate of 95%); the death rate quadrupled as a result. [30] Before England’s first compulsory vaccination law in 1853, the largest two-year smallpox death rate was about 2,000; in 1870-71, England and Wales had over 23,000 smallpox deaths. [31] In 1989, the country of Oman experienced a widespread polio outbreak six months after achieving complete vaccination. [32] In the U.S. in 1986, 90% of 1300 pertussis cases in Kansas were “adequately vaccinated.” [33] 72% of pertussis cases in the 1993 Chicago outbreak were fully up to date with their vaccinations. [34]

VACCINATION TRUTH #2:

“Evidence suggests that vaccination is an unreliable means of preventing disease.”

VACCINATION MYTH #3:

“Vaccines are the reason for low disease rates in the U.S. today...”

...or are they?

According to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, childhood diseases decreased 90% between 1850 and 1940, paralleling improved sanitation and hygienic practices, well before mandatory vaccination programs. The Medical Sentinel recently reported, “from 1911 to 1935, the four leading causes of childhood deaths from infectious diseases in the U.S. were diphtheria, pertussis, scarlet fever, and measles. However, by 1945 the combined death rates from these causes had declined by 95 percent, before the implementation of mass immunization programs.” [35]

Thus, at best, vaccinations can only be examined only for their relationship to the small, remaining portion of disease declines that occurred after their introduction. Yet even this role is questionable, as pre-vaccine rates of disease mortality decline remained virtually the same after vaccines were introduced. Furthermore, European countries that refused immunization for small pox and polio saw the epidemics end along with those countries that mandated it; vaccines were clearly not the sole determining factor. In fact, both small pox and polio immunization campaigns were followed by significant disease incidence increases. After smallpox vaccination was being mandated, smallpox remained a prevalent disease with some substantial increases, while other infectious diseases simultaneously continued their declines in the absence of vaccines. In England and Wales, smallpox disease and vaccination rates eventually declined simultaneously over a period of several decades between the 1870’s and the beginning of World War II. [36] It is thus impossible to say whether or not vaccinations contributed to the continuing declines in disease death rates, or if the declines continued unabated simply due to the same forces which likely brought about the initial declines—improvements in sanitation, hygiene and diet; better housing, transportation and infrastructure; better food preservation techniques and technology; and natural disease cycles. Underscoring this conclusion was a recent World Health Organization report which found that the disease and mortality rates in third world countries have no direct correlation with immunization procedures or medical treatment, but are closely related to the standard of hygiene and diet. [37] Credit given to vaccinations for our current disease incidence has simply been grossly exaggerated, if not outright misplaced.

Vaccine advocates point to incidence rather than mortality statistics as evidence of vaccine effectiveness. However, statisticians tell us that mortality statistics are a better measure of disease than incidence figures, for the simple reason that the quality of reporting and record keeping is much higher on fatalities. [38] For instance, a survey in New York City revealed that only 3.2% of pediatricians were actually reporting measles cases to the health department. In 1974, the CDC determined that there were 36 cases of measles in Georgia, while the Georgia State Surveillance System reported 660 cases. [39] In 1982, Maryland state health officials blamed a pertussis epidemic on a television program, “D.P.T.—Vaccine Roulette,” which warned of the dangers of DPT; but when former top virologist for the U.S. Division of Biological Standards, Dr. J. Anthony Morris, analyzed the 41 cases, he confirmed only 5, and all had been vaccinated. [40] Such instances as these demonstrate the fallacy of incidence figures, yet vaccine advocates tend to rely on them indiscriminately.

VACCINATION TRUTH #3

“It is unclear what impact, if any, that vaccines had on 19^th and 20^th century infectious disease declines.”

VACCINATION MYTH #4:

“Vaccination is based on sound immunization theory and practice...”

...or is it?

The clinical evidence for vaccines is their ability to stimulate antibody production in the recipient. What is not clear, however, is whether or not antibody production constitutes immunity. For example, agamma globulin-anemic children are incapable of producing antibodies, yet they recover from infectious diseases almost as quickly as other children. [41] Furthermore, a study published by the British Medical Council in 1950 during a diphtheria epidemic concluded that there was no relationship between antibody count and disease incidence; researchers found resistant people with extremely low antibody counts and sick people with high counts. [42] Natural immunization is a complex interactive process involving many bodily organs and systems; it cannot be replicated by the artificial stimulation of antibodies.

Research also indicates that vaccination commits immune cells to the specific antigens in a vaccine, rendering them incapable of reacting to other infections. Immunological reserves may thus actually be reduced, causing a generally lowered resistance. [43]

Another component of immunization theory is “herd immunity,” the notion that when enough people in a community are immunized, all are protected. As Myth #2 showed, there are many documented instances showing just the opposite—fully vaccinated populations have experienced epidemics. With measles, this actually seems to be the direct result of high vaccination rates. [44] In Minnesota, a state epidemiologist concluded that the Hib vaccine increases the risk of illness when a study revealed that vaccinated children were five times more likely to contract meningitis than unvaccinated children. [45]

Surprisingly, vaccination has never actually been clinically proven to be effective in preventing disease, for the simple reason that no researcher has directly exposed test subjects to diseases (nor may they ethically do so). The medical community’s gold standard, the double blind, placebo-controlled study, has not been used to compare vaccinated and unvaccinated people, and so the practice remains unscientifically proven. Furthermore, it is important to recognize that not everyone exposed to a disease develops symptoms (indeed, only a tiny percentage of a population need develop symptoms for an epidemic to be declared). Thus, if a vaccinated individual is exposed to a disease and doesn’t get sick, it is impossible to know whether the vaccine worked, because there is no way to know if that person would have developed symptoms if he or she had not been vaccinated. It is also worth noting that outbreaks in recent years have recorded more disease cases in vaccinated children than in unvaccinated children.

Yet another surprising aspect of immunization practice is the “one size fits all” aspect. An 8 pound 2 month old baby receives the same dosage as a 40 pound five year old child. Infants with immature, undeveloped immune systems may receive five or more times the dosage, relative to body weight, as older children. Furthermore, the number of “units” within doses has been found in random testing to range from ½ to 3 times what the label indicates; manufacturing quality controls appear to tolerate a rather large margin of error. “Hot Lots”—vaccine lots associated with disproportionately high death and disability rates—have been repeatedly identified by the NVIC, but the FDA consistently refuses to intervene to prevent further unnecessary injury and deaths. In fact, individual vaccine lots have never been recalled due to their greater incidence of adverse reactions. However, the rotavirus vaccine was taken off the market a few months after being introduced when it caused bowel obstructions in many recipients. Incredibly, the FDA and CDC knew about this problem prior to licensing the vaccine, but both organizations still gave their unanimous approval. [46]

Finally, vaccines are administered with the assumption that all recipients—regardless of race, culture, diet, genetic makeup, geographic location, or any other characteristic—will respond the same. This was perhaps never more dramatically disproved than in Australia's Northern Territory a few years ago, where stepped-up immunization campaigns in native aborigines resulted in an incredible 50% infant mortality rate. [47] One must wonder about the lives of the survivors, too; if half died, surely the other half did not escape unaffected.

Almost as troubling was a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine reporting that a substantial number of Romanian children were contracting polio from the vaccine. Researchers found a correlation with injections of antibiotics. A single injection within one month of vaccination raised the risk of polio eight times, two to nine injections raised the risk 27-fold, and 10 or more injections raised the risk 182 times. [48]

What other factors not accounted for in vaccination theory will surface unexpectedly to reveal unforeseen or previously overlooked consequences? We cannot begin to fully comprehend the scope and degree of the danger until public health officials begin looking and reporting in earnest. In the meantime, entire countries’ populations are unwitting gamblers in a game that many might very well choose not to play if they were given all the rules in advance.

VACCINATION TRUTH #4:

“Many of the assumptions upon which immunization theory and practice are based are unproven or have been proven false in their application.”

VACCINATION MYTH #5:

“Childhood diseases are extremely dangerous...”

...or are they, really?

Most childhood infectious diseases have few serious consequences in today's modern world. Even conservative CDC statistics for pertussis during 1992-94 indicate a 99.8% recovery rate. In fact, when hundreds of pertussis cases occurred in Ohio and Chicago in the fall 1993 outbreak, an infectious disease expert from Cincinnati Children's Hospital said, “The disease was very mild, no one died, and no one went to the intensive care unit.”

The vast majority of the time, childhood infectious diseases are benign and self-limiting. They usually impart lifelong immunity, whereas vaccine-induced immunity is only temporary. In fact, the temporary nature of vaccine immunity can create a more dangerous situation in a child’s future. For example, the new chicken pox vaccine has an effectiveness estimated at 6 - 10 years. If effective, it will postpone the child's vulnerability until adulthood, when death from the disease, while still rare, is 20 times more likely than in childhood. “Measles parties” used to be common in Britain; if a child got measles, other parents in the neighborhood would rush their kids over to play with the infected child, to deliberately contract the disease and develop immunity. This avoids the risk of infection in adulthood when the disease is more dangerous, and provides the benefits of an immune system strengthened by the natural disease process.

About half of measles cases in the late 1980's resurgence were in adolescents and adults, most of whom were vaccinated as children, [49] and the recommended booster shots may provide protection for less than six months. [50] Some healthcare professionals are concerned that the virus from the chicken pox vaccine may “reactivate later in life in the form of herpes zoster (shingles) or other immune system disorders.” [51] Dr. A. Lavin of the Dept. of Pediatrics, St. Luke's Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio, strongly opposed licensing the new vaccine, “until we actually know...the risks involved in injecting mutated DNA [the vaccine herpes virus] into the host genome [children].” [52] The truth is, no one knows, but the vaccine is now licensed, recommended by health authorities, and quickly becoming mandated throughout the country.

Not only are most infectious diseases rarely dangerous, they can actually play a vital role in the developing a strong, healthy immune system. Persons who have not had measles have a higher incidence of certain skin diseases, degenerative diseases of bone and cartilage, and certain tumors, while absence of mumps has been linked to higher risks of ovarian cancer. Anthroposophical medical doctors recommend only the tetanus and polio vaccines; they believe contracting the other childhood infectious diseases is beneficial in that it matures and strengthens the immune system.

VACCINATION TRUTH #5:

“Dangers of childhood diseases are greatly exaggerated in order to scare parents into compliance with a questionable but highly profitable procedure.”

VACCINATION MYTH #6:

“Polio was one of the clearly great vaccination success stories...”

...or was it?

Six New England states reported increases in polio one year after the Salk vaccine was introduced, ranging from more than doubling in Vermont to Massachusetts’ astounding increase of 642%; other states reported increases as well. The incidence in Wisconsin increased by a factor of five. Idaho and Utah actually halted vaccination due to the increased incidence and death rate. In 1959, 77.5% of Massachusetts’ paralytic cases had received 3 doses of IPV (injected polio vaccine). During 1962 U.S. Congressional hearings, Dr. Bernard Greenberg, head of the Dept. of Biostatistics for the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, testified that not only did the cases of polio increase substantially after mandatory vaccinations—a 50% increase from 1957 to 1958, and an 80% increase from 1958 to 1959—but that the statistics were deliberately manipulated by the Public Health Service to give the opposite impression. [53] It is important to understand that the polio vaccine was not universally accepted, at least initially. Despite this, polio declined both in European countries that refused mass vaccination as well as in those that employed it.

According to researcher-author Dr. Viera Scheibner, 90% of polio cases were eliminated from statistics by health authorities’ redefinition of the disease when the vaccine was introduced, while in reality the Salk vaccine was continuing to cause paralytic polio in several countries at a time when there were no epidemics being caused by the wild virus. For example, cases of viral and aseptic meningitis, which have symptoms similar to polio, were routinely diagnosed and recorded as polio before the vaccine, but were distinguished and removed from polio statistics after the vaccine. Also, the number of cases needed to declare an epidemic was raised from 20 to 35, and the requirement for inclusion in paralysis statistics was changed from symptoms that lasted for 24 hours to symptoms lasting 60 days (many polio victims’ paralysis was temporary). It is no wonder that polio decreased radically after vaccines—at least on paper. In 1985, the CDC reported that 87% of the cases of polio in the U.S. between 1973 and 1983 were caused by the vaccine, and later declared that all but a few imported cases since were caused by the vaccine—and most of the imported cases occurred in fully vaccinated individuals.

Jonas Salk, inventor of the IPV, testified before a Senate subcommittee that nearly all polio outbreaks since 1961 were caused by the oral polio vaccine. At a workshop on polio vaccines sponsored by the Institute of Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Samuel Katz of Duke University cited the estimated 8-10 annual U.S. cases of vaccine-associated paralytic polio (VAPP) in people who have taken the oral polio vaccine, and the [four year] absence of wild polio from the western hemisphere. Jessica Scheer of the National Rehabilitation Hospital Research Center in Washington, D.C., pointed out that most parents are unaware that polio vaccination in this country entails “a small number of human sacrifices each year.” Compounding this contradiction are low adverse event reporting and the NVIC’s experiences with confirming and correcting misdiagnoses of vaccine reactions, which suggest that the actual number of VAPP “sacrifices” may be 10 to 100 times higher than that cited by the CDC. For these reasons, the live polio virus is no longer in widespread use.

To be sure, polio as it was known in the first half of the 20^th century does not exist today. However, declines following polio peaks in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s had been underway again for a period of years by the time the vaccine was introduced.

VACCINATION TRUTH #6:

“The polio vaccine temporarily reversed disease declines that were underway before the vaccine was introduced; this fact was deliberately covered up by health authorities. In Europe, polio declined in countries that both embraced and rejected the vaccine.”

VACCINATION MYTH #7:

“My child had no reaction to the vaccines, so there is nothing to worry about...”

...or is there?

The documented long term adverse effects of vaccines include chronic immunological and neurological disorders such as autism, hyperactivity, attention deficit disorders, dyslexia, allergies, cancer, and other conditions, many of which barely existed before mass vaccination programs. Vaccine ingredients include known toxicants and carcinogens such as thimersol (a mercury derivative), aluminum phosphate, formaldehyde (for which the Poisons Information Centre in Australia claims there is no acceptable safe amount that can be injected into a living human body), and phenoxyethanol (commonly known as antifreeze). Some of these ingredients are gastrointestinal toxicants, liver toxicants, respiratory toxicants, neurotoxicants, cardiovascular and blood toxicants, reproductive toxicants, and developmental toxicants, to name a few of the known dangers. Chemical ranking systems rate many vaccine ingredients among the most hazardous substances, and they are heavily regulated. Even microscopic doses of some of these ingredients are known to be able to cause serious injury. In addition, some vaccine mediums used in the production of vaccines contain human diploid cells originating from human aborted fetal tissue, a fact that might affect many people’s vaccination choices—if they only knew this was the case.

Medical historian, researcher and author Harris Coulter, Ph.D. explained that his extensive research revealed childhood immunization to be “causing a low-grade encephalitis in infants on a much wider scale than public health authorities were willing to admit, about 15-20% of all children.” He points out that the sequelae [conditions known to result from a disease] of encephalitis [inflammation of the brain, a documented adverse effect of vaccination]: autism, learning disabilities, minimal and not-so-minimal brain damage, seizures, epilepsy, sleeping and eating disorders, sexual disorders, asthma, crib death, diabetes, obesity, and impulsive violence are precisely the disorders which afflict contemporary society. Many of these conditions were formerly relatively rare, but they have become more common as childhood vaccination programs have expanded. Coulter also points out that pertussis toxoid is used to induce encephalitis in lab animals. The pertussis vaccine’s ability to cause brain damage is thus not only known, but relied upon by clinical researchers studying brain disorders.

A German study found correlations between vaccinations and 22 neurological conditions including attention deficit and epilepsy. Another dilemma is that viral elements in vaccines may persist and mutate in the human body for years, with unknown consequences. Millions of children are partaking in an enormous, crude experiment; and no sincere, organized effort is being made by the medical community to track the negative side effects or to determine the long-term consequences. Since long-term studies on the adverse effects of vaccines are virtually non-existent, their widespread use in the absence of informed consent and adequate safety testing constitutes medical experimentation. As the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons and the National Vaccine Information Center have pointed out, this is a violation of the first principle of the Nuremberg Code, “the centerpiece of modern bioethics.” [54] , [55]

Bart Classen, MD, PhD, founder of Classen Immunotherapies and developer of vaccine technologies, conducted epidemiological studies around the world and found vaccines to be the cause of 79% of insulin type I diabetes in children under 10. The increase risk ranged from 9% with the diphtheria vaccine to 50% with the Hepatitis B vaccine. According to Classen, CDC data confirms his findings. However, the implications of Classen’s findings go well beyond diabetes, as his comment in a 1999 issue of the British Medical Journal points out: “The incidence of many other chronic immunological diseases, including asthma, allergies, and immune mediated cancers, has risen rapidly and may also be linked to immunisation.” [56] The diabetes findings may be only the tip of the iceberg.

Recent studies in the U.S. and England suggest that vaccines cause autism. [57] , [58] , [59] Mercury poisoning and autism have nearly identical symptoms, [60] and a single day’s vaccination regimen may inject 41 times the level of mercury known to cause harm. [61] California’s autism rate has mushroomed 1000% over the past 20 years, with dramatic increases following the introduction of the MMR vaccine in the early 1980’s. England had dramatic autism increases beginning in the 1990’s, following the introduction of the MMR vaccine there. Some infants receive 100 times the EPA’s maximum allowable amount of mercury through vaccines. In January, 2000, the Journal of Adverse Drug Reactions reported that the MMR vaccine was not adequately tested and should not have been licensed. Further reinforcing the suspected vaccine-autism connection is the fact that many physicians using a systematic mercury-detoxification regimen with autistic patients have seen dramatic improvements in the health and behavior of their patients. [62] Today, one out of every 150 children are affected by autism, according to the National Vaccine Information Center. In the early 1940’s, prior to the introduction of most vaccines in current use, it was considered a rare condition that few doctors would ever encounter in their practice.

VACCINATION TRUTH #7:

“The long term adverse effects of vaccinations have been ignored in spite of compelling correlations with many serious chronic conditions. Doctors can’t explain the dramatic rise in many of these diseases.”

VACCINATION MYTH #8:

“Vaccines are the only disease prevention option available...”

...or are they?

Most parents feel compelled to take some disease-preventing action for their children. While there is no 100% guarantee anywhere, there are viable alternatives. Historically, homeopathy has proven many times to be more effective than allopathic medicine in the treatment and prevention of disease, with risk of harmful side effects. In a U.S. cholera outbreak in 1849, allopathic medicine saw a 48-60% death rate, while homeopathic hospitals had a documented death rate of only 3%. [63] Roughly similar statistics still hold true for cholera today. [64] Recent epidemiological studies show homeopathic remedies as equaling or surpassing standard vaccinations in preventing disease. There are reports in which populations that were treated homeopathically after exposure had a 100% success rate—none of the treated caught the disease. [65]

There are homeopathic kits available for disease prevention. [66] Homeopathic remedies can also be taken only during times of increased risk (outbreaks, traveling, etc.), and have proven highly effective in such instances. And since these remedies have no toxic components, they have virtually no side effects. In addition, homeopathy has been effective in reversing some of the disability caused by vaccine reactions, not to mention many other chronic conditions with which allopathic medicine has had little success.

VACCINATION TRUTH #8:

“Documented safe and effective alternatives to vaccination have been available for decades. (However, they have been systematically attacked and suppressed by the medical establishment.)”

VACCINATION MYTH #9:

“Vaccinations are legally mandated and unavoidable...”

...or are they?

Vaccine laws vary from state to state. While every state legally requires vaccines, every state also has one or more legal exemptions from vaccines. School and health officials will seldom volunteer exemption information, and are often mistaken when they do, so it is important to check the laws in your state to find out exactly what the requirements are. Each state offers one or more of the following three kinds of exemptions:

1) Medical Exemption: All 50 states in the U.S. allow for a medical exemption. However, few pediatricians check for indications of increased risk before administering vaccines, so it is advisable for parents to research this matter for themselves if they have reason to believe that their child may be predisposed to vaccine reactions. Epilepsy, severe allergies, and a previous adverse reaction in a child or sibling are but a few of the many conditions in child or family history which may increase the chances of an adverse reaction, and thus may qualify for a medical exemption from one or more required vaccines. In general, though, medical exemptions are difficult to get, may be available only to those who have already had a serious vaccine reaction or who have a family history of serious vaccine reactions, may be granted only for the specific vaccine believed to have caused a previous reaction, and may be valid only as long as the condition giving rise to the exemption persists (i.e., may be temporary).

2) Religious Exemption: 48 states allow for a religious exemption (all but MS and WV). A state’s laws may state that membership in an established religious organization is required. However, this requirement has been held unconstitutional in New York federal courts; personal religious beliefs are sufficient for a religious exemption, regardless of which religious organization you belong to, or whether or not you belong to an organized religion at all. [67] , [68] , [69] , [70] In one case, the plaintiffs were awarded money damages when the court found that the state had violated their civil rights by denying them a religious exemption.

3) Philosophical or Personal Exemption: Approximately 17 states allow parents to refuse vaccination for personal or philosophical reasons.

It is worth noting that exempted children may be banned from attending schools during local outbreaks. But all schools, public or private, must comply with state vaccination laws and honor legal exemptions.

The best source for a copy of your state's vaccination laws is state health officials. A phone call to the state Department of Epidemiology or Immunization (the specific name varies from state to state) may be all that it takes to get a copy mailed to you. Or, for a small fee, the NVIC and New Atlantean Press will sell you a copy of your state’s immunization laws (see contact information at the end of this article). Statutes can be searched on the internet (for example, see www.findlaw.com), but these sources many not always reflect very recent changes in the law, if there have been any. Law libraries and lawyers are, of course, a good source as well.

VACCINATION TRUTH #9:

“Legal exemptions from vaccinations are available for many—but not all—U.S. citizens.”

VACCINATION MYTH #10:

“Public health officials always place the public’s health above all other concerns...”

...or do they?

Vaccination history is riddled with documented instances of deceit portraying vaccines as mighty disease conquerors, when in fact vaccines have had little or no discernable impact on—or have even delayed or reversed—pre-existing disease declines. The United Kingdom's Department of Health admitted that vaccination status determined the diagnosis of subsequent diseases: Those found in vaccinated patients received alternate diagnoses; hospital records and death certificates were falsified. Today, many doctors still refuse to diagnose diseases in vaccinated children, and so the “Myth” about vaccine success persists.

Conflicts of interest are the norm in the vaccine industry. Members and Chairs of the FDA and CDC vaccine advisory committees own stock in drug companies that make vaccines; individuals on both advisory committees own patents for vaccines under consideration or affected by the decisions these committees make. The CDC grants conflict-of-interest waivers to every member of their advisory committee a year at a time, allowing full participation in the discussions leading up to a vote by every member whether or not they have a financial stake in the decision. [71]

Concerns over vaccine adverse effects and conflicts of interest led the American Society of Physicians and Surgeons to issue a Resolution to Congress calling for a “moratorium on vaccine mandates and for physicians to insist upon truly informed consent for the use of vaccines.” Approved by unanimous vote at the AAPS October 2000 annual meeting, the resolution made references to the “increasing numbers of mandatory childhood vaccines, to which children are…subjected without …information about potential adverse side effects”; the fact that “safety testing of many vaccines is limited and the data are unavailable for independent scrutiny, so that mass vaccination is equivalent to human experimentation and subject to the Nuremberg Code, which requires voluntary informed consent”; and the fact that “the process of approving and ‘recommending’ vaccines is tainted with conflicts of interest.” [72]

In an October 1999 statement to Congress, Bart Classen, M.D., M.B.A., founder and CEO of Classen Immunotherapies and developer of vaccine technologies, stated, “It is clear…that the government's immunization policies… are driven by politics and not by science. I can give numerous examples where employees of the US Public Health Service …appear to be furthering their careers by acting as propaganda officers to support political agendas. In one case…employees of a foreign government, who were funded and working closely with the US Public Health Service, submitted false data to a major medical journal. The true data indicated the vaccine was dangerous however the false data that was submitted indicated there was no risk. An employee of the NIH who manages large vaccine grants jointly published a misleading letter about the subject with one of these foreign civil servants. As you are aware it is illegal to falsify data from research funded by the US government.” Dr. Classen recommended that Congress hire a special prosecutor “to determine if public health officials are following the laws enacted to ensure vaccines are safe” and to determine “if public health officials along with manufacturers are misleading the public about the safety of these products.” [73]

In France, 15,000 French citizens have sued their government over adverse Hepatitis B vaccine reactions. [74] Former public health officials there are serving prison sentences following findings that they did not follow the law to ensure the safety of the vaccine, and school-age Hep B vaccination has been discontinued. U.S. military personnel may be even worse off: “…four letters from the FDA/Public Health Service…clearly reveal that the anthrax vaccine was approved for marketing without the manufacturer performing a single controlled clinical trial.” [75] Clinical trials are, of course, absolutely critical to determining the safety and effectiveness of any pharmaceutical product. Military personnel have been, and continue to be, unwitting subjects in an unethical experiment.

VACCINATION TRUTH #10:

“Many of the public health officials who determine vaccine policy profit substantially from their policy decisions.”

SOME CLOSING REMARKS

In the December 1994 Medical Post, Canadian author of the best-seller Medical Mafia, Guylaine Lanctot, M.D., stated, “The medical authorities keep lying. Vaccination has been a disaster on the immune system. It actually causes a lot of illnesses. We are actually changing our genetic code through vaccination...100 years from now we will know that the biggest crime against humanity was vaccines.” After critically analyzing literally ten’s of thousands of pages of the vaccine medical literature, Dr. Viera Scheibner concluded that “there is no evidence whatsoever of the ability of vaccines to prevent any diseases. To the contrary, there is a great wealth of evidence that they cause serious side effects.” [76] Dr. Classen has stated, “My data proves that the studies used to support immunization are so flawed that it is impossible to say if immunization provides a net benefit to anyone or to society in general. This question can only be determined by proper studies which have never been performed. The flaw of previous studies is that there was no long-term follow up and chronic toxicity was not looked at. The American Society of Microbiology has promoted my research...and thus acknowledges the need for proper studies.” [77] To some these may seem like radical positions, but they are not unfounded. The continued denial and suppression of the evidence against vaccines only perpetuates the “Myths” of their “success” and, more importantly, their negative consequences on our children and society. Aggressive and comprehensive scientific investigation into adverse vaccine events is clearly warranted, yet immunization programs continue to expand in the absence of such research. Manufacturer profits are enormous, while accountability for the negative effects is conspicuously absent. This is especially sad given the readily available safe and effective alternatives.

The positions asserted above are not coming from a handful of fringe lunatics; entire professional organizations are speaking out. Criticisms of vaccines are being sounded by an increasing number of credible and reputable scientists, researchers, investigators, and self-educated parents from around the world. Instead, it is public health officials and die-hard vaccine advocates (many of whom have a financial stake in the outcome of the debate) who are beginning to lose credibility by refusing to acknowledge the growing body of evidence and to address the very real, serious, documented problems.

Meanwhile, the race is on. There are over 200 new vaccines being developed [78] for everything from birth control to cocaine addition. Some 100 of these are already in clinical trials. Researchers are working on vaccine delivery through nasal sprays, mosquitoes (yes, mosquitoes), and the fruits of “transgenic” plants in which vaccine viruses are grown. With every adult and child on the planet a potential recipient of vaccines administered periodically throughout their lives, and every healthcare system and government a potential buyer, it is little wonder that countless millions of dollars are spent nurturing the growing multi-billion dollar vaccine industry. Without public outcry, we will see more and more new vaccines required of us all. And while profits are readily calculable, the real human costs are ignored or suppressed.

Whatever your personal vaccination decision, make it an informed one; you have that right and responsibility. It is a difficult issue, but there is more than enough at stake to justify whatever time and energy it takes.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

1. National Vaccine Information Center, 512 Maple Avenue West #206, Vienna, VA 22180. 703-938-DPT3; 800-909-SHOT (7468).
Email: info@909shot.com
Website: http://www.909shot.com

2. Vaccine Information & Awareness (VIA), Karin Schumacher, J.D., Director. 792 Pineview Drive San Jose, CA 95117. 408-397-4192 (voice mail/pag-er) 408-554-9053 (phone/fax). Email: via@access1.net. For information on all sides of the issue, go to VIA’s Website: http://www.access1.net/via

3. Vaccine Policy Institute, 251 Ridgeway Dr., Dayton, OH 45459, Krystine Severyn, R.Ph., Ph.D., ph/fax: 513-435-4750. Quarterly Newsletter. Information from a highly credentialed, highly informed expert on vaccines.

4. New Atlantean Press P.O. Box 9638 Santa Fe, NM 87504 505-983-1856. Books, tapes, videos, write for catalog.

5. Diane Rozario, Immunization Resource Guide, 4^th Edition, Patter Publications, P.O. Box 204, Burlington, IA 5260. 319-752-0039, 888-513-7770, fx 208-361-8889. Email: patterpublications@ yahoo.com. Websites: http://patterpubli-cations.safeshopper.com, http://www.
immunizationinfo.bigstep.com/. This guide has it all, pro and con, and is reasonably priced.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

At the time of this revision Alan Phillips is a 3^rd year law student attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a co-founder and co-director of Citizens for Healthcare Freedom (CHF), a nonprofit corporation dedicated to raising vaccine awareness and advocating informed choice. Alan has a background in technical writing, writing assessment, children’s elementary education, freelance writing and investigative research on alternative health issues, and is known internationally for professional music performance and production. He holds a ministerial credential, and plans on practicing law in the Chapel Hill, NC area following admission to the bar in 2002.

Click here to learn about his book, Vaccine Legal Exemptions.

INTRODUCTORY VACCINE PRESENTATIONS

Citizens for Healthcare Freedom Director Alan Phillips conducts introductory lectures on the vaccine controversy. Presentations are designed to complement and supplement the information in this article. To sponsor a presentation in your home, office, local library, etc., write to CHF Lectures, P.O. Box 62282, Durham, NC 27715-2282, or email alan_phillips@unc.edu.

ALSO AVAILABLE:

Alan has researched and written on several vaccine legal issues, including vaccine exemptions (with a focus on religious exemption federal case law), the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, and the shaken-baby-syndrome/vaccine injury connection: the documented instances in which parents and caretakers are convicted of child abuse, but later the damage is shown to have been caused by a vaccine injury.

ABOUT “DISPELLING VACCINATION MYTHS”:

Unsolicited Reprints in:

1. parenteacher magazine, summer 2000.

2. Claudia’s Abundant Life Health Food Market, 09/1999 – 02/2000.

3. Epidemics, Opposing Viewpoints, Greenhaven Press, 1999.

4. birth issues, fall 1999. Canadian magazine of the Association for Safe Alternatives in Childbirth (ASAC).

5. The Home-Grown Family, spring, fall, winter 1998-99. Christian home-schooling magazine.

6. The Immune Manual, Life and Health Research Group, CA, 1997.

7. Hindustan Times and other Indian newspapers, two Indian homeopathic journals, 1997 (according to Sai Sanfeevini Foundation, New Delhi, India).

8. NEXUS Magazine, October-November 1997. Multinational magazine.

9. Wildfire, spring 1996. US Native American magazine.

10. Numerous grass-roots organizations’ newsletters around the world.

Unsolicited Distributors:

1. Sai Sanjeevini Foundation, New Delhi, India.

2. HealthAction Network, UK.

3. Vaccine Information Network, New Zealand.

4. Prometheus (publisher), UK.

5. Medical Missionary Press, NC, USA.

6. Asian Pacific Homeopathic Association, Hong Kong.

Request for classroom use by:

1. Sheffield Homeopathic College, UK.

2. A neurologist in Italy.

3. A medical school professor in NC.

Internet Postings: There are many; solicitations are ongoing. CHF Site as of this revision: www.unc.edu/~aphillips/www/chf

ENDNOTES

[1] Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS); National Technical Information Service, Springfield, VA 22161, 703-487-4650, 703-487-4600; see also NVIC, infra note 7; and the VAERS website at http://www.fda.gov/cber/vaers/vaers.htm.

[2] Statement of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), Hearing of the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, "Compensating Vaccine Injuries: Are Reforms Needed?" September 28, 1999.

[3] Less than 1%, according to Barbara Fisher, citing former FDA Commissioner David Kessler, 1993, JAMA, in the Statement of the NVIC, supra note 2.

[4] Less than 10%, according to KM Severyn, R.Ph., Ph.D. in the Dayton Daily News, May 28, 1993. (Vaccine Policy Institute, 251 Ridgeway Dr., Dayton, OH 45459)

[5] American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, Fact Sheet on Mandatory Vaccines at http://www.aapsonline.org/.

[6] Jane Orient, M.D., Director of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, “Mandating Vaccines: Government Practicing Medicine Without a License?” 1999.

[7] National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), 512 Maple Ave. W. #206, Vienna, VA 22180, 703-938-0342; "Investigative Report on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System."

[8] 42 U.S.C.S. § 300aa-25(b)(1)(A),(B).

[9] Karlsson L. Scheibner V. Association between non-specific stress syndrome, DPT injections and cot death. Paper presented to the 2^nd immunization conference, Canberra, Australia, May 27-29, 1992. See also Viera Schiebner, Ph.D., Vaccination: 100 Years of Orthodox Research Shows that Vaccines Represent a Medical Assault on the Immune System for discussion and references.

[10] W.C. Torch, "Diptheria-pertussis-tetanus (DPT) immunization: A potential cause of the sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)," (Amer. Academy of Neurology, 34th Annual Meeting, Apr 25 - May 1, 1982), Neurology 32(4), pt. 2.

[11] Id.

[12] Viera Schiebner, Ph.D., Vaccination: 100 Years of Orthodox Research Shows that Vaccines Represent a Medical Assault on the Immune System, 1993.

[13] Confounding in studies of adverse reactions to vaccines [see comments]. Fine PE, Chen RT, REVIEW ARTICLE: 38 REFS. Comment in: Am J Epidemiol 1994 Jan 15;139(2):229-30. Division of Immunization, Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, GA 30333.

[14] See Viera Scheibner, supra note 12.

[15] Nature and Rates of Adverse Reactions Associated with DTP and DT Immunizations in Infants and Children (Pediatrics, Nov. 1981, Vol. 68, No. 5)

[16] DPT Report, The Fresno Bee, Community Relations, 1626 E. Street, Fresno, CA 93786, December 5, 1984.

[17] Trollfors B, Rabo, E. 1981. Whooping cough in adults. British Medical Journal (September 12), 696-97.

[18] National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP) http://bhpr.hrsa.gov/vicp/.

[19] Measles vaccine failures: lack of sustained measles specific immunoglobulin G responses in revaccinated adolescents and young adults. Department of Pediatrics, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC 20007. Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal. 13(1):34-8, 1994 Jan.

[20] Measles outbreak in 31 schools: risk factors for vaccine failure and evaluation of a selective revaccination strategy. Department of Preventive Medicine and Biostatistics, University of Toronto, Ont. Canadian Medical Association Journal. 150(7):1093-8, 1994 Apr 1.

[21] Haemophilus b disease after vaccination with Haemophilus b polysaccharide or conjugate vaccine. Institution Division of Bacterial Products, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Food and Drug Administration, Bethesda, Md 20892. American Journal of Diseases of Children. 145(12):1379-82, 1991 Dec.

[22] Sustained transmission of mumps in a highly vaccinated population: assessment of primary vaccine failure and waning vaccine-induced immunity. Division of Field Epidemiology, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia. Journal of Infectious Diseases. 169(1):77-82, 1994 Jan. 1.

[23] Secondary measles vaccine failure in healthcare workers exposed to infected patients. Department of Pediatrics, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, PA 19104. Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology. 14(2):81-6, 1993 Feb.

[24] MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) 38 (8-9), 12/29/89.

[25] MMWR "Measles." 1989; 38:329-330.

[26] MMWR. 33(24),6/22/84.

[27] Failure to reach the goal of measles elimination. Apparent paradox of measles infections in immunized persons. Review article: 50 REFS. Dept. of Internal Medicine, Mayo Vaccine Research Group, Mayo Clinic and Foundation, Rochester, MN. Archives of Internal Medicine. 154(16):1815-20, 1994 Aug 22.

[28] Clinical Immunology and Immunopathology, May 1996; 79(2): 163-170.

[29] Trevor Gunn, Mass Immunization, A Point in Question, at 15 (citing E.D. Hume, Pasteur Exposed-The False Foundations of Modern Medicine, Bookreal, Australia, 1989.)

[30] Physician William Howard Hay's address of June 25, 1937; printed in the Congressional Record.

[31] Eleanor McBean, The Poisoned Needle, Health Research, 1956.

[32] Outbreak of paralytic poliomyelitis in Oman; evidence for widespread transmission among fully vaccinated children. Lancet vol 338: Sept 21, 1991; 715-720.

[33] Neil Miller, Vaccines: Are They Really Safe and Effective? Fifth Printing, 1994, at 33.

[34] Chicago Dept. of Health.

[35] Harold Buttram, M.D., “Vaccine Scene 2000, Review and Update,” Medical Sentinel, Vol.5 No. 2, March/April 2000.

[36] Neil Miller, supra note 33 at 45 [NVIC News, April 92 at 12].

[37] S. Curtis, A Handbook of Homeopathic Alternatives to Immunization.

[38] Darrell Huff, How to Lie With Statistics, W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1954 at 84.

[39] Quoted from the internet, credited to Keith Block, M.D., a family physician from Evanston, Illinois, who has spent years collecting data in the medical literature on immunizations.

[40] See Trevor Gunn, supra, note 29, at 15.

[41] Id. at 21.

[42] Id. at 21 (British Medical Council Publication 272, May 1950).

[43] See Trevor Gunn, supra, note 29, at 21; see also Neil Miller, supra note 33 at 47 (Buttram, MD, Hoffman, Mothering Magazine, Winter 1985 at 30; Kalokerinos and Dettman, MDs, "The Dangers of Immunization," Biological Research Inst. [Australia], 1979, at 49).

[44] See Mayo Vaccine Research Group, supra note 27.

[45] See Neil Miller, supra note 33 at 34.

[46] Chairman/Congressman Dan Burton, Committee of Government Reform, Opening Statement, “FACA: Conflicts of Interest and Vaccine Development, Preserving the Integrity of the Process,” June 2000.

[47] Archie Kalolerinos, MD, Every Second Child, Keats Publishing, Inc. 1981.

[48] Washington Post, February 22, 1995.

[49] Reported by KM Severyn, R.Ph, Ph.D. in the Dayton Daily News, June 3, 1995.

[50] Vaccine Information and Awareness (VIA), "Measles and Antibody Titre Levels," from Vaccine Weekly, January 1996.

[51] NVIC Press Release, "Consumer Group Warns use of New Chicken Pox Vaccine in all Healthy Children May Cause More Serious Disease".

[52] Id. [Reported by KM Severyn, R.Ph., Ph.D.]

[53] Hearings before the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives, 87th Congress, Second Session on H.R. 10541, May 1962, at 94.

[54] NVIC Vaccine Conference Program Guide, 1997.

[55] Unanimous resolution of the AAPS, 57^th Annual Meeting, St. Louis, MO, October, 2000; see http://www.aapsonline.org/.

[56] British Medical Journal, 1999, 318:193, 16 (January).

[57] Singh V, Yang V. Serological association of measles virus and human herpes virus-6 with brain autoantibodies in autism. Clinical Immunology and Immunopathology 1998;88(l):105-108.

[58] Wakefield AJ, et al. Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. Lancet 1998;351:637-641.

[59] Wakefield AJ, Anthony A, Murch SH, Thomson M, Montgomery SM, et al. Enterocolitis in Children With Developmental Disorders. Am JGastroenterol September; 95:2285-2295.

[60] Stephanie Cave, MD, NVIC Vaccine Conference, September, 2000; see http://www.909shot.com for conference transcripts and information.

[61] Congressman Dan Burton, House Committee on Government Reform, Hearing on Mercury and Medicine, 6/18/2000.

[62] Press Release, Feb. 12, 2001; see http://www.autism.com/ari/press1.html

[63] Dana Ullman, Discovering Homeopathy, at 42 (Thomas L. Bradford, Logic Figures, p68, 113-146; Coulter, Divided Legacy, Vol 3, p268).

[64] See S. Curtis, supra note 34.

[65] See S. Curtis, supra note 34.

[66] Isaac Golden, Vaccination? A Review of Risks and Alternatives, 5^th Edition, 1994. (Australia).

[67] Allanson v. Clinton Central School District, No. CV 84-174, slip op. at 5 (N.D.N.Y. 1984).

[68] Sherr and Levy vs. Northport East-Northport Union Free School District, 672 F. Supp. 81 (E.D.N.Y. 1987).

[69] Fishkin v. Yonkers Public Schools, 710 F. Supp. 506 (S.D.N.Y. 1989).

[70] Berg v. Glen Cove City School District, 853 F. Supp. 651 (E.D.N.Y. 1994).

[71] Congressman Dan Burton, Committee on Government Reform, “FACA: Conflicts of Interest and Vaccine Development: Preserving the Integrity of the Process,” June 15, 2000.

[72] “AAPS Resolution Concerning Mandatory Vaccines” at http://www.aapsonline.org/aaps/.

[73] J. Barthelow Classen, M.D., M.B.A.

President and CEO, Classen Immunotherapies, Inc., 6517 Montrose Ave, Baltimore, MD 21212

Tel: (410) 377-4549 Fax: (410) 377-8526

E-mail: Classen@vaccines.net, letter to The Honorable Dan Burton, Chairman U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Government Reform, Washington, DC 20515, October 12th, 1999, at http://vaccines.net.

[74] “Show us the Science,” Mothering Magazine, March/April 2001, Report on the Sept. 2000 NVIC Vaccine Conference.

[75] See J. Barthelow Classen, MD, MBA, supra note 73.

[76] Viera Scheibner, PhD, 178 Govetts Leap Road, Blackheath, NSW 2785, Australia; phone +61 (0)2 4787 8203, Fax +61 (0)2 4787 8988

[77] See J. Barthelow Classen, MD, MBA, supra note 73.

[78] Statement of the National Vaccine Information Center, Hearing of the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, "Compensating Vaccine Injuries: Are Reforms Needed?" September 28, 1999.

Multiple vaccines causes an inflammatory response that leads to autism -- even when there's NO thimerosal used.

2008-04-07T14:40:00.000-07:00

The U.S. government has utterly failed to sweep the vaccine-autism link under the rug. Intelligent, well-informed parents are increasingly questioning the medical justification of the mass vaccination of their children, and they're saying NO to vaccines! Today, Byron Richards reveals the details on how injecting babies with multiple vaccines causes an inflammatory response that leads to autism -- even when there's NO thimerosal used. Check the "CNN Helps Autism Debacle" story below for more details.

On April 2, 2008 CNN spent the day bringing awareness to the problem of autism. Larry King's segment, which included Jenny McCarthy along with a panel of guests, was particularly enlightening. My hat is off to Jenny, a celebrity mother who is making it quite uncomfortable for the Center for Disease Control (CDC) to ignore parents of autistic children seeking answers. Why does a mom have to do the work of the CDC? The answer is rather simple: our government's zeal to insist on too many vaccines while ignoring the actual risks is the driving force behind the autism tragedy. Sure there are many related factors – but the bottom line is that our government is causing disease at an alarming and devastating pace.

It is an interesting comment on our society that an outspoken and impassioned mother of an autistic child, along with her partner (actor Jim Carrey), are the catalysts that are likely to cause a warped empire to crumble. Many before them have tried; and typically been burned at the stake. Jenny and Jim are the government's worst nightmare. They can't shut down their medical practice because they don't have one. They can't financially damage them into silence. And as they lead their autism March on Washington D.C. this June 4th it is quite clear that they haven't a prayer of shutting them up. A powder keg is about to blow.

Jenny, to her credit, takes a diplomatic view on vaccines. Here main point is that there are too many vaccines given too soon and that the vaccines contain too many toxic components. As both a leading defender of health freedom in this country and a top nutritionist who has helped numerous autistic children, I am more than happy to put the entire problem into perspective and give insights that will help many parents.

A Brief History of Vaccines, Profits, and Politics
Vaccines started the Big Pharma sickness industry over 100 years ago. While the public views vaccines in a preventive health context our government's position is much more complex. Vaccines and germs are part of warfare, and the issue is deeply woven into national security interests. Military personnel are frequently subjected to experimental vaccines. Vaccines are a key component of herd mentality; i.e., the ability of those in power to get a population to behave. Public health is never in the best interest of any one person, which is why laws are concocted to enforce compliance. Unelected bureaucrats and scientists in our government agencies, tied financially to the profits of the drug industry and linked to the military, have been playing God for many decades. They know full well there will be deaths and injuries from vaccinations; collateral damage that is justified by prevented disease (a convenient and fear-driven argument).

Our government has no problem manipulating data so that the benefits appear to outweigh the risks. Imagine having a calculator that always has the same conclusion no matter what data is entered. How can the risk of injuring 1 in 150 children for life be acceptable to Big Pharma and the revolving door CDC and FDA management? Any business would love to have the opportunity to produce a product and have the government mandate its sale. Government officials find lucrative jobs in the industries they regulate – after doing "good work." Autism is partly a side effect of the cancer within government agencies.

Our government will never pay the price to screen children at risk for autism – that would be too proactive and expensive on the front end. They won't even prepare a reasonable patient history checklist that reflects obvious risk for vaccine injury – as too many parents would opt out. Rather, our government specializes in lazy medicine – fire a shotgun and if someone gets injured it is their fault for standing there. Costs are now the burden of families on the back end of the equation; more profits for the sickness industry. If autism didn't have painful little faces connected with it this problem would simply be swept under the rug, as is the 100,000 Americans (mostly elderly) killed by Big Pharma drugs every year.

The problem for our government is that an admission of guilt on the autism-vaccine link causes the entire paradigm of the Big Pharma-driven Western-medicine sickness industry to collapse. Even worse in their eyes, it would send an earthquake through the brotherhood of Big Pharma, public health, the CDC, the FDA, the global elite, and the military. Other public health programs would be questioned – like polluting our water with a neurotoxin called fluoride that makes a population more docile and controllable.

Unfortunately for parents combating autism, the problems of their child is only a portion of the issue they now must try to solve. They are up against a government dead set on preventing the truth from ever coming out. Once cornered, our government will play the national security card before fessing up to their sins or making any real effort to correct the damage they have done.

A Major Crack in Our Government's Armor
The case of Hannah Poling is raising quite a stir. She is now 9 years old. As a healthy and normally developing 18-month-old girl she showed up for her well baby visit and was pummeled with 9 vaccinations, two of them containing the mercury preservative known as thimerosal. Her health immediately deteriorated into full blown autism.

Her case was the first to be settled of 4,900 autism cases pending before federal Vaccine Court. She claimed that mercury-containing vaccines were the cause of her autism. In a shocking turn of events the federal government conceded this autism case saying that "compensation is appropriate."

However, our government refused to admit vaccines caused her autism. Indeed, the government settled the case before there was even a hearing. The last thing the government wants is to put vaccines on public trial, and place pictures of injured children on the news every night, especially when the evidence of the case is so clear that vaccines will certainly lose.

Rather, the CDC is hinting that it was Hannah's mitochondria that were to blame, not the vaccines. This argument opens another Pandora's box (more on that later).

The defendant in all vaccine cases is the Department of Health and Human Services. The CDC is part of the Department of Health and Human Services. Talk about conflict of interest! A pack of foxes is in charge of the national chicken coop.

How Our Government Defends Itself When It Is Clearly Wrong
It is somewhat unfortunate that those who have helped to champion the cause of our government's involvement in vaccine injury have placed so many eggs in the thimerosal basket. Of course mercury is a nerve toxin and its involvement in autism is likely as a percentage of the problem. However, neither thimerosal nor any single vaccine is an adequate overall explanation for autism.

Our government is using various studies to deflect the vaccine-autism link. These studies relate to thimerosal and MMR vaccines, but not to the collective number of vaccines given at one time and the overall number of vaccines given so early in life (the real problem). This flimsy government defense is being used to deflect attention away from vaccines as a causative link to autism. (Read their vaccine studies here: http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/vaccines.htm)

This is a classic stalling tactic used by corrupt government and industry when they have been caught red-handed. This approach involves acknowledging certain aspects of the problem, making changes (they took thimerosal out of many vaccines), creating doubt (their "study" defense), and then continuing with the mass vaccination program even though they know it causes harm. This strategy will deflect most of the legal liability from vaccine-related injury, delaying it and then minimizing it over time. A legion of government-funded scientists can be paraded in a courtroom for decades with the sole purpose of creating doubt and delaying taking responsibility for the problem. An admission of guilt opens a floodgate of liability lawsuits.

They think their skimpy studies give them breathing room so that they can now direct attention elsewhere to mysterious possibilities like genetics or environmental toxins that will also take them decades to figure out. True enough, these issues are also a percentage of the problem – so much so that they can be used to confuse the vaccine link for a long time. The government's defense is always that more research is needed. This is not research that proves what they are doing is safe before they continue to do it; it is research that proves what they are doing is harmful before they stop doing it. Unfortunately, behind closed doors they cherry pick their research results as well as what they choose to study.

In the mean time these unelected bureaucrats continue to unabashedly administer a vaccine program that injures and kills. Most societies would either call this murder or involuntary manslaughter. Why don't we hear Bush, McCain, Clinton, or Obama weighing in on this issue? Why don't they stand on stage with a group of autistic children and tell mothers everywhere how important vaccines are?

When the Hannah Polling case got on the radar map and blew up in the government's face, a damage control press conference was held. Dr. Julie Gerberding, Director of the CDC, stated, "There's absolutely nothing changed in the adamant recommendations that we are making to get children vaccinated. This is proven to save lives and is an essential component of health protection for children across America and the world." Dr. Gerberding should be the first to stand trial. ((http://www.cdc.gov/od/oc/media/transcri...)

Why Vaccines are a Problem
It is quite clear that the rate of autism in this country is directly time-associated with the increased numbers of vaccines given to children. The explosion in autism between 1987 and 1992 coincides with the tripling in the numbers of vaccines given to our children. While such data is not proof of cause and effect, it is significant and cannot be ignored by any responsible parent (it is ignored by the government and medical profession).

Numerous parents report taking their healthy child to the doctor, getting a barrage of vaccinations, having their child run a high fever, and their child never again being the same. THAT IS THE REAL PROBLEM THAT PARENTS SEE WITH THEIR OWN TWO EYES.

The current government strategy is to keep arguing about thimerosal and MMR vaccines – as they know they can create enough doubt to win that argument in the majority of the scientific community. What the government does not want to discuss is the adjuvant in vaccines – which will clearly be shown to be the autism trigger.

Vaccines contain weakened "signatures" of a disease. By themselves they are not strong enough for the immune system to mount a response. This problem is solved by adding a "booster" compound called an adjuvant. An adjuvant does not contain any signature of the disease. Rather, the adjuvant initiates an inflammatory reaction (the first step in any immune response). The idea is to get the immune system revved up so that it can see the weakened disease and learn what it looks like so that if it ever sees it again it will be more prepared to fight it. This concept, in and of itself, has validity – but only given the right set of circumstances.

It is clear that those with autism have an excessively inflamed brain. If pressed, the CDC would likely argue that the brain inflammation is a result of the autism and that they need more studies to determine the cause. I will argue that they don't need any more studies at all and that the cause is blatantly obvious based on an understanding of existing science. The multiple inflammatory insults from the adjuvant in vaccines, at a rate of 1 in 150 cases, sets the brain on fire and causes autism. As an aside, and to a lesser extent (but just as important to society), a minor brush fire causes ADHD and impaired intelligence. References: http://www.wellnessresources.com/newsro...
http://www.wellnessresources.com/newsro...
http://www.wellnessresources.com/newsro...

How Your Brain Works
The crumbling paradigm of Western medicine likes to break down body function according to convenient classifications such as nerves, immunity, hormones, etc. In reality your brain is a central processor of all systems in your body and thus has connections that link nerves, immune function, and hormones into one symphony of function. In other words, it is not possible to study only neurotransmitters like serotonin or dopamine and actually understand what your brain is doing.

Ten percent of the cells in your brain are neurotransmitter related. The other 90% are glial cells, also called astrocytes. For decades scientists thought that 90% of your brain was nothing more than a structural framework, simply because scientific tools were not adequate to understand what glial cells were doing, but that has changed in the past 10 years. Glial cells run your brain and your neurotransmitters. They are the brokers of all information coming into your brain – with direct links to your immune system and endocrine system (hormones).

Glial cells are the inflammation brokers in your brain. When stress, a toxin pollutant, or a destructive food additive (like MSG, aspartame, or food coloring) enter your brain they induce excitotoxic reactions that inflame brain cells. This inflammation is buffered primarily by the hormone leptin and other antioxidants, a process that intimately involves the healthy function of glial cells.

When the buffering anti-inflammatory capacity of glial cells is overloaded, then inflammation becomes chronic. Minimally, this results in brain wear and tear. It is the mechanism behind all accelerated brain aging and, depending on a person's genetic weaknesses and other health issues, leads to various states of early cognitive decline and nerve-related diseases of aging such as Alzheimer's.

There is also a point at which low grade brain inflammation catches fire. In adults with an established nerve network this causes a "power outage" in the head, otherwise known as spreading depression. Such an event is typically triggered by emotional pain or physical pain of a prolonged nature or acute intensity (elevating substance P to abnormally high levels). Such trauma pushes struggling nerves over the edge.

The difference in a fetus or small child is that the nervous system is still rapidly evolving. If the brain catches fire at this age proper development of the nerves can be seriously disturbed (the autism spectrum of disorders) or functionally impaired (ADHD, lower IQ).

The adjuvant in vaccine is pro-inflammatory; i.e., neurologically excitotoxic. That is intentional so as to boost the effectiveness of the vaccine. The problem comes about when giving so many of them at once, which can injure even a perfectly healthy child. Giving multiple adjuvants is like playing Russian roulette with a child's brain. Children with already inflamed nerves are at much higher risk for reacting to multiple vaccines, as their nerves have been conditioned to hyper-react. Don't think for a moment that Dr. Gerberding and other scientists at the CDC aren't fully aware of this issue.

Government Responsibility
Our government has the responsibility to prove the safety of any vaccination being recommended for broad public health, as part of an overall vaccine program. Our current knowledge of science, the immune system, and the brain would make it unlikely that broad vaccine programs could ever be approved for use today if they hadn't being going on for so long.

Our government is not only grossly negligent on the vaccine issue itself, but on numerous other true public health issues that pose a significant risk for brain inflammation in fetuses and children. The CDC, the EPA, and the FDA all play large roles in creating huge autism risk for our population.

Space in this article only allows a few examples; there are many. Environmental pollution that is fat soluble can cross the placenta, exists in mother's milk, or occurs in the general food supply fed to small children. Fat soluble toxins cross the blood-brain barrier and induce nerve inflammation.

Huge public health risks include widespread contamination of our food supply with fat soluble PCB toxins, a problem that would cost at least 50 billion dollars to clean up. Another example of broad exposure is the neurotoxic pesticides used on food (originally Nazi nerve gas agents). Another example is the military's poisoning of our water supply with perchlorate, a contaminant now found in breast milk of mothers across the country. This interferes with thyroid function in the baby, resulting in a serious risk for faulty brain development.

Another example is iron fortification of baby formulas, which encourages the growth of hostile bacteria and Candida Albicans in the child's digestive tract; organisms that produce neurotoxic waste products. Another example is the use of antibiotics before age 1, which also encourages the growth of the very same hostile bacteria and Candida. C-Section deliveries also increased the risk for a hostile digestive terrain in the baby. Candida itself directly communicates to and promotes inflammation in the human immune system causing it to malfunction.

Yet another example is the widespread use of antidepressants by pregnant and nursing mothers, which drastically disturbs the evolving function of nerves and overall health of the fetus or baby. And then there is the vaccine preservative thimerosal (different than an adjuvant), which is a neuro-inflammatory in and of itself. And this is the short list.

All of these issues play a role as a percentage of the problem that induces friction in the developing nervous system of a fetus, baby, or young child and primes the nerves to hyper-react to vaccines. Each of these problems is a true public health problem because they are caused by industry and are allowed to continue by various vested interests. Each one will take tens of billions of dollars to fix. However, that is actually the responsibility of government – to fix costly and broad public health problems – not to make them worse.

The Genetic Red-Herring
The case of Hannah Poling has forced our government to show its hand – and a very weak hand it is. They will continue to bluff and confuse the public with scientific gibberish in an effort to misdirect. Their defense in the Poling case, even though they conceded the case, is that the child had genetic mitochondrial dysfunction.

Mitochondria are the car engines in your cells that produce energy (ATP). ATP is the energy currency in your body, much like money in your wallet. You spend ATP, as needed, to do anything. Inflammation uses up ATP by causing your body to go into a hyper mode (like a 911 phone call). If ATP production is compromised then inflammation can run wild – contributing to the brain fire called autism.

True mitochondrial gene mutations are too rare to explain autism, so the government is trying to blame this mechanism in the Poling case to deflect the idea that vaccines are a risk for the majority.

What the government isn't saying is that, independent of a true genetic issue, mitochondria can be taxed into a state of stress that predisposes any child to autism risk. You don't need to have a gene mutation; that is simply a diversion and cover-up attempt.

Furthermore, the glial cells in your brain use ATP to communicate, a separate function than energy currency. This means that any time you run low in overall body energy, brain function is compromised and tilted into a pro-inflammatory mode. This is why stress makes you tired and causes you to feel physical wear and tear. It is also why any time you exercise, which conditions your body to make ATP more efficiently, your head feels better. When glial cells run low on ATP they enter a low grade chronic inflammatory mode – a condition that seriously predisposes to vaccine injury.

Reducing the Risk for Adverse Vaccine Reactions
The bottom line for any parent is to not expose their child to vaccines under circumstances that are likely to increase the odds of a brain fire that results in autism. Fewer vaccines in general, not giving so many at once, and giving them at older ages are all common sense.

Additionally, proper nutrition during pregnancy, during lactation, and the overall fitness and health habits of the mother have a profound effect on having a child with a stronger nervous system. It is quite clear that the obesity hormone leptin is elevated in the blood of autistic children. This is a risk factor linked to obesity in the mother with consequent abnormal fetal programming of the developing brain which is then handicapped to buffer inflammation from toxic exposure like vaccines. ((http://www.wellnessresources.com/newsro...)

High leptin in the blood means that leptin isn't getting into the brain. Leptin is the primary buffer in the brain against inflammatory excitotoxic damage. This is why boys have four times the rate of autism compared to girls. Girls have naturally higher levels of protective leptin in their brains, mostly to help them get pregnant and nurse their children in later life. My books on leptin (Mastering Leptin and The Leptin Diet) explain how leptin works in much greater detail. A mother's health and eating habits, prior to and during pregnancy, play a large role in the health of her baby's nervous system. ((http://www.wellnessresources.com/Books/...)

Likewise, family stress during pregnancy and early childhood development are important to how a child processes stress and consequent nerve inflammation. Conflicts between husband and wife, in front of a child (including a child in the womb), primes nerves to be inflamed. Providing a stable environment for mother and child is a main reason for the family unit – and in my opinion the responsibility of men.

Thus we see that there are multiple factors, some under your control and many that are not, acting in one way or another to prime the nerves into a chronic low-grade inflammatory state which sets the stage for increased risk of vaccine injury.

One of the very worst times to vaccinate a child is directly after an illness or surgery – which are highly inflammatory events. Unfortunately, doctors don't seem to understand health very well and it is often the case that the parent has brought the child to the doctor because of an illness or a follow up from some other medical procedure. At that time the doctor says "Oh, your vaccinations are not up to date." And then gives them to a child who is already neurologically inflamed. Such medical malpractice is a disaster, and common in this country.

Parents who have children with digestive problems, recurring infections, asthma, allergies, or any other sign of immune weakness should not vaccinate until such problems are fully resolved. These problems also indicate a high level of existing brain inflammation.

It is pathetic that the CDC does not publish a list of guidelines for parents that would dramatically reduce the risk for vaccine injury (low cost and low tech). The "more research is needed" excuse is enough to make everyone vomit. Of course we could do far more by screening for inflammatory brain markers and immune system dysfunction ahead of any round of vaccines (high cost and high tech). The days of blindly vaccinating children according to a schedule, while ignoring the child's state of existing nerve inflammation and immune system function are over. Parents should revolt. This is a national tragedy. The government's vaccination program is indeed the cause of the autism epidemic.

About the author: Byron J. Richards, Founder/Director of Wellness Resources (www.wellnessresources.com), is a Board-Certified Clinical Nutritionist and nationally-renowned health expert, radio personality, and educator. He is the author of Mastering Leptin, The Leptin Diet, and Fight for Your Health: Exposing the FDA's Betrayal of America.

Also , read Dr. Sorge from Abunda Life Abunda Life

Vaccines -- Merck made $2 Billion in revenue just from Gardasil!

2008-04-05T16:37:00.000-07:00

1.	Vaccines are big business

	As this recent Wall Street Journal article reported, Merck stands to generate as much as $2 billion in revenues per year for their new Gardasil vaccine for girls targeting Cervical cancer. For a company beaten down by the Vioxx scandal, Gardasil�s success is a very important initiative, which according to the article has caused the company to push the vaccine out the door using questionable marketing techniques while legitimate concerns about safety and efficacy still exist. (A January 2008 story that made headlines across Europe reported on the deaths of two teenage girls immediately after getting the Gardasil vaccine -- we couldn�t find any U.S. media outlets that covered the story.)

	Vaccine manufacturers are no different from other corporations: they want to sell more of whatever it is they make. Unfortunately, there is a revolving door between the policy-makers who determine the vaccine schedule and the pharmaceutical companies who make vaccines, as our own Congressional Committee on Government Reform reported in this document titled Conflicts of Interest in Vaccine Policy Making.

2.	Vaccines have real documented risks and the U.S. Government knows this.

	Vaccines have risks and parents are rarely told about these risks. Any pediatrician who represents that vaccines are "completely safe" is not presenting the facts. Many vaccines contain other toxic substances including ethylene glycol (antifreeze), phenol (a disinfectant dye), benzethonium chloride (a disinfectant), formaldehyde (a preservative and disinfectant), and aluminum (another known neuro-toxin). Further, some viruses used in vaccines are cultured in animal tissue including chicken albumin and monkey liver. Click here for a complete list of the foreign substances found in vaccines, and here for a poster summarizing vaccine ingredients.

	The CDC maintains a database called the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System or VAERS. This database keeps track of publicly reported adverse reactions to vaccines. In a ten year period (1991-2001), VAERS received 128,717 reports of adverse events, of which 14% were described as "serious" which means "death, life-threatening illness, hospitalization or prolongation of hospitalization, or permanent disability."

	The Federal Government maintains a National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). Between 1990-2004, the VICP paid more than $900 million in restitution to persons injured by vaccines, and they provide a list of possible injuries by type of vaccine.

3.	There are legitimate concerns over the efficacy of some vaccines.

	Consider the flu vaccine as just one example of where there may be evidence that the vaccine does not work:

	A recent study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association touting the safety of flu vaccine. Nine of the studies authors had stated financial ties to vaccine manufacturers, and an additional four authors worked for the CDC. The study also stated: "It is also important to note that there is scant data on the efficacy and effectiveness of influenza vaccine in young children."

	On October 27, 2006, the British Medical Journal published an article also questioning the efficacy of the flu vaccine. The article noted: "Evidence from systematic reviews shows that inactivated vaccines [flu vaccines] have little or no effect on the effects measured. Little comparative evidence exists on the safety of these vaccines. Reasons for the current gap between policy and evidence are unclear, but given the huge resources involved, a re-evaluation should be urgently undertaken...The optimistic and confident tone of some predictions of viral circulation and of the impact of inactivated vaccines, which are at odds with the evidence, is striking."

4.	You can't be forced to vaccinate your child or follow the CDC's recommended immunization schedule.

	Parents are often told that vaccinating their child is "required by law". It is important for parents to understand what their rights are as all states offer either a philosophical or religious exemption from vaccinations. You have the right to design a vaccine program that is right for you and your child. Click here for more information.

1.	Attempts At Eradicating Infectious Diseases Are Putting Our Children At Risk National Vaccine Information Center By Barbara Loe Fisher, President, National Vaccine Information Center

2.	MMR and the Simple Truth about Autism Age of Autism Blog By Dan Olmsted February 7, 2008

3.	What Did the CDC Know and When Did They Know It? Age of Autism Blog By Mark Blaxill December 13, 2007

4.	The Age of Autism: Pox -- Part 1 By Dan Olmsted, UPI April 19, 2006

5.	In the Wake of Vaccines Mothering By Barbara Loe Fisher September-October 2004

6.	Vaccines: The Overlooked Factors Autism Research Institute Bernard Rimland, Ph.D., President, Autism Research Institute

7.	DAN! Vaccine Guidelines Autism Research Institute

8.	Putting Toddlers At Risk With Mandated Vaccines American Association of Physicians and Surgeons Online By Jane Orient, M.D., Executive Director, American Association of Physicians and Surgeons

1.	What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Children's Vaccinations By Stephanie Cave

2.	A Shot In The Dark By Harris Coulter

3.	The Vaccine Guide: Risks and Benefits for Children and Adults By Randall Neustaeder

1.	National Vaccine Information Center
2.	Vacinfo.org

Vaccine Hall of Shame

2008-04-05T16:34:00.000-07:00

1.	The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) Centers for Disease Control According to the CDC�s website, "the ACIP consists of 15 'experts' in fields associated with immunization who have been selected by the Secretary of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services to provide advice and guidance to the Secretary, the Assistant Secretary for Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the most effective means to prevent vaccine-preventable diseases." The ACIP is responsible for expanding the number of required vaccines for children from 10 in 1983 to 36 in 2007 (see a comparison here), without ever ensuring that the schedule was tested in combination or that appropriate monitoring took place for delayed onset conditions. The ACIP was the topic of a document titled Conflicts of Interest in Vaccine Policy Making written by the U.S. Congressional Subcommittee on Government Reform which highlighted the conflicts of interest present between ACIP members and pharmaceutical companies manufacturing vaccines.

2.	Julie Gerberding Director, Centers For Disease Control Ms. Gerberding has served as the Director of the CDC since 2002. A complete description of the cover-up by the CDC of the autism epidemic can be viewed at PutChildrenFirst, our sister website, including many previously unreleased emails from CDC employees and this Statement of Charges spelling out the laws broken by CDC.

3.	Paul Offit Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Mr. Offit appears to be the pharmaceutical industry�s go to Doctor to speak to the press about the safety of the current vaccine program. He is also the patent holder for the new rotavirus vaccine, recently added to the Immunization Schedule, and a past member of the ACIP (See #1). Among his many outrageous statements, Mr. Offit wrote in the journal of Pediatrics that a child�s immune system could handle 10,000 vaccines: "A more practical way to determine the diversity of the immune response would be to estimate the number of vaccines to which a child could respond at one time...then each infant would have the theoretical capacity to respond to about 10,000 vaccines at any one time." Regarding Thimerosal in vaccines: "In some instances I think full disclosure can be harmful. Is it safe to say there is zero risk with thimerosal, when it is remotely possible that one child would get sick? Well, since we say that mercury is a neurotoxin, we have to do everything we can to get rid of it. But I would argue that removing thimerosal didn't make vaccines safer -- it only made them perceptibly safer." On potential conflicts of interest as a vaccine patent-holder: "I am a co-holder of a patent for a (rotavirus) vaccine. If this vaccine were to become a routinely recommended vaccine, I would make money off of that. When I review safety data, am I biased? That answer is really easy: absolutely not." Speaking to a journalist: "You did more harm than good in sort of quote/unquote allowing the parent to be fully informed [regarding the presence of mercury in vaccines]. There�s no politically correct way to say this, but being fully informed is not always the best thing. You can take that out of context and make me look like a jerk, but you know what I�m saying."

If you would like to nominate someone for our Hall Of Shame, please write to: info@generationrescue.org.

Scientific Research , who is funding it???

2008-04-01T07:19:00.000-07:00

Do vaccinations cause autism?

Follow the money trail. Big Pharma wants to provide us with their "Clinical" and "scientific" studies showing that vaccines do not cause autism.

They want to have the money spent funding gene research. So lets ignore history and correlation with the rise of autism in direct correlation and proportion to vaccine implementation, and suddenly think we are all stupid enough to believe that our gonadal cells are now influencing the genetic material our of children causing autism. ABSURB.

Here is the bogus crazy latest article.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/31/magazines/fortune/autism_roots.fortune/index.htm?eref=rss_topstories

Tracing autism's roots

Move over vaccines. The most promising research into the disorder is emerging from the quest for the genes that underlie it.

By David Stipp, contributor

Hannah Poling and her parents.

(Fortune) -- Do vaccinations cause autism?

Despite the fact that one major study after another has answered no since the issue came to the fore around 2000, 54% of parents of autistic children in a 2006 survey said the answer is yes. In fact, the parents named vaccines more frequently than any other suspected cause.

It's likely that even more parents blame vaccines now in the wake of the recent brouhaha about 9-year-old Hannah Poling. The government agreed that her family was entitled to a settlement from a federal vaccine injury fund based on their claim that childhood vaccinations aggravated a rare metabolic disorder in Hannah, triggering autism symptoms.

Anti-vaccine advocates hailed the decision as unprecedented support for their view that either thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative once widely used in vaccines, or the vaccines themselves, are behind many cases of the brain disorder.

Federal health officials countered that the Poling case says nothing in general about autism and vaccines - they're concerned about parents refusing immunizations for their kids. Hannah, they noted, has been diagnosed with a genetic defect in her mitochondria - energy dynamos within cells. The mitochondrial disorder can cause a form of autism, and its symptoms often aren't apparent until stress, such as a fever, overtaxes energy-deficient cells. Vaccinations occasionally induce fever, hence the ones Hannah got as a toddler may have combined with her disorder to bring on signs of autism. Or they might not have - Hannah had a history of ear infections, and the associated fever might have aggravated her mitochondrial disorder.

Complex genetics

The ruckus highlights one of the great ironies surrounding autism: While anti-vaccine groups and thousands of anxious parents are fixated on a single environmental factor - vaccines - as a possible cause of autism, most of the exciting insights on its causes in recent years have come from the study of its complex genetic underpinnings.

The quickening quest for genes underlying autism promises both to improve diagnosis and treatment, and to help resolve burning questions about the disorder, such as why surveys suggest it is three times more prevalent in New Jersey than in Alabama.

The central role genes play in autism became manifest after scientists realized about two decades ago that there are different forms of the disorder involving varied sets of genes. Called "autism spectrum disorders," or ASDs, they include Asperger's syndrome, which causes social deficits but not the cognitive delays usually associated with autism.

Using this broad definition in studies of twins, researchers have repeatedly shown that if one identical twin is diagnosed with autism, the other has about a 90% chance of developing an ASD. Geneticists have concluded from such studies that most, and perhaps the great majority, of ASDs involve a genetic component.

There is a new wrinkle to the genetic research however. Based on family studies, scientists have long characterized autism-linked genes as "heritable." But recent research shows a surprisingly large number of mutations tied to autism are "de novo" glitches that arise spontaneously in children whose parents don't carry them.

Such spontaneous mutations have come to light by studying so-called "structural changes" in the genome, which, if DNA's chemical letters were arranged in book form, would consist of largish mistakes such as duplicated and missing pages. A recent study that got much less attention than the Poling story showed that 7% of kids with autism carry structural changes not found in their parents, compared with less than 1% of such glitches seen in the general population.

"This is really exciting, and a lot of people haven't picked up on it yet," says geneticist Stephen Scherer, a co-author of the study at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.

Spontaneous mutations

It's likely that many more such changes will be linked to ASDs as researchers examine a wider array of cases with new gene-scanning tools. Some researchers even theorize that the majority of autism cases stem from such spontaneous mutations.

Why would genes linked to autism be so mutation-prone?

Consider a mutation on chromosome 16 recently tied to autism. The glitch is in a DNA region containing so-called "morpheus" genes, which changed very rapidly as evolution produced ever brainier apes. The genes may well help shape cognitive capacities specific to apes and humans, including ones affected by autism.

Since fast mutation goes hand in hand with fast evolution, it's likely that the new autism-linked gene lies in a DNA "hotspot" prone to spontaneous mutation. In short, the same phenomenon that helped to rapidly evolve our braininess may contribute to autism.

For all geneticists' excitement about such discoveries, few if any of them rule out environmental contributors to autism, such as exposure to certain drugs, chemicals or infections during pregnancy. As Hannah Poling's case suggests, environmental factors may conspire with predisposing genes to bring on autism.

But pinpointing the culprits among the tens of thousands of possible environmental factors - everything from air pollutants to ultrasound examinations during pregnancy to multiple immunizations given to kids all at once - is a monumental problem that could take decades to solve with traditional human studies. Parents of autistic children can't wait that long.

But gene research is helping on this front too, by speeding the quest for environmental contributors. For instance, researchers are developing various mouse models of autism by mimicking mutations linked to the disorder in the rodents. Such animals are very useful for testing suspected environmental contributors to autism.

Early intervention

Genetics research should also help explode the myth that the effects of ASD-susceptibility genes are set in stone. By helping to identify the disorder during infancy, genetic tests promise to enable early intervention that wards off some of autism's worst effects. (Autism usually isn't diagnosed until speech delays or social deficits surface after infancy.)

By teaching parents how to bolster social engagement in babies with ASD-susceptibility genes - for instance, by removing distracting objects so that a parent's face is the most salient object in a baby's visual field - "you might even be able to prevent the full syndrome from emerging," says Geri Dawson, chief science officer of Autism Speaks, an advocacy group based in New York. Toronto's Scherer adds that his team's genetic research has already led to early interventions in several cases involving families participating in studies.

Tricky questions remain about interpreting tests for autism-linked genes. But several companies, such as Mukilteo, Wash.-based CombiMatrix, France's IntegraGen SA and Melville, N.Y.-based Population Diagnostics Inc., have already introduced such diagnostics or announced plans to develop them.

Over time such tests will enable ever more precise classification of autism cases according to underlying causes. Among other things, that should help researchers sort out what's driving the extraordinarily high prevalence observed in areas such as New Jersey. Even better, it will provide a way to detect the special vulnerabilities of kids like Hannah Poling before symptoms appear - and perhaps even keep such children out of harm's way

No Mystery Here -- Vaccines

2008-03-31T14:10:00.001-07:00

The triplets were happy, healthy boys. But at 18 months, one became withdrawn, one screamed at night and one stopped talking. Doctor after doctor told the boys' parents to just wait, but now all are known to have autism -- the neurological disorder that baffles scientists.

No mystery, vaccines caused it. Big Pharma has Big Money. It is Hush HUSH

Promoting Vaccination, Fear, Hate & Discrimination

2008-03-25T14:17:00.000-07:00

The discrimination begins, always, with the majority in a society pointing the finger at a minority for somehow endangering the public health and welfare. Individuals in the minority group are singled out as different - ethnically, biologically, spiritually, morally - from the majority. The human impulse to fear, judge, marginalize or eliminate those different from the rest has left a blood soaked trail winding throughout the entire history of man from the Great Inquisition to the Holocaust; from the killing fields of Cambodia to Rwanda, Serbia and Tibet; while the persecution of those with leprosy, TB, AIDS, mental illness, and handicaps continues in every society.

It was with a heavy heart that I read the March 21 New York Times article, "Public Health Risk Seen as Parents Reject Vaccines." Then I waded through the venomous comments posted on the NY Times website attacking parents of vaccine injured autistic children and those supporting informed consent to vaccination, specifically legal exemptions.

Some New York Times readers simply engaged in adolescent name-calling, angrily accusing parents of being "stupid" for questioning the wisdom of doctors in positions of authority and "selfish" for wanting to make informed vaccine choices:

"I'm so tired of these morons who refuse to vaccinate their children. It's stupid and selfish and, as usual, the kid suffers because of an hysterical, paranoid mother. What we need is a vaccine against paranoid conspiracy theory nuts. Oh, yeah....and by all means, let's trust a primary care doc from Arizona rather than the AAP and CDC. After all, what does some pinhead in private practice know that the best trained, most informed academic docs at some backwater like Johns Hopkins or CHOP or Children's Boston know, anyhow."

Others ridiculed parents for having faith in God but not in medical science, doctors and the safety of vaccines:

"The irrational decisions of adults, including parents and even physicians, supported by superstition, faith and magical beliefs, rather than data, evidence and proof, cannot stand in the way of science's obligation to create new knowledge to protect the members of a society, especially its most vulnerable members."

"Western religion's relationship with God requires a scapegoat. Since the Satan bit is worn a little thin they have once again decided that science and technology are to blame for all man's evils. As a civilized society we have given far too much deference to religion. Those not wishing to participate should simply not be included in schools, hospitals, etc. Not allowing their children to participate is the cruelist of abuse and should be removed from their "care."

"The parents whose personal beliefs cause them to fail to vaccinate their children should be seen clearly for what they are - child abusers. They are as monstrous as people that allow their children to die because they are convinced that if their god wants their children to live, he'll take care of it."

"Science is not infallible but it works. No one doubts that savagely beating a kid and offering "religious beliefs" as a pretext is a crime. These parents are doing the same thing. They should be prosecuted for endangering the health of their children - and ours."

The idea that the unvaccinated should be made "outcasts" in society and kept in isolation or even banned from being able to go out in public was a popular one:

"To those who demand an exemption, the choice should be clear and simple. No vaccine, no attendance at any public venue, schools in particular. Let these leaches live up in the woods as hermits."

" Parents of immunized children should not allow their children to play with [unvaccinated children]. Being an outcast is a powerful tool to use against these very selfish people."

Doctors defending their belief in vaccination weighed in, too, calling for elimination of the unvaccinated from society:

"As an epidemiologist who believes in the power and strength of herd immunity, I would like to ask these people who forgo vaccination to politely leave the herd."

Several more suggested the unvaccinated be publicly branded and forced to reveal their vaccination history to all who come in contact with them:

"Those making this decision [to not vaccinate their children] should be ineligible for access to public schooling. They should also be mandated to inform any and all people with whom they come into contact of their lack of vaccinations. They should also sign a waiver to any public or insurance pool funding for treatment of avoidable disease and/or long term damage caused by contraction of that disease."

"Should parents get to decide what happens to their child, even when that decision flies in the face of all evidence? Yes. But then should I have a right to know who these children are, so that I can keep my own child away from them? Indeed, I think I should......"

Another went further, calling for hospital and medical care to be denied to the unvaccinated:

"They should not be permitted in clinics and hospitals, where immunocompromised children and adults have the right to safety. No exception, whether based on religious faith or just garden-variety ignorance and superstition."

Several others believe mothers and fathers with unvaccinated children should be not only be charged with a crime but have their children taken from them:

"This should be a reason to notify CPS so that they can remove these children from parents who endanger their lives. This should be a crime."

There was a call for legislators who vote for vaccine exemptions to be punished:

"The parents who unilaterally decide to withhold immunization from their children should be sent to jail. The legislators who voted to condone this behavior should be identified and subjected to recall."

And some wanted to see parents and their unvaccinated children physically harmed:

.....Fine, so long as these parents are forcibly exposed to the illnesses themselves. And if their children either die, or are permanently injured, criminal charges should be laid. Then we'll see how much they still believe in their voodoo- science......"

Like sharks in a feeding frenzy, they gave public witness to their fear and loathing of fellow human beings who do not believe, think or act as they do.

I could not help but think of the children and parents forced to line up last November at a Maryland County Courthouse patrolled by armed police with dogs, a stark reminder that the parents were under threat of imprisonment and fines for failing to show schools proof that their children got chicken pox and hepatitis B shots.

I remembered the news report out of Belgium last month describing how a State court had sentenced mothers and fathers to five months in prison and a $4,000 fine because their children had not gotten vaccinated.

I thought of the persecution of Andrew Wakefield, M.D., who is being punished by his British colleagues for daring to report an association between the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine and neuroimmune dysfunction, including inflammatory bowel disease and autism. Like when the heads of heretics were impaled upon stakes on the Tower of London as a warning for all to see, the Wakefield inquisition is a spectacle designed to persuade all doctors contemplating questioning the safety of current mass vaccination policies to remain silent.

And then I thought of the Jewish orphan from Philadelphia, whose DNA I inherited from several generations back, and whose lineage in my mid-west Protestant family was not known to me for many years. Her blood is my blood, her genes belong to me just as the Norwegian and Scottish-Irish genes that predispose me and my children to autoimmunity and vaccine reactions are part of who I am.

I wondered how many of the readers of that New York Times article, who spewed fear, prejudice and hate into cyberspace and urged discrimination against and punishment of the unvaccinated, remembered that we are who we are because of the genetic strengths and vulnerabilities inherited from our mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers going back generations and generations.

I come from a family of doctors and nurses, physical therapists and social workers, historians and soldiers, artists and writers, pastors and farmers, public administrators and builders; feminists and teachers, who have made the world a little better because they were allowed to live. And all through our family there is a history of autoimmunity, including rheumatoid arthritis, thyroid disease, diabetes, asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, severe allergies to foods, prescription drugs and pollen, and vaccine reactions.

My mother died of lupus two years ago this week, her body unable to protect itself from self. A nurse who once took care of polio victims at Mayo Clinic, she left three children and 11 grandchildren, all of whom carry her genes.

We do not choose the genes we inherit that make us the unique individuals we each are, as different from one another as we are similar within the human species.

My mother would have gladly laid down her life for any one of her children or grandchildren in order to protect them from harm, as I and countless other mothers around the world would do. The biological imperative, which prompts mothers and fathers to willingly sacrifice their lives to ensure their children survive, dictates we do that in order to ensure the survival of the human race.

For what is the human race but a collection of individuals from individual families living in different communities, all joined together to make up the whole of humanity? When any one life is devalued and deemed expendable, by extension, the well being and integrity of the whole is compromised.

Individual health IS public health.

Vaccine policies issued by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) do not recognize the potential biological vulnerability of my family and many other families to be harmed by vaccination. It does not matter if we have a vaccine injured child: CDC and AAP policies turned into law by state legislators do not provide for vaccine injured children or the siblings of vaccine injured children to be medically exempt from vaccination. Children, who have had seizures and other health deterioration after vaccination, often do not qualify for medical exemptions.

In the past quarter century, the numbers of vaccines the CDC and AAP insist that children must get has increased from 23 doses of 7 vaccines to 48 doses of 14 vaccines by age six without any large, credible studies proving it is safe for all children. How many of those genetically vulnerable to repeated atypical manipulation of the immune system through forced multiple vaccine use are among the highly vaccinated American children who are chronically ill and disabled today: 1 in 6 learning disabled; 1 in 9 asthmatic; 1 in 150 developing autism?

The doctors in charge at the CDC and AAP have refused, for more than a quarter century, to acknowledge the existence of a growing number of vaccine injured children and so they have refused to identify and screen out children biologically vulnerable to vaccine-induced brain and immune system dysfunction. One-size-fits-all vaccine policies and state laws have become a de facto selection of the genetically vulnerable for sacrifice. It is a very small step from that kind of societal thinking to the prisons, concentration camps and killing fields that stand as chilling testimony to the human impulse to dehumanize others in order to control, exploit or eliminate them.

Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel has said "When you take an idea or a concept and turn it into an abstraction, that opens the way to take human beings and turn them, also, into abstractions."

Individuals harmed by vaccines are not abstractions. They are human beings who deserve to be spared a lifetime of suffering rather than being thrown under the bus to prop up forced mass vaccination policies that fail to acknowledge biodiversity within the family of man.

In the face of a medical community committed to the utilitarian rationale that a minority of human beings can be sacrificed in service to the majority, the only way parents can protect children from being injured or killed by vaccines is by the free exercise of non- medical legal exemptions for deeply held religious or conscientious beliefs.

Doctors inside and outside of government, who have instilled fear of and discrimination against parents with vaccine injured children, bear responsibility for the hate and prejudice expressed on the New York Times website last week. It is a wake-up call for all Americans who cherish freedom and the human right to make informed, voluntary medical decisions that involve a risk of injury or death.

***********************************************************

"The very success of immunizations has turned out to be an Achilles' heel," said Dr. Mark Sawyer, a pediatrician and infectious disease specialist at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego. "Most of these parents have never seen measles, and don't realize it could be a bad disease so they turn their concerns to unfounded risks. They do not perceive risk of the disease but perceive risk of the vaccine." Dr. Sawyer and the vast majority of pediatricians believe strongly that vaccinations are the cornerstone of sound public health. Many doctors view the so-called exempters as parasites, of a sort, benefiting from the otherwise inoculated majority.....While the picture of an unvaccinated child was once that of the offspring of poor and uneducated parents, "exempters" are often well educated and financially stable, and hold a host of like-minded child-rearing beliefs. Vaccine skeptics provide differing explanations for their belief that vaccines may cause various illnesses and disorders, including autism. Recent news that a federal vaccine court agreed to pay the family of an autistic child in Georgia who had an underlying mitochondrial disorder has led some skeptics to speculate that vaccines may worsen such conditions. Again, researchers say there is no evidence to support this thesis. Alexandra Stewart, director of the Epidemiology of U.S. Immunization Law project at George Washington University, said many of these parents are influenced by misinformation obtained from Web sites that oppose vaccination. "The autism debate has convinced these parents to refuse vaccines to the detriment of their own children as well as the community," Ms. Stewart said." - Jennifer Steinhauer, The New York Times (March 21, 2008) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/0 3/21/us/21vaccine.html?hp

"Two sets of parents in Belgium were recently handed five month prison terms for failing to vaccinate their children against polio. Each parent was also fined 4,100 euros ($8,000)....The parents can still avoid prison - their sentences were delayed to give them a chance to vaccinate their children. But if that deadline also passes without their children receiving the injections, the parents could be put behind bars.....The polio vaccine is the only one required by Belgian law. Exceptions are granted only if parents can prove their children might have a bad physical reaction to the vaccine.....Aside from Belgium, only France makes polio vaccinations mandatory by law. In the United States, children must be vaccinated against many diseases including polio, but most states allow children to opt out if their parents have religious or "philosophical" objections. In the U.S. state of Maryland, prosecutors and school officials in one county threatened truancy charges against parents who failed to vaccinate their children.....People who refuse to be vaccinated are "free riders," Harris said. "They can only afford to refuse the vaccine because they are surrounded by people who have fulfilled their obligations to the community." - Maria Cheng, Associated Press (March 12, 2008) http://news.yahoo.com/s/a p/20080312/ap_on_he_me/polio_vaccine_prison

"One of the most reprehensible weapons being wielded in the witch-hunt against Wakefield is the claim that anyone who gives any credence whatever to his concerns is responsible for the incidence of measles amongst children whose parents are as a result too frightened to give them the MMR vaccination. There are two obvious points to make in response to this piece of moral blackmail: 1) the whole panic could have been avoided by offering single measles, mumps and rubella jabs rather than the triple MMR, and 2) it is surely just as important as avoiding cases of measles mumps and rubella to avoid causing the kind of catastrophic damage to the brain and gut displayed by the children at the heart of this controversy. And there is a further and quite appalling point to note. This whole saga started because parents of such children found that their family doctors were dismissing out of hand their children's gut and brain problems, accordingly refusing to alleviate their suffering. Now, as a direct result of the animosity towards Wakefield that has been whipped up - and the fear that any doctor who suggests he might be right will similarly find him or herself at the receiving end of the medical establishment's fist - children exhibiting this combination of gut and brain damage are finding it difficult to obtain treatment." - Melanie Phillips, The Spectator (March 21, 2008) http://www.spectator.co.uk/melanieph illips/568226/the-wakefield-witchhunt.thtml

Public Health Risk Seen as Parents Reject Vaccines

New York Times
March 21, 2008

by Jennifer Steinhauer

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SAN DIEGO - In a highly unusual outbreak of measles here last month, 12 children fell ill; nine of them had not been inoculated against the virus because their parents objected, and the other three were too young to receive vaccines.

The parents who objected to their children being inoculated are among a small but growing number of vaccine skeptics in California and other states who take advantage of exemptions to laws requiring vaccinations for school-age children.

The exemptions have been growing since the early 1990s at a rate that many epidemiologists, public health officials and physicians find disturbing.

Children who are not vaccinated are unnecessarily susceptible to serious illnesses, they say, but also present a danger to children who have had their shots - the measles vaccine, for instance, is only 95 percent effective - and to those children too young to receive certain vaccines.

Measles, almost wholly eradicated in the United States through vaccines, can cause pneumonia and brain swelling, which in rare cases can lead to death.

The measles outbreak here alarmed public health officials, sickened babies and sent one child to the hospital.

Every state allows medical exemptions, and most permit exemptions based on religious practices. But an increasing number of the vaccine skeptics belong to a different group - those who object to the inoculations because of their personal beliefs, often related to an unproven notion that vaccines are linked to autism and other disorders.

Twenty states, including California, Ohio and Texas, allow some kind of personal exemption, according to a tally by the Johns Hopkins University. "I refuse to sacrifice my children for the greater good," said Sybil Carlson, whose 6-year-old son goes to school with several of the children hit by the measles outbreak here. The boy is immunized against some diseases but not measles, Ms. Carlson said, while his 3-year-old brother has had just one shot, protecting him against meningitis.

"When I began to read about vaccines and how they work," she said, "I saw medical studies, not given to use by the mainstream media, connecting them with neurological disorders, asthma and immunology." Ms. Carlson said she understood what was at stake. "I cannot deny that my child can put someone else at risk," she said.

In 1991, less than 1 percent of children in the states with personal-belief exemptions went without vaccines based on the exemption; by 2004, the most recent year for which data are available, the percentage had increased to 2.54 percent, said Saad B. Omer, an assistant scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

While nationwide over 90 percent of children old enough to receive vaccines get them, the number of exemptions worries many health officials and experts. They say that vaccines have saved countless lives, and that personal-belief exemptions are potentially dangerous and bad public policy because they are not based on sound science.

"If you have clusters of exemptions, you increase the risk of exposing everyone in the community," said Dr. Omer, who has extensively studied disease outbreaks and vaccines.

It is the absence, or close to it, of some illnesses in the United States that keep some parents from opting for the shots. Worldwide, 242,000 children a year die from measles, but it used to be near one million. The deaths have dropped because of vaccination, a 68 percent decrease from 2000 to 2006.

"The very success of immunizations has turned out to be an Achilles' heel," said Dr. Mark Sawyer, a pediatrician and infectious disease specialist at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego. "Most of these parents have never seen measles, and don't realize it could be a bad disease so they turn their concerns to unfounded risks. They do not perceive risk of the disease but perceive risk of the vaccine."

Dr. Sawyer and the vast majority of pediatricians believe strongly that vaccinations are the cornerstone of sound public health. Many doctors view the so- called exempters as parasites, of a sort, benefiting from the otherwise inoculated majority.

Most children get immunized to measles from a combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, a live virus.

While the picture of an unvaccinated child was once that of the offspring of poor and uneducated parents, "exempters" are often well educated and financially stable, and hold a host of like-minded child- rearing beliefs.

Vaccine skeptics provide differing explanations for their belief that vaccines may cause various illnesses and disorders, including autism.

Recent news that a federal vaccine court agreed to pay the family of an autistic child in Georgia who had an underlying mitochondrial disorder has led some skeptics to speculate that vaccines may worsen such conditions. Again, researchers say there is no evidence to support this thesis.

Alexandra Stewart, director of the Epidemiology of U.S. Immunization Law project at George Washington University, said many of these parents are influenced by misinformation obtained from Web sites that oppose vaccination.

"The autism debate has convinced these parents to refuse vaccines to the detriment of their own children as well as the community," Ms. Stewart said. While many parents meet deep resistance and even hostility from pediatricians when they choose to delay, space or reject vaccines, they are often able to find doctors who support their choice.

"I do think vaccines help with the public health and helping prevent the occasional fatality," said Dr. Bob Sears, the son of the well-known child-care author by the same name, who practices pediatrics in San Clemente. Roughly 20 percent of his patients do not vaccinate, Dr. Sears said, and another 20 percent partially vaccinate.

"I don't think it is such a critical public health issue that we should force parents into it," Dr. Sears said. "I don't lecture the parents or try to change their mind; if they flat out tell me they understand the risks I feel that I should be very respectful of their decision."

Some parents of unvaccinated children go to great lengths to expose their children to childhood diseases to help them build natural immunities.

In the wake of last month's outbreak, Linda Palmer considered sending her son to a measles party to contract the virus. Several years ago, the boy, now 12, contracted chicken pox when Ms. Palmer had him attend a gathering of children with that virus.

"It is a very common thing in the natural-health oriented world," Ms. Palmer said of the parties.

She ultimately decided against the measles party for fear of having her son ostracized if he became ill.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, measles outbreaks in Alaska and California triggered strong enforcement of vaccine mandates by states, and exemption laws followed.

While the laws vary from state to state, most allow children to attend school if their parents agree to keep them home during any outbreak of illnesses prevented by vaccines. The easier it is to get an exemption - some states require barely any paperwork - the more people opt for them, according to Dr. Omer's research, supported by other vaccine experts.

There are differences within states, too. There tend to be geographic clusters of "exempters" in certain counties or even neighborhoods or schools.

According to a 2006 article in The Journal of The American Medical Association, exemption rates of 15 percent to 18 percent have been found in Ashland, Ore., and Vashon, Wash. In California, where the statewide rate is about 1.5 percent, some counties were as high as 10 percent to 19 percent of kindergartners.

In the San Diego measles outbreak, four of the cases, including the first one, came from a single charter school, and 17 children stayed home during the outbreak to avoid contracting the illness.

There is substantial evidence that communities with pools of unvaccinated clusters risk infecting a broad community that includes people who have been inoculated.

For instance, in a 2006 mumps outbreak in Iowa that infected 219 people, the majority of those sickened had been vaccinated. In a 2005 measles outbreak in Indiana, there were 34 cases, including six people who had been vaccinated.

Here in California, six pertussis outbreaks infected 24 people in 2007; only 2 of 24 were documented as having been appropriately immunized. A surveillance program in the mid '90s in Canada of infants and preschoolers found that cases of Hib fell to between 8 and 10 cases a year from 550 a year after a vaccine program was begun, and roughly half of those cases were among children whose vaccine failed.

Gardiner Harris contributed reporting from Washington.

Parents may be jailed over vaccinations

Associated Press
March 12, 2008

by Maria Cheng

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As doctors struggle to eradicate polio worldwide, one of their biggest problems is persuading parents to vaccinate their children. In Belgium, authorities are resorting to an extreme measure: prison sentences.

Two sets of parents in Belgium were recently handed five month prison terms for failing to vaccinate their children against polio. Each parent was also fined 4,100 euros ($8,000).

"It's a pretty extraordinary case," said Dr. Ross Upshur, director of the Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto.

"The Belgians have a right to take some action against the parents, given the seriousness of polio, but the question is, is a prison sentence disproportionate?"

The parents can still avoid prison - their sentences were delayed to give them a chance to vaccinate their children. But if that deadline also passes without their children receiving the injections, the parents could be put behind bars.

Because of privacy laws, Belgian officials would not talk specifically about the case, such as why the parents refused the vaccine or how much longer they have to vaccinate their children.

The polio vaccine is the only one required by Belgian law. Exceptions are granted only if parents can prove their children might have a bad physical reaction to the vaccine.

"Polio is a very serious disease and has caused great suffering in the past," said Dr. Victor Lusayu, head of Belgium's international vaccine centre. "The discovery of the vaccine has eliminated polio from Europe and it is simply the law in Belgium that you have to be vaccinated. .....At the end of the day, the law must be respected."

Some ethicists back the hardline Belgian stance.

"Nobody has the right to unfettered liberty, and people do not have a right to endanger their kids," said John Harris, a professor of bioethics at the University of Manchester.

"The parents in this case do not have any rights they can appeal to. They have obligations they are not fulfilling."

Aside from Belgium, only France makes polio vaccinations mandatory by law. In the United States, children must be vaccinated against many diseases including polio, but most states allow children to opt out if their parents have religious or "philosophical" objections.

In the U.S. state of Maryland, prosecutors and school officials in one county threatened truancy charges against parents who failed to vaccinate their children. The measure sharply reduced the number of unvaccinated children although nobody has been charged.

The only other case of mandatory polio vaccines is during the Muslim yearly Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. Pilgrims from polio-endemic countries - Afghanistan, India, Nigeria and Pakistan - must prove they have been vaccinated. Saudi officials even give them an extra dose upon arrival at the airport. Since the polio virus can live in the human body for weeks, it jumps borders easily. That makes health officials even in developed countries nervous, since the threat of an outbreak remains as long as the virus is circulating anywhere.

Polio is a highly infectious disease spread through water that mainly strikes children under five. Initial symptoms include fever, headaches, vomiting, stiffness in the neck and fatigue. The polio virus invades the body's nervous system and can lead to irreversible paralysis within hours. In extreme cases, children can die when their breathing muscles are immobilized.

Incidence has dropped by 99 percent since the World Health Organization and partners began their eradication effort in 1988. But the virus is still entrenched in Afghanistan, India, Nigeria and Pakistan, and occasionally pops up elsewhere.

For developed countries, imported polio cases could cause chaos in the health system, warned Dr. Steve Cochi, an immunization expert at the United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

He said that unlike other medical problems, in which rejecting treatment only affects the individual, refusing a vaccine for a transmissible disease like polio puts others at risk as well.

"Most of the time, polio outbreaks do spill into the general population," Cochi said.

Ethicists argue that people who refuse vaccinations are taking advantage of everyone else who has been vaccinated. Once the majority of a population is vaccinated, there are few susceptible people the disease can infect, thus lowering the odds of an outbreak.

People who refuse to be vaccinated are "free riders," Harris said. "They can only afford to refuse the vaccine because they are surrounded by people who have fulfilled their obligations to the community."

Health officials doubt that Belgium's strategy will be useful to countries still battling polio.

"It is up to individual countries to decide their own policies, but we do not feel that imprisonment would help," said Dr. David Heymann, WHO's top polio official.

The Wakefield witch-hunt

The Spectator (UK)
March 21, 2008

by Melanie Phillips

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A couple of days ago, yet another story appeared claiming that fresh research had shown that there was no link between the MMR vaccination and autism. This new research was said to have shown that, contrary to the claims made by Dr Andrew Wakefield, the surgeon at the centre of the MMR scare, there was no relationship between gut problems and autism, the core of his concerns. It also claimed that the discovery furthermore damaged the related theory that a gluten- free diet could help children with autism. Dr Hilary Cass, from Great Ormond Street, said: 'It is very distressing to have a diagnosis of autism, a lifelong condition.Many families are driven to try out interventions which currently have no scientific basis. For example, advocates of the leaky gut hypothesis offer children a casein and gluten-free diet which as yet lacks an evidence base.' This particular observation is a telling indication that this study bears little relation to reality. For there are countless families whose autistic children's suffering from gut problems has only been eased, and their autistic symptoms improved, by the introduction of precisely such a diet. 'No evidence base'? Tell that to those families. It is their lived experience. Second, despite the way this was presented in the media this is not a new piece of research at all. It is instead a recycled version of a study by Baird G. et al, published in the Archive of Diseases in Childhood on February 5 and reported in the press around that time. The study drew the following response from Andrew Wakefield:

....The study is severely limited by case definition in the context of the crucial 'possible enterocolitis' group. For inclusion in this group they required the presence of two or more of the following five current gastrointestinal symptoms:

current persistent diarrhea (defined as watery/loose stools three or more times per day >14 days),
current persistent vomiting (occurring at least once per day, or more than five times per week),
current weight loss,
current persistent abdominal pain (3 or more episodes [frequency not specified by authors] severe enough to interfere with activity);
current blood in stool;

plus:

past persistent diarrhea >14 days' duration, and excluding current constipation.

We have over the last 10 years evaluated several thousand children on the autistic spectrum who have significant gastrointestinal symptoms. Upper and lower endoscopy and surgical histology have identified mucosal inflammation in excess of 80% of these children. Almost none of these children with biopsy-proven enterocolitis would fit the criteria set out above. Firstly, these children rarely have vomiting, current weight loss (as opposed to failure to gain weight in an age-appropriate manner), or passage of blood per rectum. The requirement is thus narrowed to a child having two of two relevant symptoms - current persistent diarrhea and current abdominal pain according to their criteria, plus a past history of persistent diarrhea excluding current constipation.

The requirement for the current presence of these symptoms, for 14 or more days continuously, shows a singular lack of understanding of the episodic, fluctuating, and alternating (e.g. diarrhea/constipation) symptom profile experienced by these children. In our experience, ASD children with histologic enterocolitis typically have 1 to 2 unformed stools per day that are very malodorous and usually contain a variety of undigested foodstuffs. This pattern alternates with that of "constipation" in which the unformed stool is passed after many days of no bowel movements at all, and with excessive straining. This group is entirely overlooked by the arbitrary criteria set forth in their paper. With respect to diarrhea and constipation, a detailed discussion of stool pattern in these children is available1 which further highlights the shortcomings of the above criteria. Moreover, the interpretation of pain as a symptom in non-verbal children, as it often manifests as self injury, aggressive outbursts, sleep disturbances, and abnormal posturing, is notoriously difficult. This interpretation requires an insight based upon the correlation of symptoms, histological findings, and response of symptoms to anti-inflammatory treatment. There is no evidence in the Baird et al. paper that these crucial factors were taken into account. This study's inappropriate symptom criteria would explain the discordance with other reports that have revealed a high prevalence of significant gastrointestinal symptoms in general autism populations 2,3.

It is surprising that Dr Peter Sullivan, a co-author on the paper, who presumably provided the above gastroenterological criteria, was not aware of the aforementioned limitations. In his role as a Defendant's expert in the UK MMR litigation, he will have had access to the clinical records of autistic children with the relevant intestinal symptoms and biopsy-proven intestinal inflammation.

We suggest that the authors might wish to reflect on the ethical implications of setting the bar too high for the investigation of such children by ileo- colonoscopy, with the attendant risk of missing symptomatic, treatable inflammation.

Since the relevant MMR/autism children are considered to be those with regression and significant gastrointestinal symptoms, the appropriate stratification for between-group analyses of measles virus antibody levels has not been conducted; therefore the paper is difficult to interpret, adding little if anything to the issue of causation. Moreover, it is a major error to have presumed that peripheral blood mononuclear cells are a valid 'proxy' for gut mucosal lymphoid tissues when searching for persistent viral genetic material.

A further major problem in this study is the number of children who dropped out or who were unable to provide adequate blood samples. We know nothing about either the 735 children who were lost at stage two, or the 100 children for whom blood samples were not available. At the very least, we should be told whether the children who dropped out were likely to be representative of those who stayed in, with regard to the key issues of interest.

For reasons that will emerge in the near future, it would be of interest to know whether siblings of autistic children were included in either of the two control groups. This information is not provided.

As a general observation, this paper contributes nothing to the issue of causation, one way or another. Case definition alone is likely to have obscured the relevant group of autistic children. The study tells us nothing about what actually happened to the children at the time of exposure. We are increasingly persuaded that measuring things in blood many years down the line tells us very little about the initiating events in what is, in effect, a static (non-progressive) encephalopathy unlike, for example, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, which is a progressive measles encephalopathy. The gut is a different matter, and analysis of mucosal tissues has been very informative, since here, in the relevant children, active ongoing, possibly progressive [AV1]4, inflammation has been identified.

None of Wakefield's pointers to the irrelevance of or inadequacies in the Baird research was included in the news stories. Nor do these stories refer to other research studies which show a higher rate of gastro- intestinal problems among children with autistic- spectrum symptoms. The recycling of the Baird study was but the latest in a steady drip-feed of such items which appear to be part of a concerted campaign to ensure that the General Medical Council hearing into the conduct of Wakefield's research, which is shortly due to resume, takes place in as prejudiced an atmosphere as possible. No stone is being left unturned by the medico-political establishment and its creatures in the media to ensure that this doctor is destroyed.

As I have repeatedly said, I have no idea whether Wakefield is correct or not in his concerns about the possible adverse effects of the MMR vaccine on a small sub-set of vaccinated children. Nor do I know whether any of the charges being levelled against him at the GMC has any legs. But I do believe - as I wrote in my series of articles on the subject for the Daily Mail in 2003 - that many of the statements made by the Department of Health and medical establishment about the 'proof' of the vaccine's unchallengeable safety are deeply misleading. And I also believe, having spoken to many parents of such children, that their experiences simply cannot be dismissed as they have been by the medical establishment. No-one has ever suggested that the MMR vaccine causes all or most of the incidence of autism. If Wakefield is correct, it is only a small proportion of children whose immune systems may be unable to cope, for whatever reason, which makes them particularly vulnerable to such ill-effects. And contrary to the message being pumped out by the medical establishment that the vaccine has been proved to be safe - by studies which are all either flawed, inadequate or irrelevant - the fairest and most accurate thing to say is that the jury is still out.

One of the most reprehensible weapons being wielded in the witch-hunt against Wakefield is the claim that anyone who gives any credence whatever to his concerns is responsible for the incidence of measles amongst children whose parents are as a result too frightened to give them the MMR vaccination. There are two obvious points to make in response to this piece of moral blackmail: 1) the whole panic could have been avoided by offering single measles, mumps and rubella jabs rather than the triple MMR, and 2) it is surely just as important as avoiding cases of measles mumps and rubella to avoid causing the kind of catastrophic damage to the brain and gut displayed by the children at the heart of this controversy.

And there is a further and quite appalling point to note. This whole saga started because parents of such children found that their family doctors were dismissing out of hand their children's gut and brain problems, accordingly refusing to alleviate their suffering. Now, as a direct result of the animosity towards Wakefield that has been whipped up - and the fear that any doctor who suggests he might be right will similarly find him or herself at the receiving end of the medical establishment's fist - children exhibiting this combination of gut and brain damage are finding it difficult to obtain treatment. Another letter to the Archive of Diseases in Childhood from John Stone, the parent of an autistic child, makes terrifying and distressing reading: In this regard it is worth noting the recent warning of the National Autistic Society (NAS):
'The National Autistic Society is keenly aware of the concerns of parents surrounding suggested links between autism and the MMR vaccine. The charity is concerned that the GMC hearing, and surrounding media coverage, will create further confusion and make it even more difficult for parents to access appropriate medical advice for their children. It is particularly important that this case is not allowed to increase the lack of sympathy that some parents of children with autism have encountered from health professionals, particularly on suspected gut and bowel problems. Parents have reported to the NAS that in some cases their concerns have been dismissed as hysteria following previous publicity around the MMR vaccine. It is crucial that health professionals listen to parents' concerns and respect their views as the experts on their individual children....'

The NAS warning relates to the GMC hearing involving doctors Wakefield, Walker-Smith and Murch which is set to resume on 25 March approaching. I do not think it is being unduly cynical to query the publication of this study at the present time as a media event, bearing in mind that it seems to have been carried out five or six years ago. Moreover, the study has once again been promoted as refuting the Wakefield hypothesis when it in fact tests for a possibility that had not been proposed. Meanwhile, the plight of autistic children with gastro- intestinal symptoms is excluded both from the study and public attention, as if they did not exist. The NAS statement warned of 'creating further confusion' and this is precisely what this study and its media exposure has done. As the resumption of the GMC hearing draws nearer, one has to ask whether this will serve the cause of truth and justice and the relief of suffering - or is it instead merely a show trial which will bring about the precise opposite?

Joe Scarborough (former host of Scarborough Country) on Vaccines

2008-03-25T14:06:00.000-07:00

Scarborough expressed concerns about the possibility one of his sons may have suffered vaccine damage, perhaps attributable to the sharp increase during the 1980s in the amount of thimerosal injected into infants, "My son, born in 1991, has a slight form of autism called Asperger's. When I was practicing law and also when I was in Congress, parents would constantly come to me and they would bring me videotapes of their children, and they were all around the age of my son or younger. So, something happened in 1989.

Joe Scarborough

Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 1st district

Dr. Sorge Abundalife Vaccination PDF to read!

2008-03-20T08:43:00.000-07:00

Dr. Sorge Abundalife Vaccination PDF to read!

Hepatitis B: Discrimination & Vaccine Damage

2008-03-20T08:14:00.000-07:00

A news report out of China, where about 125 million people are hepatitis B carriers, reveals that any child or adult found to be hepatitis B positive faces severe discrimination and societal sanctions while news reports out of Japan reveal that mandatory hepatitis B vaccination programs have transmitted hepatitis B infection. In France, families of hepatitis B vaccine victims are suing drug giants GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Sanofi Pasteur for aggravated deceit and involuntary homicide for the crippling and killing of children and adults, who were required to take the vaccine. The families have been barred from suing two former French government health officials who initiated and promoted the mandatory hepatitis B vaccination program.

For more than 20 years, the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) has been receiving reports that adults,children and infants are suffering serious reactions to hepatitis B vaccine. Hepatitis B vaccine reaction reports began to come in to NVIC's Vaccine Reaction Registry in the late 1980's from adult health care workers, who reported extreme fatigue, muscle weakness, joint pain, loss of vision, memory loss, heart problems, and development of multiple sclerosis after hepatitis B vaccination.

When the CDC recommended in 1991 that all healthy newborns at 12 hours of age be given hepatitis B vaccine in the newborn nursery, reports of infants dying after hepatitis B vaccination started coming in and continued all through the 90's. When states started mandating the vaccine for all school children in the late 1990's, parents began reporting that their bright, healthy, honor roll students and star athletes were becoming brain damaged, bed ridden and unable to attend school.

In 1999, NVIC published a report that in the U.S. there were more reported cases of hepatitis B vaccine reactions than reported cases of hepatitis B disease in children under 14 years old, an infection that is primarily transmitted in the U.S. among adult high risk groups such as IV drug users and those with multiple sexual partners.

The U.S., Europe and Canada have had historically low rates of hepatitis B disease. In 1990, one year before the CDC told doctors to give every American child three doses of hepatitis B vaccine, there were 21,102 cases of hepatitis B reported in the U.S. out of more than 300 million Americans. In 2005, there were 5,119 hepatitis B cases reported (MMWR, March 30, 2007)
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mm wrhtml/mm5453a1.htm

During the past century, medical doctors in positions of power inside and outside of governments around the world have developed an irrational fear of infectious microorganisms, such as hepatitis B virus, and have instilled that fear in the people they counsel. When irrational fear overtakes rational thought, the first casualty is usually the truth; the second is freedom.

The people in China, who are facing cruel discrimination for testing positive for hepatitis B infection, are being persecuted because of myths and misinformation perpetuated by doctors pushing mass use of hepatitis B vaccine and pharmaceutical drugs. The hype that surrounded CDC-inspired mandatory hepatitis B vaccination laws in the late 1990's had doctors declaring to the media that hepatitis B is highly contagious and could be transmitted in school settings, even though they knew transmission was impossible unless there was a direct exchange of blood. When questioned in a public hearing in 1997, CDC official Eric Mast, M.D. admitted "although [the hepatitis B] virus is present in moderate concentrations in saliva, it's not transmitted commonly by casual contact."

Infants who contract hepatitis B, either from their infected mother or infected blood transfusions, are at highest risk for chronic infection. But for the majority of healthy teenagers and adults, who come down with hepatitis B infection, symptoms include nausea, vomiting, low grade fever, pain and swelling in the joints, headache, and cough for two weeks before the onset of jaundice and enlargement/tenderness of the liver that lasts for three to four weeks. Fatigue can last up to a year but "most patients do not require hospital care" and "95 percent of patients have a favorable course and recover completely" with the case fatality ratio being "very low (approximately 0.1 percent)" according to Harrison's Principles of Medicine (11th Edition).

Those who recover completely from hepatitis B infection acquire life-long immunity. One medical textbook (Robbins Pathologic Textbook of Disease) points out that among those who do not recover completely from hepatitis B infection, fewer than 5 percent become chronic carrriers of the virus, with just one quarter of these in danger of developing life threatening disease later in life. For more information on hepatitis B disease and the vaccine, go to http://www.nvic.org/Diseases/hepbnlr.htm

The tragic consequences of doctors promoting mass hysteria about infectious diseases, like hepatitis B, and insisting on "no-exceptions" vaccine mandates, are becoming clearer every day. The only hope that citizens of every country have to protect their health and the health of their children is to stand up and pass laws which allow informed, voluntary use of vaccines and prohibit discrimination against those who have a disease or are vaccine injured.

No forced vaccination. Not in America.

Robert: injured by Hepatitis B Vaccine and reported to NVIC ( www.VaccineMemorial.org )

"Risk of [hepatitis B] infection through casual contact is minimal, and in many places worldwide, most carriers go about their own business whether in school or at work, facing little or no discrimination. But in China, fear of the virus has reached hysterical proportions, health experts say. Ignorance and relentless advertisements by drugmakers making misleading claims about the disease and touting all kinds of magic cures have built a climate of terror surrounding the virus, and discrimination against carriers, they add. Many schools, universities and companies now subject students and staff to regular health checks to screen for the virus. Toddlers who test positive are refused entry to school, older students are expelled, men and women can't find work and some couples are forced into separation by terrified in-laws....."You can't imagine the situation if your colleagues come to know you're a carrier. People are selfish and ignorant because of misleading (information) from the government and some doctors," said Shuai, who works at a scientific institute in South Africa." - Tan Ee Lyn, Reuters (March 18 2008) htt p://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUST257138 20080319? feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&sp=true

"Hundreds of hepatitis B patients [in Japan] who contracted the virus in their childhood through mandatory vaccinations against diseases will file a series of damages suits against the government next month, a group of lawyers said Saturday.....Lawsuits will be filed at a total of 11 district courts across Japan, starting with Sapporo, as the government has presented no concrete measures for redress to other patients following a Supreme Court ruling in 2006 ordering the state to compensate five such victims....In the ruling, the top court recognized causal links between the plaintiffs' inoculations and infections, and found the state responsible for leaving physicians to use the same hypodermic needles repeatedly when giving group vaccinations at public health centers. Vaccinations against several diseases had been mandated by the government prior to 1994, but are now only recommended following a number of lawsuits involving side effects from inoculations." - Associated Press (February 23, 2008) http://progressivenewsdaily.com/? p=2297

"Two drug companies are facing charges in France over a hepatitis B vaccine blamed for the death of a 28- year-old woman in 1998 and which caused serious side effects among 1,300 patients. Smithkline Beecham, now GlaxoSmithKline GSK, and Pasteur Merieux MSD-Aventis Pasteur, now Sanofi Pasteur MSD, are accused of aggravated deceit for failing to disclose the possible side effects from the vaccine, justice officials said Thursday. Pasteur MSD is also charged with involuntary homicide in the 1998 death of Nathalie Desainquentin, who allegedly contracted multiple sclerosis from the vaccine.....Lawyer Bernard Fau representing Desainquentin's family and other victims expressed satisfaction with the decision to press charges, saying "this supports our theory that the recommended use of the vaccination was not in line with the real risks." - Yahoo News (Canada) (February 1, 2008) http://ca.news. yahoo.com/s/afp/080201/health/france_health_hepatiti s_pharma_justice

China's Hepatitis B carriers face gloomy future

Reuters
March 18, 2008

by Tan Ee Lyn

Click here for the URL:

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Madam Yan and 11 other mothers in China turned to the All-China Women's Federation for help after their toddlers were denied places in kindergarten after testing positive for the Hepatitis B virus.

"When I see other children going to school happily and mine is alone, my heart drips with blood," Yan wrote.

Hepatitis B is preventable through vaccination and there are drugs to control the replication of the virus in carriers, such as Yan's child, who shows no symptoms.

Risk of infection through casual contact is minimal, and in many places worldwide, most carriers go about their own business whether in school or at work, facing little or no discrimination. But in China, fear of the virus has reached hysterical proportions, health experts say.

Ignorance and relentless advertisements by drugmakers making misleading claims about the disease and touting all kinds of magic cures have built a climate of terror surrounding the virus, and discrimination against carriers, they add.

Many schools, universities and companies now subject students and staff to regular health checks to screen for the virus.

Toddlers who test positive are refused entry to school, older students are expelled, men and women can't find work and some couples are forced into separation by terrified in-laws.

Qing Song, an activist who helps carriers fight discrimination at work, related a case where a young pregnant woman discovered her carrier status during a prenatal check.

"Her mother-in-law advised her to abort the child and fix her own health before trying to conceive again. But after the abortion, she was forced into a divorce and driven out of the family home," said Qing, who is based in southern Shenzhen city.

BEIJING ACTS

Hepatitis B is endemic in parts of Asia and Africa.

Worldwide, there are 360 million carriers and a whopping third of that, or between 120-130 million, are in China.

China's hepatitis B rate has historically been high but the reasons are unclear and it is not known if it may be due to genetic susceptibility.

Though 10 percent of its population are carriers, that figure is believed to be as high as 17 percent in its southern provinces, such as Guangdong and Guangxi.

The chief mode of transmission is from mother to child. Others include sex, blood transfusions and contaminated needles, including the reuse of needles to vaccinate children which was a common practice in China up until recently.

While a mature immune system in an older child or adult can flush out the virus, this is not the case for children under the age of 5 who contract the virus. It remains in their bodies, replicating quietly.

Drugs can only control the virus but not get rid of it and most of these younger children become carriers for life.

One in four of them are at risk of developing cirrhosis -- scarring of the liver -- or liver cancer later in life.

The Chinese government introduced free universal vaccinations for newborns in 2002, but actual coverage is inconsistent. Medical experts say more babies are vaccinated in the cities than in rural areas.

DISCRIMINATION

The government has tried to stop discrimination in recent years, reversing an age-old policy banning carriers from the civil service. Last year it banned companies from screening employees for the virus in health checks and using a positive test result as a condition to fire staff or reject new hires.

But these laws are difficult to enforce.

"Employers don't give a reason anymore. They say you are a danger to others or that you will suffer prejudice. They persuade you to resign and they don't have to compensate you," said a lawyer, who carries the virus and declined to be identified.

"It (carrier status) has deep repercussions whether in employment, marriage or social relationships. If people know you have it, they will reject you because they think you will infect them," said Ah Peng, who applied to work at a hotel but was rejected after a pre-employment health check showed he had the virus.

Consequences of such discrimination can be tragic.

Walter Shuai managed to escape health checks at his company for three years, but depression and the constant stress of being found out finally drove him to quit his job and leave China.

"You can't imagine the situation if your colleagues come to know you're a carrier. People are selfish and ignorant because of misleading (information) from the government and some doctors," said Shuai, who works at a scientific institute in South Africa.

Ah Tian, also a carrier, said his childhood friend died at the age 26 from an overdose of drugs that a doctor prescribed with an assurance that it would get rid of the virus.
"There is so much prejudice, suffering, pressure and people are desperate, he was so anxious to get well," said Ah Tian.

"This virus affects my job, family and love life, what else can be closer to us? Even my brother wouldn't sit at the same table with me. I think of suicide sometimes."

(Editing by Megan Goldin)

Damages suits to target state over vaccine induced hepatitits B+

(AP) Progressive News Daily
Kyodo News Agency
February 23, 2008

Click here for the URL:

SAPPORO, Feb. 23 (AP) - (Kyodo) - Hundreds of hepatitis B patients [in Japan] who contracted the virus in their childhood through mandatory vaccinations against diseases will file a series of damages suits against the government from next month, a group of lawyers said Saturday.

The move comes after the Diet moved to enact relief measures in January for those people who contracted hepatitis C through tainted blood products and fought their cases against the state in court. Lawsuits will be filed at a total of 11 district courts across Japan, starting with Sapporo, as the government has presented no concrete measures for redress to other patients following a Supreme Court ruling in 2006 ordering the state to compensate five such victims, the group said after a meeting in the northern Japan city.

In the ruling, the top court recognized causal links between the plaintiffs' inoculations and infections, and found the state responsible for leaving physicians to use the same hypodermic needles repeatedly when giving group vaccinations at public health centers.

Vaccinations against several diseases had been mandated by the government prior to 1994, but are now only recommended following a number of lawsuits involving side effects from inoculations.

The first group of about 20 patients, who are believed to have contracted hepatitis B through group vaccinations because transmission of the virus from their mothers was unlikely, will go to the Sapporo District Court on March 28. They are seeking compensation worth 15 million to 60 million yen per person.

Other groups will follow in April onward, bringing their cases before the Sendai, Tokyo, Niigata, Shizuoka, Nagoya, Osaka, Tottori, Matsue, Hiroshima and Fukuoka district courts, according to the lawyers.

Hepatitis B, if left unattended, is believed to cause chronic hepatitis in some carriers and could develop into liver cirrhosis or cancer.

Two drug firms charged in France over hepatitis vaccine

Yahoo News (Canada)
February 1, 2008

Click here for the URL:

PARIS (AFP) - Two drug companies are facing charges in France over a hepatitis B vaccine blamed for the death of a 28-year-old woman in 1998 and which caused serious side effects among 1,300 patients.

Smithkline Beecham, now GlaxoSmithKline GSK, and Pasteur Merieux MSD-Aventis Pasteur, now Sanofi Pasteur MSD, are accused of aggravated deceit for failing to disclose the possible side effects from the vaccine, justice officials said Thursday.

Pasteur MSD is also charged with involuntary homicide in the 1998 death of Nathalie Desainquentin, who allegedly contracted multiple sclerosis from the vaccine.

More than 20 million French people were vaccinated against hepatitis B from 1994 to 1998.

Lawyer Bernard Fau representing Desainquentin's family and other victims expressed satisfaction with the decision to press charges, saying "this supports our theory that the recommended use of the vaccination was not in line with the real risks".

France's former rightwing government had launched a national vaccination campaign against hepatitis B, which can infect the liver, in 1994 and suspended it in 1998 after several lawsuits were lodged.

A total of 29 victims have filed suit including five who claim the vaccine caused the death of a family member.

In 2005, a court threw out a suit for endangering lives against former health ministers Jean-Francois Mattei, Bernard Kouchner and Philippe Douste-Blazy over the vaccination campaign.

GSK and Pasteur MSD have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Report to NVIC's International Memorial for Vaccine Victims

www.VaccineMemorial.org

Report ID: 157
Name: Robert Topp
Birth Date: 8/2/1988
Death Date:
Birth State: CA
Birth Country: USA
Vaccination Age: 10
Suspected Vaccine: HBV (hepatitis B)
Primary Reaction: mononeuropathy
Secondary Reaction: paralysis
Other Reaction: transverse myelitis

Reaction Description: He had a thorough exam. The doctor said he was in great shape. The the nurse gave him his first "mandatory " Hepatitis B vaccine. The following morning he was different. Different looking, different acting. He was paralyzed on one side, but that for us is only the tip of the iceberg. Mentally, physically, and personality wise he is a different kid. No tolerance to pain or outside stimulation. If he was younger he would have diagnoosed with autism.

Current Health Problems: Robert is much better. No wheat or dairy in his diet. Intense physical and behavioral therapy for years. IG therapy. Excellent chiropractic care. Thank you Doctor Tom! There is still the uncertain future we live with each day of what may happen when Robert grows older and stops remyelinating. This didn't have to happen.

Robert is a fighter.

National Vaccine Information Center

Military Biodefence Vaccine Project

HPV VACCINE FACTS

The Doctor's Corner

Aluminum in Vaccines: Dr. Palevsky Joins NVIC's "The Doctor's Corner"

2008-03-13T20:30:00.000-07:00

In an article entitled "Aluminum Adjuvants: What Do We Know, What Don't We Know," pediatrician Lawrence Palevsky, M.D., FAAP, joins NVIC's new internet forum for pediatricians, "The Doctor's Corner" at www.nvic.org. Dr. Palevsky, who is co- founder and president of the Holistic Pediatric Association and past president of the American Holistic Medical Association, questions whether aluminum in vaccines is affecting the health of our children and contributing to the burden of chronic disease and disability.

In his referenced article, Dr. Palevsky explains the importance of maintaining a healthy immune system capable of initiating and resolving inflammation in response to challenges from viruses and bacteria, as well as reviews what is known and not known about the effects of the heavy metal, aluminum, on immune and brain function. He asks "Does aluminum play a role in impairing the overall synergistic, balanced activity of TH1, TH2 and TH3, which is a requirement for a healthy immune system response to the natural environment?"

Dr. Palevsky received his medical degree from the NYU School of Medicine in 1987. He completed a residency at Mount Sinai Hospital in NYC and a fellowship at Bellevue Hospital before joining Our Lady of Mercy Medical Center in the Bronx. He served as Chief of the Pediatric Acute Care Unit at Lenox Hill Hospital for four years and later was in private practice as a holistic integrative pediatrician for the Center for Health & Healing, an integrative and complementary care medical facility affiliated with Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. He provides wellness care for families at the Northport Wellness Center in Long Island and in New York City and participates in community health education programs in New York and nationally.

The Doctor's Corner, sponsored by the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), was created for enlightened pediatricians to publish referenced articles and stimulate dialogue about how and why vaccines cause reactions, injuries and death; why some individuals may be at higher risk than others for suffering a vaccine reaction; and ways in which vaccine risks may be reduced. The discussion on NVIC's The Doctor's Corner will also examine the relationship between infectious disease and vaccination and how early childhood experiences with both can influence immune and brain function.

The National Vaccine Information Center has long supported the forging of a new and more enlightened partnership between pediatricians and parents when it comes to making vaccination decisions for children. Parents in the 21st Century are becoming educated about vaccination and they want something more from pediatricians than inflexible administration of one-size- fits-all vaccine policies that fail to respect bio-diversity or the informed consent ethic. Parents are looking for intelligent, open-minded, compassionate and courageous pediatricians offering an alternative to calls by physicians inside and outside of government issue for forced use of multiple vaccines by all children.

The two pediatricians who have written articles for NVIC's "The Doctor's Corner" - Edward Yazbak, M.D. and Lawrence Palevsky, M.D. - demonstrate that there are enlightened pediatricians who respect and understand parental concerns about vaccines and the risks associated with inflexible vaccine policies. We thank them both for their courage and commitment to preventing vaccine injuries and deaths through public education.

To learn more about Dr. Palevsky and to read his article on aluminum and vaccines, go to http://www.nvic.org/doctors_corner/doctors_co rner.htm

Federal Government Concedes Autistic Child Injured By Vaccines

2008-03-06T14:13:00.000-08:00

by Barbara Loe Fisher

Ever since the historic National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Reagan, federal health officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) have fought most vaccine injury claims in the U.S. Court of Claims. Even so, special masters in the Court have awarded nearly $2 billion to vaccine victims since 1988. Over the years, there have been several awards quietly made to children, whose autistic behaviors began after DPT vaccine induced brain inflammation, but those awards were vigorously protested by DHHS officials who insisted that vaccines do not cause autism.

This week, however, the news is that DHHS officials have finally "conceded" that vaccines given in 2000 to a 19 month old boy with a pre-existing mitochondrial disorder did, in fact, cause brain inflammation that resulted in a spectrum of permanent brain dysfunction, including autistic behaviors. The child was given DTaP, HIB, MMR, Varicella and polio vaccines all at once and suffered classic vaccine reaction symptoms within 48 hours of the shots and subsequently regressed and was left with permanent disability, including autism.

The parents of the child, Dr. and Mrs. Jon Poling, participated in a press conference in Atlanta today, which was broadcast on CNN. The Poling's attorney for the case was NVIC Board member Cliff Shoemaker, who has represented the vaccine injured in the federal vaccine injury compensation program (VICP) ever since it was created in 1986. Tonight the parents will appear on Larry King Live at 9 p.m. on CNN and there is an on-line poll on autism and vaccines on CNN's website. CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta explains what he thinks the VICP award means.

On tonight's 5:30 p.m. WJLA-TV7 (ABC) News in Washington, D.C., Vicky Debold, PhD, RN speaks out about how her son regressed into autism after his 15 month vaccinations. Vicky's son, who received 7 live virus and killed bacterial vaccines on one day in 1998, suffered nearly identical reactions as the daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Poling. During the interview, she said, "I did something stupid. I gave my son 7 vaccines on one day. " She went on to say "I regret this but I can't take it back." Like Terry Poling, who was formerly a pediatric intensive care nurse, Dr. Debold recalls that she was a pediatric ICU nurse and completely trusted the vaccine recommendations by the CDC and AAP. Both Terry and Vicky fully vaccinated their children. Vicky, who is on NVIC's Board, has served as NVIC's Director of Patient Safety for the past few years and has counseled many parents reporting vaccine reactions and regression into poor health to NVIC during the past few years. (View some of these reaction reports at http://vaccinememorial.org/)

For more information on the history of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act and NVIC's long- held position regarding need for reform of the Act to make the system less adversarial and compensation less difficult to obtain for the vaccine injured, go to http://www.nvic.org/Loe_Fisher/blfvicp82899.htm

***********************************************************

"The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has concluded the family of Hannah Poling of Athens is entitled to compensation from a federal vaccine injury fund, according to the text of a court document in the case. The amount of the family's award is still being determined. The language in the document does not establish a clear-cut vaccine- autism link. But it does say the government concluded that vaccines aggravated a rare underlying metabolic condition that resulted in a brain disorder "with features of autism spectrum disorder.".....Hannah requires one-on-one care at all times, said her mother, Terry Poling, a nurse and lawyer. The Polings described how Hannah was a normal, verbal toddler until she received several vaccines during a well-baby visit. Within 48 hours of the shots, she developed a high fever and inconsolable crying and refused to walk. She stopped sleeping through the night. Within three months after receiving the vaccine, she began showing signs of autism, including spinning and staring at lights and fans. For a while, she lost her ability to speak. Then, within six months after the shots, as the family came to grips with the likelihood that she was autistic, they turned to leading experts in neurology. "I had to know. My daughter didn't just suddenly develop autism for no reason," Terry Poling said." - Alison Young, Atlanta Journal Constitution (March 5, 2008) http://www.ajc.com/me tro/content/health/stories/2008/03/06/autism_0306.ht ml

Hannah Poling requires one-on-one care at all times. Her family is trying to get details of her case opened for public review

GA girl helps link autism to childhood vaccines

The Atlanta Journal Constitution
March 5, 2008

by Alison Young

Click here for the URL:

Jon and Terry Poling with 9 year-old daughter, Hannah. They couple says the symptoms of autism began in Hannah after shots she received during a doctor visit when she was 19 months old.

In a move autism family advocates call unprecedented, federal health officials have concluded that childhood vaccines contributed to symptoms of the disorder in a 9-year-old Georgia girl. While government officials continue to maintain that vaccines don't cause autism, advocates say the recent settlement of the girl's injury case in a secretive federal vaccine court shows otherwise.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has concluded the family of Hannah Poling of Athens is entitled to compensation from a federal vaccine injury fund, according to the text of a court document in the case. The amount of the family's award is still being determined.

The language in the document does not establish a clear-cut vaccine-autism link. But it does say the government concluded that vaccines aggravated a rare underlying metabolic condition that resulted in a brain disorder "with features of autism spectrum disorder."

In an interview Wednesday with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Hannah's parents, Jon and Terry Poling, said the government's concession in the case will help pay for the numerous therapists and other medical experts their autistic child needs - now and for the rest of her life.

"At least we have some commitment from the government to take care of Hannah when we're gone," said Dr. Jon Poling, a neurologist.

But the case also thrusts the family into a national spotlight in the controversial public debate over whether vaccines have played some role in the growing number of U.S. children diagnosed with autism. Of particular concern to some families is the mercury-based preservative thimerosal, not used in child vaccines (except for some flu shots) since 2001. Hannah's case was one of three vaccine-court test cases alleging that thimerosal caused the children's autism. The other cases go to trial in May.

Suspicion of vaccines is fueled in part by vocal advocates - including radio shock jock Don Imus and actress Jenny McCarthy - speaking out on radio and TV shows such as "Oprah" and "Larry King Live." Even Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain said on the campaign trail that "there's strong evidence" that a preservative in vaccines is fueling the dramatic rise in autism cases across the country. As many as 1 in 150 children in some communities have autism disorders, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"We need to recognize this is a national crisis," Jon Poling said.

Autism is a lifelong neurological disorder that causes problems with communication and the ability to have normal social interactions. Autism and related autism spectrum disorders cover a range of symptoms that can vary from mild to severe. The cause is unknown, but scientists believe genes may play a role.

Pediatricians and public health officials worry that this case may cause fear among some parents and prompt them to refuse to vaccinate their children, and put them in real danger from measles, whooping cough and other diseases.

"The risks of diseases are real risks," said Dr. Melinda Wharton, deputy director of CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. Numerous large studies don't support a relationship between vaccines and autism, according to the CDC and the Institutes of Medicine.

The Georgia girl's case - and its implications in the vaccine-autism debate - raise more questions than it answers, experts say.

Some medical experts say it's difficult to fully assess the case because the federal vaccine-court documents are sealed from public view.

"It raised a lot of questions for us," said Dr. David Tayloe Jr., president-elect of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The national medical group's leadership has been seeking more information about Hannah's vaccine-court case since last week when a sealed vaccine-court document detailing the government's settlement was posted on the Internet by an autism book author, then circulated widely among autism groups.

The pediatrics association has been trying to get access to official documents in the case so medical experts can delve into the science, assess whether there are implications for other children and answer questions from doctors and families.

"Our responsibility is to make sure the public is given good information and make sure the hype doesn't distract from public health," Tayloe said. "I still would not think that we're going to have evidence showing a role of vaccines actually causing autism." According to the leaked document posted online, the government's Division of Vaccine Injury Compensation concluded that five shots Hannah received in July 2000, when she was 19 months old, "significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder" and resulted in a brain disorder "with features of autism spectrum disorder."

Sallie Bernard, executive director of the national autism advocacy group SafeMinds, called the case "unprecedented" in that a link between vaccines and autism is being made public. Federal health officials "have insisted there is no link at all between vaccines and vaccine components and autism. And apparently that is not true," she said.

The case also is significant because other autistic children have mitochondrial disorders, Bernard said. "The question is: What is the proportion?"

Robert Krakow, a New York attorney representing other autistic children in vaccine court, said the significance of the case is "potentially explosive." He said he has several clients with similar histories. Hannah requires one-on-one care at all times, said her mother, Terry Poling, a nurse and lawyer. The Polings described how Hannah was a normal, verbal toddler until she received several vaccines during a well-baby visit. Within 48 hours of the shots, she developed a high fever and inconsolable crying and refused to walk. She stopped sleeping through the night. Within three months after receiving the vaccine, she began showing signs of autism, including spinning and staring at lights and fans. For a while, she lost her ability to speak.

Then, within six months after the shots, as the family came to grips with the likelihood that she was autistic, they turned to leading experts in neurology. "I had to know. My daughter didn't just suddenly develop autism for no reason," Terry Poling said. Hannah's father co-authored an article about her case, which was published in the Journal of Child Neurology in 2006.

Hannah, who has two older brothers, continues to have mild to moderate symptoms of autism. The family says early and ongoing intensive therapy has been critical for her.

"The biggest question right now for the public is: How unique is Hannah's case?" said Jon Poling. Poling said he suspects there are other children like Hannah.

Cliff Shoemaker, the Polings' attorney, said the family has filed a petition with the vaccine court to unseal all of Hannah's records and allow both the family and the government to fully discuss the case. Despite this, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, which represents the government in court cases, would not grant interviews or explain to the AJC why it isn't releasing the records. HHS officials, who administer the vaccine compensation fund, also declined to be interviewed, citing the court's confidentiality requirements.

Shoemaker said the government's November concession in the case is public, but the government's reasons aren't. "I'm not aware of any other conceded autism cases," he said.

Congress created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in 1988 after widespread lawsuits against manufacturers and health-care providers stemming from reports of side-effects of a version of the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine used in the 1980s.

With companies getting out of the vaccine business for liability reasons, Congress established the program and a trust fund to serve as a no-fault alternative for resolving certain vaccine injury claims. The average injury compensation to an individual in vaccine court has been about $1 million. In fiscal year 2007, more than $91 million was awarded to people harmed by vaccines.

CDC Committee Vote on Flu Vaccine Endangers Children to Age 18

2008-02-28T13:17:00.000-08:00

by Barbara Loe Fisher

Without scientific evidence that it is both safe and effective to repeatedly administer influenza vaccine to children, the members of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices(ACIP) voted yesterday(Feb. 28) to vaccinate all infants and children up to age 18 with influenza vaccine every year. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/health/28flu.ht ml? em&ex=1204261200&en=a727f3655a7f32cc&ei=5087 %0A The vote came in the middle of a flu season that has seen widespread outbreaks of type A and type B strains of influenza that were not included in this year's influenza vaccine. http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN0 850501820080208? feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews&sp=true A report out of Canada last fall indicated that influenza vaccine strains contained in last year's vaccines appeared to be mutating. http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNe ws/20071024/flu_shot_071024/20071024hub=TopSto ries

The questionable safey and efficacy of influenza vaccine has been a subject of controversy for decades, despite the insistence by the drug industry and doctors selling the vaccine and government health officials promoting its use that most Americans should get a flu shot every year. Often public health officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) and in the U.S. fail to choose the right influenza strains for the vaccine. http://www.nvic.org/History/News letters/%203770Reaction.pdf

In the past few years, comprehensive reviews of influenza vaccine studies published in the medical literature revealed a stunning lack of scientific support for the safety and effectiveness of giving influenza vaccine to not only children but also to the elderly http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/333/7574/912. The truth is that (1) only 20 percent of all respiratory flu-like illness in a normal flu season is, in fact influenza, and misdiagnosis often occurs; (2) the CDC has never provided published documentation that 36,000 Americans die from actual influenza every year versus respiratory illness that looks like influenza but is not; (3) there is little scientific evidence that influenza vaccine works or is safe for anyone; (4) government policies targeting all infants and children for annual flu vaccination may well endanger the long term health of this and future generations of children by atypically manipulating the immune system with repeated vaccination in an attempt to prevent all natural experience with type A or type B influzenza; and (5) these misguided flu vaccine policies could not only weaken the ability of future generations to experience and successfully heal from a bout with the flu without severe complications or death but also could put pressure on influenza viruses to mutate into more virulent, vaccine resistent forms that will cause future virulent epidemics in populations.

The majority of the American public, including doctors and nurses, refuse to get a flu shot every year despite the millions of dollars spent by the pharmaceutical industry and taxpayer money spent by the CDC to vigorously promote its use. http://www.cidrap.u mn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/general/news/jul0207 acip.html Recently, there have been calls by doctors advocating a cradle to the grave approach to vaccination that would require all 300 million Americans to get an annual flu shot. http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/Flu/s tory?id=3781181

The drug companies selling flu vaccine have one goal: making profit on the millions of doses of vaccine produced every year rather than throwing it away because of poor uptake. CDC officials, eager to help the drug companies out, keep issuing ever widening recommendations to qualify more Americans for getting a flu shot. What began as an effort decades ago to protect those over 65 from complications of influenza that can be deadly for the elderly, has become a boondoggle for drug companies selling and doctors making profit on administering influenza vaccine to everyone, including babies, children and adults.

For the past four decades, every time the CDC has recommended a vaccine for "universal use" by children, those "recommendations" are translated into vaccine laws at the state level. Last year, New Jersey became the first state to mandate influenza vaccine for children as a requirement for attending school. Most states now require nearly three dozen doses vaccines that the CDC has "recommended."

The majority of Americans may not want to get a flu shot every year but the time is soon approaching when they will have no choice. Strident calls by vaccine makers, administrators and policymakers for more vaccine mandates and societal punishments for refusing to comply (" No shots - no education, no health insurance, no job) are paving the way for the day when rolling up your sleeve for a flu shot will become as mandatory and punishable as drinking and driving.

Increasingly, the CDC is guilty of endangering the public health, not protecting it. There is no excuse for issuing vaccine policies not supported by scientific data. The only recourse the public has is to change vaccine laws in the states to allow exemptions for conscientious and religious beliefs, as well as widen the medical exemption to allow enlightened doctors to exempt those with health conditions that are not acknowledged by the CDC as a reason for deferring vaccination. If vaccine laws cannot be made more flexible by allowing wider exemptions, then the day will come when the public will have no choice but to work for the repeal of all vaccine laws.

The National Vaccine Information Center remains committed to working to insert vaccine safety and informed consent protections in vaccine laws in America.

NO FORCED VACCINATION. NOT IN AMERICA.

***********************************************************

"All children ages 6 months to 18 years in this country should receive an influenza shot every year, a federal advisory panel said on Wednesday [Feb. 27, 2008] . The recommendation expands by about 30 million the number of children who should get annual flu shots. Current pediatric recommendations call for influenza vaccinations for children ages 6 months to about 5 years....The committee voted unanimously that the expanded immunization should start as soon as possible, but no later than the 2009-10 flu season. The centers expect that the vaccine industry, which made 132 million doses available this year, will be able to produce a sufficient supply in future years. Every state but one has reported widespread influenza this winter....... The C.D.C. has long urged older adults and those with chronic ailments to get influenza shots each season. In 2004, following the advisory committee's recommendation, the centers urged that all infants ages 6 months to 23 months receive flu shots....In 2006, the centers expanded the recommendation to include children ages 24 months to 59 months....- Lawrence Altman, New York Times, (February 28, 2008) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/health/28flu.ht ml? em&ex=1204261200&en=a727f3655a7f32cc&ei=5087 %0A

The advisory committee to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that the new guidelines go into effect as soon as possible and no later than the 2009-10 influenza season. That would encourage private insurers and taxpayer- funded vaccination programs to pay for flu shots or nasal sprays for an additional 30 million children across the country. "This new recommendation will help parents understand that all children can benefit from vaccination," said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. The announcement comes during a flu season that has many parents doubting the vaccine's effectiveness. Some children and adults who received flu shots in recent months still came down with the illness because one of this year's common strains was not included in the vaccine. "(Vaccinating all children) is a waste of money and resources because the vaccine isn't that effective," said Dawn Richardson, president of the Austin-based Parents Requesting Open Vaccine Education, a group that opposes universal vaccinations. She said she also worries about side effects of the flu shot.......One driving force behind the expanded recommendation is increased availability of the vaccine, said Carol J. Baker, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Texas Children's Hospital who serves on the advisory panel. She also serves as president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. - Alexis Grant, Houston Chronicle, (February 27, 2008) http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/55 77063.html

Panel Advises Flu Shots for Children Up to Age 18

The New York Times
February 28, 2008

by Lawrence Altman

Click here for the URL:

All children ages 6 months to 18 years in this country should receive an influenza shot every year, a federal advisory panel said on Wednesday.

The recommendation expands by about 30 million the number of children who should get annual flu shots. Current pediatric recommendations call for influenza vaccinations for children ages 6 months to about 5 years.

In expanding the new upper age limit to 18 years, the aim is to reduce both the time children and parents lose from visits to pediatricians and missing school and the need for antibiotics for complications, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, who directs the disease agency's program on immunization and respiratory diseases.

An added expected benefit would be indirect - to reduce the number of influenza cases among parents and other household members, and possibly spread to the general community. The recommendation, which is voluntary, was made by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice, which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The C.D.C. and its parent, the Department of Health and Human Services, generally follow the advice of the committee, which is composed of vaccine experts from academia and the private sector.

The committee voted unanimously that the expanded immunization should start as soon as possible, but no later than the 2009-10 flu season. The centers expect that the vaccine industry, which made 132 million doses available this year, will be able to produce a sufficient supply in future years.

Every state but one has reported widespread influenza this winter. In Florida, activity is regional. Last week, the centers reported that 22 children had died in this influenza season.

The C.D.C. has long urged older adults and those with chronic ailments to get influenza shots each season. In 2004, following the advisory committee's recommendation, the centers urged that all infants ages 6 months to 23 months receive flu shots to protect them from serious complications of the viral illness. Hospitalization rates among the infant group rivals those among elderly Americans.

In 2006, the centers expanded the recommendation to include children ages 24 months to 59 months to provide them direct protection against influenza infection.

For initial protection, children ages 6 months to 9 years require two doses of flu vaccine, at least one month apart, the committee said. Then they should receive annual shots.

In a new study reported at Wednesday's meeting, Dr. David K. Shay, who led a team from the C.D.C. and eight state health departments, found that full immunization against flu provided about a 75 percent effectiveness rate in preventing hospitalizations from influenza complications in the 2005-6 and 2006-7 influenza seasons. (The 75 percent rate could range, according to a standard statistical measure known as confidence intervals, from 41 percent to 91 percent.)

The study, which involved children ages 6 months to 23 months who had laboratory confirmed cases of influenza, will continue through this flu season. Because this season seems to be more severe than the last two, the researchers expect to have more cases to analyze and improve the statistical odds.

Vaccines are typically designed to protect against the three strains of influenza. Experts determine the strains based on data from current seasonal transmission and their judgment about future activity. Usually one or two strains are changed in each year's vaccine.

But committees from the World Health Organization and the United States Food and Drug Administration voted earlier this month to change all three strains in next season's vaccine. It is the first time that all three strains were changed at once, Dr. Nancy Cox, an influenza expert at the C.D.C., said in a news conference on Feb. 22.

The centers recommendations for annual flu shots for adults include all Americans ages 50 and older; people with chronic lung, heart and other ailments; health care workers; and women who will be pregnant during the influenza season.

__________________________________________

Despite being vaccinated, Shannon Scott's 11-year- old daughter, Courtney Williams, caught the flu this year, a strain not covered by the vaccine. It took her a month and a half to recover.
STEVE CAMPBELL: CHRONICLE

CDC pushes flu shots for toddlers to teens

Houston Chronicle
February 27, 2008

by Alexis Grant
Click here for the URL:

All children older than 6 months should receive a flu shot every year, a federal panel recommended Wednesday, pushing for expansion of the current recommendation that covers children only up to age 5.

The advisory committee to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that the new guidelines go into effect as soon as possible and no later than the 2009-10 influenza season. That would encourage private insurers and taxpayer- funded vaccination programs to pay for flu shots or nasal sprays for an additional 30 million children across the country.

"This new recommendation will help parents understand that all children can benefit from vaccination," said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

The announcement comes during a flu season that has many parents doubting the vaccine's effectiveness. Some children and adults who received flu shots in recent months still came down with the illness because one of this year's common strains was not included in the vaccine.

"(Vaccinating all children) is a waste of money and resources because the vaccine isn't that effective," said Dawn Richardson, president of the Austin-based Parents Requesting Open Vaccine Education, a group that opposes universal vaccinations. She said she also worries about side effects of the flu shot.

Children, the elderly and people with other health conditions such as asthma are most at risk for contracting flu. Vaccinating all children not only helps prevent them from catching it. It also keeps them from spreading it to other high-risk groups, pediatricians say.

Peak time for illness

Flu activity in Texas is now widespread, according to the CDC. That's not unusual for this time of year, because influenza peaks in Texas during January and February, said Emily Palmer, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services. The season typically runs through March, but can run as late as May.

Seven children in Texas have died from flu since November, Palmer reported. Three of those were in Harris County.

Four of the children who have died were older than 5. The state does not track flu-related adult deaths.

The new vaccination recommendation must be approved by the CDC, which is expected to adopt the change.

That would be good news for Shannon Scott, whose 11-year-old daughter, Courtney Williams, caught the flu this year.

Courtney and her family get flu shots every year because her immune deficiency disorder puts her at high risk. The fifth-grader caught a strain that wasn't covered by the vaccine, however, and it took her a month and a half to recover.

"I think it would be best that everybody got (vaccinated), just to keep it from spreading," said Scott, who lives in Splendora, in Montgomery County.

Increased availability

One driving force behind the expanded recommendation is increased availability of the vaccine, said Carol J. Baker, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Texas Children's Hospital who serves on the advisory panel. She also serves as president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.

MedImmune, manufacturer of the nasal spray vaccine FluMist, on Wednesday announced plans to meet increased demand. The company will prepare about 12 million doses for the next flu season, a record number for MedImmune.

MedImmune and other manufacturers created about 130 million doses this year. CDC officials and pediatricians say there is plenty of vaccine for those who still need protection.

Local flu expert Dr. Paul Glezen said the recommendation could help increase immunization rates, which have leveled off over the past decade.

"What you have to recognize is that the current strategy is not effective," said Glezen, lead epidemiologist at Baylor College of Medicine's Influenza Research Center. "We have not been controlling influenza."

NJ and MD Parents Act on Vaccine Law Reforms

2008-02-26T12:11:00.000-08:00

by Barbara Loe Fisher

Parents in New Jersey are calling on NJ Governor Corzine and state legislators to reverse the state Health Department's recent order to add four new vaccines to state vaccine mandates and to support the addition of a conscientious belief exemption to NJ vaccine laws (A260 and S107). Parents in Maryland are calling on state legislators to support the Mercury and Lead Reduction Act (HB506 and SB304). Vaccine safety and informed consent activists are urging that citizens living in both states take action this week.

New Jersey Action Alert

Sue Collins, co-founder of NJAICV, has issued an Action Alert for New Jersey residents to make a personal call to NJ Governor Corzine and their state legislators offices tomorrow, Feb.27, and ask for (1) reversal of the state Health Department's recent order to add 4 new vaccines to the mandates for day care and school admission; and (2) support for the conscientious belief exemption to vaccination.

"Even if you have called in the past, it is crucial that you call again," said Sue. "The full Assembly meets this week and we want them to be talking about this legislation. There is a groundswell of support for giving parents in NJ the freedom to exercise a conscientious belief exemption to vaccination. The Govenor has already received more than 1,000 calls protesting the new mandates. We need everyone to get involved."

Governor Corzine: Call 609-292- 6000
Message: Stop the new vaccine mandates. Support a conscientious belief exemption to vaccination.

NJ Legislators: To find your district and state legislator, go to http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/members/legsearch. asp
Message: Stop the new vaccine mandates. Co-sponsor A260 (if an Assemblyperson) or S107 (if a Senator) that adds a conscientious belief exemption to NJ state vaccine laws.

The following NJ legislators should be called and thanked for co-sponsoring the conscientious belief exemption legislation: NJ Assemblypersons Charlotte Vandervalk, Peter Biondi, John McKeon, Sheila Oliver, Pamela Lampet, Joan Voss, Linda Stender, Michael Doherty, Jon Bramnick; and NJ State Senators Anthony Bucco and Andrew Ciesla.

Contact Sue Collins to report any feedback from legislators at NJAICV@aol.com

Maryland Action Alert

Maryand vaccine safety activist Mike Dow reports that the sponsors of the Lead and Mercury Reduction Act (HB586 and SB304), Delegates Sue Kullen and Nicholaus Kipke and Senator Thomas "Mac" Middleton, have requested that all concerned citizens living in Maryland contact their state legislators now and urge them to support the legislation.

"Negotiations are at a crucial point. If HB 586 and SB 304 have any chance of being passed, Senators and Delegates must hear from their constituents now," said Mike. "Faxes and email letters of support are needed, not phone calls, at this point."

To find out who your MD state representative is:
http://mdel ect.net/electedofficials/
Contact information for MD Senators:
http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/mdm anual/05sen/html/senal.html
Contact information for MD Delegates:
http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/mdm anual/06hse/html/hseal.html
Message: Support the Lead and Mercury Reduction Act (HB586 for Delegates and SB304 for Senators).

"Please capitalize and bold the name of the legislation - THE LEAD AND MERCURY REDUCTION ACT," said Mike. "Include a very brief explanation as to why you want the bill to be passed. No long letters. The legislators want and need to hear from their constituents now. Please include your name and address on the bottom of each email. Phone number is optional."

If you have any questions, contact Mike Dow at mikewdow@msn.com

Lead and Mercury Reduction Act Summary: FOR the purpose of prohibiting certain persons from administering vaccines that contain more than a certain amount of mercury per dose; prohibiting the sale, offer for sale, or distribution in the State of certain drugs that contain mercury; prohibiting the sale, offer for sale, or distribution in the State of cosmetics that contain lead or mercury; providing for a delayed effective date; and generally relating to prohibitions against the administering of vaccines with specified levels of mercury and the sale of cosmetics and specified drugs that contain mercury.

How Vaccines Can Damage Your Brain

2008-02-26T07:52:00.000-08:00

Vaccines, Depression and Neurodegeneration After Age 50: Another Reason to Avoid the Recommended Vaccines.

By Russell L. Blaylock, M.D., CCN

Depression later in life tends to last longer and be more severe than at younger ages. It is also associated with a high rate of suicide. Previously, it was thought that major depression was secondary to a deficiency in certain neurotransmitters in the brain, particularly the monoamines, which include serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine.

While alterations in these important mood-related neurotransmitters is found with major depression, growing evidence indicates that the primary culprit is low-grade, chronic brain inflammation.

This exclusive article will review in detail the functions and impact of various agents on depression and neurodegeneration, including:

The impact of MSG on your brain and mood
The link between elevated brain glutamate and inflammation
The connections between pesticides and neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease
How vaccinations cause brain inflammation
The impact of an expanding vaccine schedule for the elderly
The shocking truth, linking brain inflammation to neurodegenerative diseases
How vaccine additives such as mercury and aluminum impact your brain health
The real danger of live virus vaccines

Current recommendations by the CDC for adult vaccinations include a total of 14 separate inoculations with infectious agents and powerful immune adjuvants.

According to CDC recommendations, multiple vaccinations for a single disease are separated by no more than 4 weeks, which is close enough together to trigger a smoldering process of brain inflammation and excitotoxicity that can not only result in depression, anxiety and high suicide rates, but can increase your risk of developing one of the neurodegenerative diseases as well.

We have also seen that in many cases a person will be injected with several vaccines during a single office visit and this means that their body is exposed to a very large dose of immune adjuvant. Compelling studies, using many animal species as well as humans, have shown that this overactivates brain inflammatory mechanisms that can last for years.

Childhood Vaccinations Hoax - Not Effective and at Worst, Harmful

2008-02-25T05:46:00.000-08:00

Friday, February 08, 2008 by: Heidi Stevenson

(NaturalNews) It's taken as an article of faith that vaccinations have improved our lifespan. We take our children to the doctor for their injections without question. We think of ourselves as bad parents if we don't. It's simply one of those things that we don't question, as if it's obvious. It's gone so far now that, as has been so well documented on NaturalNews, parents are threatened with prison, and their children are forced to get vaccinations at gunpoint (http://www.NaturalNews.com/021572.html) . Medical tyranny in Texas turns teenage girls into HPV vaccination profit centers.

The reality, as documented by the American Medical Association's own journal (JAMA) in the January 1999 issue, is that there is no connection between death from infectious diseases and vaccinations; that's right, "none".

First, let's look at the dates for when vaccinations were first introduced in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control:

* Measles (one of the Ms of the MMR vaccination): 1963

* Mumps (the other M of the MMR vaccination): 1967

* Chickenpox: 1995

* Diphtheria (the D of the DPT vaccination): First licensed in 1921, but not widely used until the 1930's

* Pertussis (whooping cough, the P of the DPT vaccination): First developed in the 1930's, widely used by the mid-1940's

* Tetanus (the T of the DPT vaccination): First used as a childhood vaccine in the 1940's.

* Rubella (German measles, the R of the MMR vaccination): 1969

There are several others, of course, but they are either too recent to take into account or not truly associated with childhood illnesses, such as smallpox and polio, which are more appropriately considered epidemic diseases.

The JAMA Study

The number of deaths from nine different infectious diseases, in some cases, groups of diseases, were tallied. They are:

* Pneumonia and influenza

* Tuberculosis

* Diphtheria

* Pertussis

* Measles

* Typhoid fever

* Dysentery

* Syphilis

* AIDS

All but AIDS were chosen because they were the most common cause of death by infectious diseases in the first half of the 20th century, with the exception of polio, for which data are not available for all years covered by the study.

Graphs showing numbers of deaths by age, by infectious disease deaths as a whole, by specific infectious diseases, and by all disease causes are shown plotted by time, from 1900 through 1996.

Results of the JAMA Study

With the exception of 1918, when the influenza epidemic struck, the rate of deaths from infectious diseases show a fairly smooth rate of decrease from 1900 through 1980, at which point a slight rate of increase develops. This link shows the associated JAMA graph: ((http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/fu...) .

Deaths graphed by groups of diseases show some variations, but interestingly, the most significant improvements are in typhus and dysentery ((http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/fu...) . Both of these diseases show almost no deaths after 1960. Interestingly, there is no vaccination for dysentery and most people are not vaccinated for typhus.

Tuberculosis rates show a curve similar to the overall infectious disease rate. The death rate from pneumonia and influenza from 1970 through 1996 shows a general increase, in spite of the ongoing vaccinations for influenza and the introduction of pneumonia vaccines in 1977 and 1983.

Diphtheria shows its greatest decrease of deaths prior to 1920. There was a spike in diphtheria deaths during the early 1920's, shortly after the vaccination was introduced, and then the rate of decrease continued as before the vaccination's introduction. Whooping cough (pertussis) and measles showed the same general trend of decrease during the 20th century.

Finally, take a look at the chart for death rates from all disease causes ((http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/fu...) . From 1900 through the 1920's, the infectious disease rate goes down at an impressive pace. This is a time during which there were no vaccinations against childhood diseases. The rate of decrease of deaths from 1940 through 1960 continues at about the same pace. Then, it starts to level out, in spite of the fact that the vast majority of children are vaccinated during this time.

Now, take a look at the same graph showing the death rates from all causes. This should make you nervous. The rate of death from all disease decreases slightly from 1900 through 1920. However, after this, when vaccinations start to be introduced, the death rate from noninfectious causes starts to increase. It isn't a huge amount, but it's definitely there. Most significantly, the increase in death rate from noninfectious causes starts when vaccinations are introduced.

What Can Explain the Reduction in Infectious Disease Rates?

Since it's obvious from the AMA's own documentation that vaccinations have little or no effect on the outcome of infectious disease deaths, then there must be other issues at play. If one looks at the history of the 20th century in the U.S. then it isn't too difficult to see what has changed. This was the era of improved overall hygiene and adequate food.

It was when clean and abundant water became the norm. It was when systems to clean wastes from public water supplies became standard. It was when septic and sewer systems to separate people from disease-producing wastes were introduced. It was a time of relative plenty, when people grew larger because of adequate food. In other words, it was a time of relative wealth and public works for good water and sewage treatment.

This is the most likely reason behind the decrease in infectious diseases, not the medical system's vaunted vaccinations.

Why Are We Vaccinating Against Childhood Diseases?

This is the multi-billion dollar question. Parents usually have their children vaccinated because the idea of not doing it simply doesn't occur. We have been thoroughly indoctrinated with the concept of “deadly” childhood diseases. Yet, there is no documentation showing that death rates from these diseases have been improved by vaccinations. As the data from the AMA itself shows, there is every reason to believe that these vaccinations are not effective, that we need to look to other reasons for the decrease in these disease deaths.

Even more significantly, the AMA's own data shows a possible link between an increase in death coinciding with vaccinations. Whether this is a cause-and-effect link is not proven at this time. However, with the AMA's record of not looking into the effects of vaccinations - of not even requiring that after-effects be reported - it's clear that the allopathic (standard) medical system is not going to sort this out. That leaves us with no option but to assume the worst - that childhood vaccinations not only do little or no good, but they may be doing great harm.

The question, of course, is “Why?” As with any corporate-controlled business (and make no mistake, the medical industry is big business) the answer always goes back to the same thing: money. Filthy lucre. There are millions and billions of dollars, pounds, euros, and other currencies to be made by both the pharmaceutical firms and the doctors themselves.

The Bottom Line

For the medical industry, the bottom line is the bottom line. For each of us and for our children, the bottom line is completely different. It's the quality of our lives. In the end, the only ones who must live with the results of vaccinations are the children and adults whose bodies have been pierced by the needles injecting them.

Addendum

This article focused on the most common childhood vaccines, the ones noted for childhood diseases and also the ones that have existed for the greatest amount of time. However, readers may find the following information about when vaccines have been introduced to be of interest:

* Anthrax: November 20, 2002

* Hepatitis A: HAVRIXR vaccine in 1995, VAQTAR vaccine in 1996

* Hepatitis B: First in 1982; in 1986 a recombinant DNA vaccine issued; in 1989 a second recombinant DNA vaccine issued

* Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type b, not a true influenza virus, but a bacterium): First licensed in 1985, but a “new improved” form licensed in 1987

* HPV (Human papillomavirus): June 8, 2006

* Influenza: First introduced in 1945; ongoing updates developed year after year in attempt to keep up with viral changes

* Meningococcus: First in 1974 against one of five major subtypes; others introduced 1981 and 2005 for original subtype and three others; no vaccine exists for fifth subtype (B), which is the cause of 65% of meningitis cases under age 2

* Pneumonia: 1977 for 14 types of bacterial pneumonia; 1983 “improved” vaccine for 23 types of bacteria; a specific vaccine aimed at children under age 2 developed in 2000

* Polio: Jonas Salk killed virus vaccine in 1955; live vaccine in 1961; “enhanced formulation” introduced in 1988. Note that the death rate from polio had already decreased dramatically, to a tiny fraction of where it had been at the beginning of the century, before the vaccine's introduction.

* Rotavirus: February 2006

* Zoster (shingles): May 26, 2006

To see how the medical establishment presents nonsense studies falsely “proving” that their treatments and drugs are useful or harmless, read Dissecting a Thimerosal Study (http://www.NaturalNews.com/022237.html).

NaturalNews's Mike Adams has been pointing out problems with vaccines. A recent must-read is his exposé, HPV Vaccine Hoax Exposed: FDA Documents Reveal HPV “Not Associated with Cervical Cancer” (http://www.NaturalNews.com/022404.html).

About the author

Heidi Stevenson
Fellow, British Institute of Homeopathy

more deaths among the healthy infants who received Rotarix compared to those who received a placebo.

2008-02-22T07:13:00.000-08:00

NVIC's Director of Patient Safety, Vicky Debold, Ph.D, RN, who is the consumer voting member on the FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, cast the sole dissenting "NO" vote when the Committee was asked whether GlaxoSmithKline's pre-licensure clinical trials had proved that rotavirus vaccine (Rotarix) is safe to give to infants. The FDA Panel voted unanimously that GSK had proven effectiveness but voted 11-1 on the safety question.

Debold noted that there were more deaths among the healthy infants who received Rotarix compared to those who received a placebo. She pointed out that the clinical trials did not inlude premature, sick and otherwise biologically compromised infants and asked "What is going to happen when this vaccine is given to children in the real world?" An FDA staff report analyzing GSK data revealed a statistically significant increase in deaths related to pneumonia among infants who got Rotarix versus the placebo.

Rotarix vaccine will directly compete with Merck's Rotateq vaccine for market share. Rotateq, a genetically engineered hybrid live virus vaccine containing human and bovine strains, has been associated with bowel blockage (intussusception). Bowel blockage does not appear to be a problem for live virus Rotarix, which contains genetically engineered human rotavirus strains, although serious adverse events associated with the new vaccine have included not only pneumonia and death but also bronchitis and convulsions.

pneumonia from GlaxoSmithKline’s rotavirus vaccine, Rotarix

2008-02-20T13:45:00.001-08:00

GlaxoSmithKline’s rotavirus vaccine, Rotarix, has been associated with increased pneumonia-related deaths and other adverse reactions.

This FDA is considering approval of the oral vaccine, which prevents the most common cause of severe diarrhea and dehydration among infants and young children.

FDA staff said that an analysis of 11 studies revealed a statistically significant increase in deaths related to pneumonia. The largest study, which examined about 63,000 children, also found an increase in convulsions in children given the drug. Another study found an increased rate of bronchitis.

Vaccine at Birth to Helpless Infants

2008-02-20T13:07:00.001-08:00

Why Are We Giving Vaccine at Birth to Helpless Infants?
Some Hepatitis B Vaccines Still Have Mercury!!

The only possible justification is to prevent the transmission from an infected mother to her child but this is easier and less expensive to do by screening mothers and giving those at risk the vaccine. They are screening all mothers already for a variety of conditions, why can’t we add another one?
Instead of using common sense we are mandating this vaccine to ALL children. In the hope that when they get older and actually have the opportunity to engage in risky behaviors that they will be protected.
Well guess what?
In over half the kids the immune protection lasts less than seven years which is well before these kids will need any possible benefits of the vaccine.

Aside from the question of whether or not it is appropirate to give infants this vaccine, today, over 8 years after federal agencies advised vaccine manufacturers to remove mercury from their vaccines, some still contain them.

ActHIB, HibTITER in single-dose vials, and PedvaxHIB do not contain thimerosal as a preservative. However, PRP-T (ActHIB) reconstituted with DTaP (Tripedia) to form TriHIBit STILL contain organic mercury.
Does This Make ANY Sense???

Physicians Are Harming 4,000 Children to Protect One From Hepatitis B Complications
Even if a child does become infected with hepatitis B what is the problem? Just how serious is it? Will they die just as surely as if they came down with pancreatic cancer?
Hardly.
The numbers speak for themselves. Only one in 100 who get this infection will run the risk of ANY serious illness.

So just how serious is an infection with Hepatitis B?

Hepatitis B is a rare, mainly blood-transmitted disease.
Far less than 100 children under the age of 1 become infected with hepatitis B. Since there are about 4 million children born in the US every year this works out to about one child in every 200 births that develop hepatitis B. As you will see below this number is actually far lower as only 1% of these children develop serious complications or about 4 or 5 kids.
The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reported over 2,000 total reports of adverse reactions from hepatitis B vaccine in the 0-1 age group, with over 50 deaths reported. Here is the kicker, it is well recognized that this is only about 10% of the actual cases. So if you multiply this by 10 you have 20,000 injured infants from the vaccine.
So as a result of all these immunizations physicians are harming 20,000 infants to protect 5 from serious problems.

Why Is This Being Done??
Simple answer - - Money and Greed
Merck is the company that makes the hepatitis B vaccine. Remember Merck? They are the ones that are defending thousands of lawsuits for killing over 60,000 people for Vioxx. They are earning a cool $1 billion dollars per year from selling this vaccine.
Guess you have to pay those Vioxx lawsuits some way.

Some Physicians Understand the Truth

There are many independent physicians who share this belief. There is also an Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). This is a group of over 10,000 US medical doctors (MDs and DOs), and most of them have reached the conclusion that the head of the organization, Dr. Jane Orient, has about this issue.
To the extent that the physician simply complies without making an independent evaluation of the appropriateness of the vaccine for each patient, he is abdicating his responsibility under the Oath of Hippocrates to:
"prescribe regimen for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone." .
AAPS opposes federal mandates for vaccines, on principle, on the grounds that they are:
An unconstitutional expansion of the power of the federal government.
An unconstitutional delegation of power to a public-private partnership.
An unconstitutional and destructive intrusion into the patient-physician and parent-child relationships.
A violation of the Nuremberg Code in that they force individuals to have medical treatment against their will, or to participate in the functional equivalent of a vast experiment without fully informed consent.
A violation of rights to free speech and to the practice of one's religion (which may require one to keep oaths).
AAPS would specifically oppose the campaign for universal immunization against hepatitis B, even if the above did not apply, because the safety of the vaccine is in question.

Vaccines are Poisons

2008-02-19T13:44:00.001-08:00

All Vaccines are poisons. None are necessary. 50% of Medical Schools teach 1 nutrition class, and the other 50% teach ZERO. Medical Doctors chase around disease after disease. The researchers get paid to research and "find a cure." There is no money in it for the Doctors and Pharmaceutical companies for a person to take whole food supplements and be healthy! The whole system loves the white flour, high fructose syrup, synthetic vitamins like Centrum etc... that only make you sicker! They love Mcdonalds etc... Solution is preventative medicine. Linus Pauling, Bernard Jenson, Mr. Bragg , Jack La Lanne etc... Omega 3's and Vitamin D3 is crucial!
Prevent all the diseases .... we don't need to name more diseases. Everyone should be taking cod liver oil daily! It has omegas, Vitamin A, Vitamin D, Vitamin E.
SIDS is a Vitamin C problem. Many JAMA or other Medical journals from the last 50 years back up the science that proved success through preventative medicine with proper Nutrition.

Flu Vaccine Misses Flu Strains Again.

2008-02-18T09:38:00.000-08:00

Every year, officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) look into a crystal ball and try to figure out which strains of Type A and Type B influenza will be prevalent in the U.S.. Sometimes they guess right and sometimes they guess wrong. This year, they guessed wrong as more than half of the influenza virus strains circulating in the U.S. right now are Type A and B strains that are not covered in this year's influenza vaccine.
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN0 850501820080208? feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews&sp=true

In a typical flu season, only 20 percent of all flu-like illness is actually influenza. In 2003-2004 a mini-epidemic of a more severe type of influzenza caused by the A/Fujian strain occurred around the world, including the U.S. In spring of 2003, federal health agencies and the pharmaceutical industry knew the genetically mutated type A flu was emerging out of Asia and causing significant complications, including death, but chose not to include it in the 2003/2004 flu vaccine formula after the WHO voted to stay with strains that had been included in the previous year's formulation (A/Panama, A/Caledonia and B/Hong Kong). Without informing the public that the flu vaccine did not contain the strain of flu causing severe flu that season, the CDC heavily publicized child flu deaths in the fall of 2003 and Americans stood in long lines that fall and winter to get flu vaccine, which caused a vaccine shortage and subsequent CDC-recommended rationing of flu vaccine supplies. (http://www.nvic.org/History/News letters/%203770Reaction.pdf). The FDA stated that "between October 2003 and early January 2004, the deaths of 93 children younger than 18 had been reported to the CDC, according to preliminary data" and eventually the CDC would state that 152 flu related deaths occurred in children younger than 18 that year.

This year, the CDC is wisely admitting that this year's influenza vaccine does not match the circulating strains and is advising common sense strategies for prevention and management of flu, such as hand-washing.
http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20080208/flu-vaccine-most-flu-bugs-dont-match?src=RSS_PUBLIC
Those who are suffering with an especially nasty bout with the flu this year can take comfort in the fact that natural experience with type A or type B influenza will produce immunological memory that will help minimize the risk of a severe case of that same strain of influenza when it circulates in the future. In fact, pandemic flu planners are counting on the superior, longer lasting cell mediated immunity of those Americans, who have actually recovered from influenza infection in the past, because drug companies won't be able to produce pandemic flu vaccine fast enough to provide doses for everyone for up to a year after the pandemic begins.

Many Americans are taking steps to deal with influenza or flu-like illnesses by enhancing the functioning of the immune system through diet, exercise and other positive lifestyle and health care changes. And if they do get the flu, they are taking a common sense approach. To prevent and treat influenza or flu-like illness that does not involve a fever over 103 F, pneumonia or serious complications which may require special medical intervention, here are a few non-toxic suggestions:

1. Wash your hands frequently.
2. Avoid close contact with those who are sick.
3. If you are sick, avoid close contact with those who are well.
4. Cover your mouth if you cough or sneeze.
5. Drink plenty of fluids, especially water.
6. Get adequate sleep.
7. Eat a healthy diet rich in vitamins and minerals, especially foods containing vitamin C (such as citrus fruits) and vitamins A and D (such as cod liver oil) and spend a few minutes a day in sunlight to help your body make and store vitamin D.
8. Exercise regularly when you are well.
9. Lower stress.
10. Consider including holistic alternatives in your wellness or healing plan, such as chiropractic adjustments, homeopathic and naturopathic remedies, acupuncture and other health care options.

NJ and MD Parents Take Action on Vaccine Laws

2008-02-11T12:58:00.000-08:00

Parents in New Jersey and Maryland are organizing to educate legislators about the need for informed consent and safety protections in state laws.

NEW JERSEY NEWS:

Sue Collins, co-founder of New Jersey Alliance for Informed Choice in Vaccination (NJAICV) reports that NJAICV is sponsoring an on-line petition to endorse support for the insertion of a conscientious belief exemption to vaccination in NJ vaccine laws. She encourages New Jersey residents to sign the petition, which lists the signer's name, town, state, comments and date signed, but anyone living in any state can sign the petition. Go to http://www.gopetition.com/online/16754.html.

With the recent addition of 9 doses of 4 new vaccines (pneumococcal, influenza, meningococcal, Tdap) to daycare and school mandates, New Jersey became the state with the most vaccine requirements in the nation: 35 doses of 13 vaccines. The new vaccine mandates were rammed through by state health department employees last year under rule making authority and legislators did not vote on the new vaccine mandates. New Jersey has a religious and medical exemption but both exemptions are almost impossible to obtain due to opposition by state education and public health employees seeking a 100 percent vaccination rate among children.

Tonight, Monday, Feb. 11 from 7 to 9 p.m., NJ Govenor Corzine is holding a Financial Restructuring and Debit Reduction Town Hall Meeting in Glassboro, NJ. The meeting will be held at Gloucester, Glassboro Rowan University, Evon Ballroom, Student Center, 201 Mollica Hill Rd., Glassboro, NJ, 08028-1701. NJ citizens, who would like to ask Gov. Corzine a question at the Town Hall Meeting, must register to attend. To RSVP, call 609-777-2509 or go to http://www.nj.gov/townhallmeetings/rsvp/index.ht ml

MARYLAND NEWS:

After four years of hard work, parents in Maryland are educating MD legislators about the need to pass the "Lead and Mercury Reduction Act" (HB586 and SB304) supported by Maryland Delegates Sue Kullen and Nic Kipke and Maryland Senator Thomas "Mac" Middleton and others. Activist father, Mike Dow, who has been coordinating the effort, urges all Maryland residents to contact their own legislators as well as contact members of the Maryland House Health and Government Operations Committee and the Maryland Senate Education, Health and Environmental Matters Committee.

For a list of legislators and Committees in the Maryland General Assembly and status of bills, go to http://mlis.state.md.us/

Mike reports that a Feb. 19, 2008 hearing has been scheduled at 1 p.m. and testimony is needed from experts and parents. For more information, contact Mike at
mikewdow@msn.com

The "Lead and Mercury Reduction Act" would prohibit "certain persons from administering vaccines that contain more than a certain amount of mercury per dose; prohibiting the sale, offer for sale, or distribution in the State of certain drugs that contain mercury; prohibiting the sale, offer for sale, or distribution in the State of cosmetics that contain lead or mercury; providing for a delayed effective date; and generally relating to prohibitions against the administering of vaccines with specified levels of mercury and the sale of cosmetics and specified drugs that contain mercury."

How Vaccines Can Damage Your Brain

2008-02-11T12:45:00.000-08:00

Vaccines, Depression and Neurodegeneration After Age 50: Another Reason to Avoid the Recommended Vaccines.

By Russell L. Blaylock, M.D., CCN

It has been estimated that 14.8 million Americans suffer from major depressive disorder and of this number 6 million are elderly. If we include anxiety disorders, which commonly accompany depression, the number jumps to 40 million adults. At a cost of $44 billon dollars a year just for care of the seniors, this impacts the national budget as well. Depression later in life tends to last longer and be more severe than at younger ages. It is also associated with a high rate of suicide.

Previously, it was thought that major depression was secondary to a deficiency in certain neurotransmitters in the brain, particularly the monoamines, which include serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine. While alterations in these important mood-related neurotransmitters is found with major depression, growing evidence indicates that the primary culprit is low-grade, chronic brain inflammation. In addition, we now know that inflammatory cytokines can lower serotonin significantly and for long periods by a number of different mechanisms.

Researchers have also discovered that most people with major depressive disease (MDD) have higher levels of the neurotransmitter glutamate in their spinal fluid (CSF) and blood plasma. This is the same glutamate found as a food additive-for example, MSG (monosodium glutamate), hydrolyzed proteins, calcium or sodium casienate, soy protein isolate, vegetable protein concentrate or isolate, etc. Much of the free glutamate in the brain of depressed people comes from within, that is it escapes from special cells within the brain itself (microglia and astrocytes). Free glutamate, that is, existing outside the neurons, is very toxic to brain connections and brain cells themselves -- mainly by a process called excitotoxicity.

This connection between high brain glutamate levels and major depression was discovered quite by accident, when researchers observed that the anesthetic drug ketamine could relieve depression for a prolonged period. Ketamine is a powerful blocking drug for a class of glutamate receptors (NMDA receptors).

For quite some time it was known that depression could cause a loss of neurons in the hippocampus of the brain-the area most important for recent memory (declarative memory or working memory), the form of memory most affected in Alzheimer’s disease. This shrinkage of the brain usually occurred with long-term depression, yet it was shown, using sophisticated testing, that even without brain shrinkage, memory could be adversely affected. Some antidepressants could not only reverse the memory loss but could reverse the shrinkage as well.

The implication was that the elevated brain glutamate, via excitotoxicity, was destroying brain connections and later killing brain cells in the hippocampus and that the antidepressants were lowering brain glutamate levels. Subsequent studies have confirmed that drugs that block excitotoxicity also reduce depression and that some antidepressants reduce brain glutamate levels.

The Link Between Elevated Brain Glutamate and Inflammation

A tremendous amount of research has now demonstrated the link between chronic low-level brain inflammation, elevated brain glutamate levels and major depression. We know that as we age, the level of inflammatory immune cytokines increase (such as interleukin-1ß (IL-1), IL-6 and TNF-a). That is, the level of inflammation in our body increases, with high levels being seen at the extremes of life -- the 80s and 90s.

This progressive elevation in the body’s inflammation increases our risk of a number of inflammation-linked diseases, such as cancer, arthritis, muscle weakness, fatigue, sleep disturbances, memory loss and confusion. People with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease have even higher levels of these inflammatory cytokines -- much higher.

When inflammatory chemicals are elevated in the brain it makes brain cells more vulnerable to a number of toxins, many of which are in the environment. One study demonstrated, using a series of sophisticated techniques, that if brain cells were exposed to low levels of a pesticide there was little toxicity seen and that if you exposed these same brain cells to an immune stimulant alone, little damage occurred. But if you first exposed the brain cells to the immune stimulant, the same low dose of pesticide could destroy a great number of brain cells.

The importance of this observation was that the vaccine made the brain cells hypersensitive to the toxin so that even in concentrations that normally would do not cause harm, could wiped out most of the neurons. One of the strongest connections between an environmental toxin (pesticides) and a neurological disorder is with Parkinson’s disease. The reason it is more common in the elderly is that they have the highest levels of inflammatory cytokines. This also explains the high incidence of Alzheimer’s disease, which reaches incidences of 50% after age 80.

The link depression was also by accident. Doctors using immune cytokines to treat patients with cancer or hepatitis found that one third of the patients developed major depressive illness within days of the treatment and that it resolved only when the treatment was terminated. Other studies, in which inflammatory cytokine levels were measured in people with major depressive illness, also found most had high levels of these inflammatory chemicals.

To their surprise, they found that many of the antidepressant medications commonly used lowered inflammatory cytokines levels and that patients who failed to respond had the highest level of the cytokines.

So, how is this linked to excitotoxicity? Neuroscientists have known for some time that inflammatory cytokines cause the brain to release higher levels of glutamate -- the more intense the inflammation, the higher the brain glutamate level. The highest levels are found in the prefrontal lobes and limbic system, the areas most related to mood control. MSG also increases brain inflammation.

Vaccination and Brain Inflammation

A great number of studies have shown that when you vaccinate an animal, the body’s inflammatory cytokines not only increase dramatically, but so do the brain’s inflammatory chemicals. The brain has its own immune system that is intimately connected to the body’s immune system. The main immune cell in the brain is called a microglia. Normally, these brain cells are lying throughout the brain in a resting state (called ramified). Once activated, they can move around, traveling between brain cells like amoeba (called amoeboid microglia).

In the resting state, they release chemicals that support the growth and protection of brain cells and their connections (dendrites and synapses). But when activated, they secrete a number of very harmful chemicals, including inflammatory cytokines, chemokines, complement, free radicals, lipid peroxidation products, and two excitotoxins -- glutamate and quinolinic acid.

In essence, these brain immune cells are out to kill invaders, since the body’s immune system sent an emergency message that an invasion had occurred. With most infections, this phase of activation last no more than a few days to two weeks, during which time the immune system successfully kills off the invaders. Once that is accomplished, the immune system shuts down to allow things to cool off and the brain to repair what damage was done by its own immune system.

What researchers knew was that during this period of activation, people generally feel bad and that what they experience closely resembles depression -- a condition called “sickness behavior”. Most of us have experience this when suffering from a viral illness -- such things as restlessness, irritability, a need to get away from people, trouble sleeping, fatigue and difficulty thinking.

Studies have shown that there are two phases to this “sickness behavior”; one in which we have the flu-like symptoms and a later onset of depression-like symptoms that can last awhile. They have also shown that all of these symptoms are due to high levels of inflammatory cytokines in the brain, which come from activated microglia.

A number of studies have also shown that after age 50, people have exaggerated and prolonged “sickness behavior”, much more so than younger people. This is one of the reasons why many elderly hang onto flu symptoms for months after exposure.

There is also another immune phenomenon that plays a major role in vaccine-related brain injury. Researchers discovered that when you vaccinate an animal, the brain microglia immune cells turn on partially (called priming), that is, they are in a state of high readiness. If the immune system is activated again soon after (days, weeks to months), these microglia explode into action secreting levels of their destructive chemicals far higher than normal. This overreaction can be very destructive and make you feel very depressed.

Stimulating the immune system with a vaccine is far different than contracting an infectious illness naturally. Vaccines are made of two components -- the agent you wish to vaccinate against -- for example, the measles virus; and an immune system booster called an immune adjuvant. These adjuvants are composed of such things as aluminum compounds, MSG, lipid compounds and even mercury. Their job is to make the immune system react as intensely as possible and for as long as possible.

Studies have shown that these adjuvants, from a single vaccine, can cause immune overactivation for as long as two years. This means that the brain microglia remain active as well, continuously pouring out destructive chemicals. In fact, one study found that a single injection of an immune activating substance could cause brain immune overactivation for over a year. This is very destructive.

Flu Vaccines and An Expanding Vaccine Schedule for the Elderly

Public health authorities and physician societies are in an all out campaign to have every elderly person vaccinated every year with the flu vaccine as well as a growing number of newer vaccines. When I was practicing neurosurgery, the hospitals had an automatic written order on all older patients’ charts mandating a flu vaccine, unless it was countermanded by the physician, which I always did. Now, they are giving the shots in malls, tents and every available site they can muster. And worse still, using lies and scare tactics to frighten the elderly onto getting the shots (such as the bold lie of 36,000 elderly dying of the flu every year).

As you age your immune system, including that special immune system in your brain, releases significantly more inflammatory immune cytokines than when you were younger. This serves to prime the microglia, as discussed. So, when you get your first flu shot your microglia overreact and does so for a very long period -- perhaps years. Many elderly report that the flu shot gave them the flu. Proponents of vaccines, retort with a condescending laugh, that it is impossible because the flu vaccine contains killed flu viruses. In truth, what these people are reporting is a prolonged, intense “sickness behavior” response to the vaccine. To the body, it is worse than getting the flu. Remember, no one is recording the number of elderly who die after getting the flu shot, especially if they die months later, which can happen with sickness behavior, especially if they have a preexisting chronic illness or are infirm.

Here is the shocking truth. With the elderly already having increased inflammatory cytokine levels both systemically and in their brain, stimulating these primed microglia so that a chronic overstimulation of the brain’s immune system is triggered, will not only increase their risk of developing one of the neurodegenerative diseases, but will also substantially increase their risk of developing major depression. Remember, this also increases their risk of suicide and even homicide dramatically.

Anxiety is a major problem with depression, and vaccinations will greatly worsen the condition. In fact, vaccination, especially multiple vaccinations, will maintain the brain in a state of inflammation that will be self-perpetuating, because the excess release of glutamate in the brain, as well as glutamate in the diet, will further enhance microglial activation and excitotoxicity.

Those who are prone to developing one of the neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease will be at a drastically increased risk as we have seen experimentally when even animals exposed to subtoxic concentrations of environmental toxins and vaccinated develop neurologic worsening.

Most people use pesticides in their home and studies have shown that the concentrations in homes are sufficient to trigger Parkinson’s disease in susceptible people. Vaccinations, as these studies have shown, will greatly increase risk. Most doctors are completely unaware of this important research.

You must keep in mind that “health authorities” urge the elderly to get the flu vaccine each and every year. This will keep the microglia in a primed and even activated state continuously. Recently, neurologists announced that the incidence of neurodegenerative disease had been grossly underestimated and that neurological diseases of aging were increasing at a frightening rate. They have no explanation. Over the last three decades the number of elderly receiving yearly flu vaccines has risen from 20% before 1980 to over 60% today.

If this were not depressing enough, now the public health authorities and medical specialty societies are adding a whole new set of vaccines for those above 50 years of age, including the pneumococcal and meningiococcal vaccines. What is being completely ignored by the promoters of these vaccines is the effect of multiple doses of immune adjuvant that accompany each of these vaccines.

Lets, say you see your doctor and he talks you into getting the flu vaccine, the pneumococcal and meningiococcal vaccine all during the same office visit. That way, he can save you extra office visits. What your doctor ignores is that he is giving you three doses of powerful immune adjuvant all in one sitting, which means that your body and brain are assaulted by a massive dose of powerful immune activators, which have been proven to activate the brain’s immune system to dangerous levels, even when given as a single dose. Proof of this mechanism exists not only in animal studies, but in humans as well.

Mercury and Aluminum

There are other ways that vaccines can cause havoc in the brain. Most vaccines contain aluminum compounds. A multitude of studies have shown that aluminum, especially if combined with fluoride, is a powerful brain toxin and that it accumulates in the brain. With each vaccine injection, a dose of aluminum is given. These yearly aluminum inoculations accumulate not only at the site of the injection, but travel to the brain, where it enters neurons and glial cells (astrocytes and microglia). A number of studies have shown that aluminum can activate microglia and do so for long periods. This means that the aluminum in your vaccination is priming your microglia to overreact. The next vaccine acts to trigger the enhanced inflammatory reaction and release of the excitotoxins, glutamate and quinolinic acid.

You must also appreciate that any infection, stroke, head injury or other toxin exposure will also magnify this inflammatory brain reaction initially triggered by your vaccines. Studies have now indicated that the more one’s immune system is activated the more like he or she will suffer from one of the neurodegenerative diseases.

Mercury is also a powerful activator of brain microglia and can do so in extremely low concentrations-in nanomolar amounts. Because of its numerous reactions with sulfhydral compounds in the body (which are ubiquitous), mercury can poison a number of enzymes both systemically and in the brain. Of special concern is the ability of mercury, especially ethylmercury (the kind found in vaccines called thimerosal) to inhibit the regulation of brain glutamate levels. (It does this by inhibiting the glutamate transfer proteins that control the removal of glutamate from outside the neuron, where it does its harm.)

In essence, mercury, in the concentrations being injected with vaccines, triggers excitotoxicity, increases brain free radicals and lipid peroxidation products, inhibits critical brain enzymes, inhibits antioxidant enzymes and impairs DNA repair ability. The flu vaccine contains enough mercury to do all of these things. You must keep in mind that each flu vaccine adds to the mercury supplied by your last vaccine, that is, it is progressively accumulating in your brain.

In addition, the aluminum in the vaccines also primes microglia and when combined with mercury is infinitively more toxic to the brain. Now, if this is not enough, we also have to consider the contamination of vaccines with foreign viruses and viral components. Studies have shown that this is not a rare occurrence, with up to 60% of vaccines being contaminated in one study of several major manufactured vaccines. When confronted with this fact, vaccine proponents just shrug their shoulders and say -- “We don’t think these things are harmful.”

Yet, the studies say otherwise. It has been found that insertion of viral fragments, not even the whole virus, is sufficient to trigger the brain’s microglial system and subsequent excitotoxicity, leading to progressive brain degeneration. This is accepted to be the mechanism by which the HIV virus causes dementia in a great number of AIDS victims. Fragments of the virus (gp140 and Tat) are engulfed by the microglia and this triggers chronic brain inflammation and excitotoxicity. The herpes virus and measles virus can do the same thing.

Danger of Live Virus Vaccines

A number of studies have shown that live viruses used in vaccines can enter the brain and reside there for a lifetime. One such study, in which autopsied elderly were examined for the presence of the measles virus, found that 20% of the brains had live measles viruses and 45% of other organs were infected. These viruses were highly mutated, meaning that they could be just as potent as other measles viruses, but could be even more virulent. Worse, is that in most cases they cause a smoldering destruction of tissues without the obvious symptoms of infection, which has been shown in a number of studies.

Live virus vaccines are made using a process to attenuate the pathogenic or disease-causing virus by passing it through a series of cultures. The problem is that the reverse can also happen within the body. A number of studies have shown that when we produce free radicals in our body (and we produce tons of such radicals over a lifetime), it mutates the viruses residing in our tissues. This is what was found in the autopsy study I referred to above.

Likewise, these viruses can trigger brain inflammation and degeneration, which has been shown in a number of studies-that is, there exist a chronic degeneration of the brain over years or decades. Because it is so far separated from the time of the original vaccine, physicians just attribute it to old age or heredity, anything but the vaccines.

Virologists are also concerned that such mutated live viruses can also infect other people, leading to outbreaks of disease totally unsuspected by health authorities.

Conclusion

Current recommendations by the CDC for adult vaccinations include a total of 14 separate inoculations with infectious agents and powerful immune adjuvants. To be fair, some of these are for special medical risks and conditions, such as high-risk behaviors, illegal drug use and HIV infected individuals. If we eliminate these, women will be exposed to 10 inoculations and men 7, should they follow CDC guidelines, which doctors follow.

According to CDC recommendations, multiple vaccinations for a single disease are separated by no more than 4 weeks, which is close enough together to produce priming and subsequent hyperactivation of brain microglia. We have seen that this can trigger a smoldering process of brain inflammation and excitotoxicity that can not only result in depression, anxiety and high suicide rates, but can increase one’s risk of developing one of the neurodegenerative diseases as well.

We have also seen that in many cases a person will be injected with several vaccines during a single office visit and that this means their body is exposed to a very large dose of immune adjuvant. Compelling studies, using many animal species as well as humans, have shown that this overactivates brain inflammatory mechanism that can last for years.

In addition, several additives to vaccines, such as mercury and aluminum, are powerful brain toxins that are known to accumulate in the brain over years and can trigger brain inflammatory/excitotoxic mechanisms. Vaccine contaminants, such as bacteria, mycoplasma and viral fragments can also produce prolonged brain inflammation and neurodegeneration.

Because the elderly already have high levels of inflammatory cytokines, they are at a special risk. The very young (babies and small children) are at a high risk because their brains are undergoing the most rapid development at the very time they receive the greatest number of vaccinations -- the first two years of life. In fact, they receive 22 vaccines during the first year of life, one of which contains a full pediatric dose of mercury. Like adults, they receive many inoculations (up to 9 inoculations) in one office visit. This is insane and in my estimation, criminal.

Nasal flu vaccines are even worse, because they introduce a live virus into the nasal passages, which can then travel along the olfactory nerves, which leads to the very part of the brain first and most severely affected by Alzheimer’s disease. A number of studies have shown that viruses and bacteria can pass along this route to the brain. In fact, in one study scientists sprayed a bacterium into the nose of mice and observed a rapid development of Alzheimer’s type plaques in the mouse’s brain.

So, what should older people do? First, studies have shown that the primary cause of immune deficiency in the elderly is purely dietary. The carotenoids, such as beta-carotene, alpha-carotene, canthaxanthin, lutein and lycopene significantly enhance the immunity of the elderly. Zinc, magnesium and selenium are also essential. One should also avoid omega-6 oils (the vegetable oils-corn, safflower, sunflower, canola, soybean and peanut oils), since they greatly enhance inflammation and depress immunity. The EPA component of fish oils (omega-3 oils) is also a powerful immune suppressant. DHA is not. A healthy immune system means that you can fight infections efficiently and rapidly.

Regular exercise, such as brisk walking or weight exercises three to five times a week also boost immunity, while extreme exercise suppresses immunity. Sugar and refined carbohydrates also suppress immunity and inflame the brain. Exercise protects the brain from aging effects and from degeneration.

Adequate sleep is also vital to both brain health and good immune function. Pubic health officials and spokesmen for the major medical societies are lying to the public concerning vaccine safety. We now possess sufficient information from a great number of studies to halt this disastrous vaccine policy. We are facing a medial disaster in this country, which is already well on its way.

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Is "Shaken Baby Syndrome" Caused By Vaccinations?

2008-02-11T12:36:00.000-08:00

Many have recently questioned the existence of the so-called “Shaken Baby Syndrome” (SBS), which attributes certain infant deaths to trauma resulting from child abuse. Recent pediatric vaccinations have been suspected as a possible precipitating factor in some of these infant deaths.

A review of pediatric records intended to determine whether infants diagnosed with SBS had underlying medical conditions found that some infants had received the same combination of vaccines not long prior to the event which resulted in an SBS diagnosis. Further research determined that the vaccinations had also been given to a number of infants whose deaths were diagnosed as resulting from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

The three vaccines in question were a 5 in 1 vaccine combination, a HIB conjugate vaccine, and a 7-valent pediatric pneumococcal vaccine.

Sources:

National Vaccine Information Center February 5, 2008

Dr Al-Bayati is a brilliant toxicologist and pathologist who has investigated many of these tragic cases. Over and over he finds vaccines cause the initial illness, and then the poor kids are finished off by negligent hospital care like overdose of heparin, overdosing with sodium bicarbonate and other deadly protocols. Then the hospital docs cover there a**es by accusing the parents of SBS, child abuse and murder. You can read about the cases he has represented at the link below. Be warned – your blood will boil when you read the details of these cases.

Australian Dr Viera Schrieber has written about this for years.

Viera Scheibner Ph.D. Has studied over 100000 pages of medical research, and authored "Vaccination" and "Behavioural Problems in Childhood – the Link to Vaccination"

Dr Viera Scheibner is a retired Principal Research Scientist (Rtd) with a doctorate in Natural Sciences. After an eminent scientific career in which she published 3 books and some 90 scientific papers in refereed scientific journals in Australia and overseas, her study of baby’s breathing patterns and cot death in the mid 1980s clearly pointed to vaccines as being behind the majority of cot deaths. This introduced her to the subject of vaccination, which she has, as a result, been avidly studying ever since.

Despite extensive research of orthodox medical research published on vaccines over the past 100 years she could find no scientific evidence that these injections of highly noxious substances prevent diseases, quite the contrary, that they increase susceptibility to them, in addition to causing a host of immune disorders and other damage to the body, including the brain. She was forced to conclude that they represent nothing but a medical assault on the immune system. Having vaccinated her own two daughters when she was a young mother (and also having insisted on receiving a tetanus vaccine herself, not long before her research caused her to study vaccination) this was not easy to come to terms with.

Her research into vaccination has culminated so far in two books, and frequent international lecture tours in which she is invited to address groups of medical and legal professionals as well as the general public. She is also accepted as expert witness in court cases relating to death and injuries caused by vaccines, such as so-called “shaken baby” syndrome injuries, which like many vaccine injuries can be fatal.

Vaccine Companies Investigated for Manslaughter

2008-02-11T12:30:00.000-08:00

French authorities have opened a formal investigation into two managers from drugs groups GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi Pasteur. Judge Marie-Odile Bertella-Geffroy also opened an investigation for manslaughter against Sanofi Pasteur MSD, a joint venture between Sanofi Aventis and Merck.

The investigations follow allegations that the companies did not fully disclose side effects from an anti-hepatitis B drug used in a vaccination campaign in the 1990’s.

From 1994 to 1998, almost two thirds of the French population, and almost all newborns, were vaccinated against hepatitis B. The campaign was suspended after concerns arose about side effects.

Some 30 plaintiffs have launched a civil action, including the families of five people who died after receiving vaccinations.