Vaccines

Vaccines and the Information Blackout

If you pay attention to health "news," as I do, you must have noticed the current spin. Anyone who opposes vaccination is a kook and is putting the general public in danger. If you have any experience with adverse vaccine reactions, as I have had in my practice, the question immediately arises: "Why are this devastating products still on the market?" This article attempts to shed light on what is going on behind the scenes.

Let me elaborate on what I have seen in my practice. Two or three examples will give you a window into what can happen. Several children in my practice developed severe cerebral palsy after being vaccinated – either at birth or at the age of 2 months. Several other children developed autistic symptoms after being vaccinated in infancy. In every case, the medical professionals claimed that the symptom pattern bore no relationship to the disability, leaving the parents without recourse or any help for the expensive and life-changing challenges they now faced.

In one particularly severe instance, the medical profession wanted to vaccinate the family's second son, as well. Happily, the mother did extensive research on the Internet, discovering the increased incidence of adverse reactions in siblings of impaired children. This research completely changed her view on vaccine dangers. Happily, their second son is perfectly healthy – and unvaccinated. Of course, they've had to take a lot of heat from the medical profession, as a result.

So, how is this vital information concealed from the public at large? It is important to understand that, in America, we have an enormous conflict of interest in health care. And, this conflict severely limits your health care choices. The problem is: American medical practice doesn't acknowledge that there are any other authorities, except American research. The examples are endless, but I'll provide a compelling one. There are literally thousands of research articles demonstrating the efficacy of herbs in human health. However, this research was all done outside of the U.S. -- Europe, Australia and Japan are prime sources. But, herbs are dismissed in American medical practice. They are regarded as mere panaceas (although lately we've been hearing more and more about the "dangers" of these supposedly useless plants). The American medical profession always falls back on the old chestnut, "More research is needed." As though no one knows anything about herbs! In effect, American hubris completely discounts all other professionals and the research they do. If an article on non-traditional medicine isn't published in the United States, any research result is automatically suspect.

The mechanism for this information blackout is "peer review," the gold standard of scientific and medical publishing in the U.S. This means that a research article must be approved by a panel of "experts" before it can be published in an accepted medical journal. (The word used to refer to these journals is "reputable," automatically categorizing all other publications as "disreputable." Clever, isn't it?) In actuality, this process provides an excellent tool to control what is accepted "truth," becoming the basis for our entire health care industry, including acceptable treatments and what claims insurance companies will honor.

This same scenario applies to chiropractic research. Where chiropractic is concerned so much has been lost. I have a garage full of research done in the 1950's and 1960's by well-trained scientists. However, no peer reviewed medical journal would accept their findings. And, thus, these research results are no longer in the public knowledge pool. The work done is a total loss. Today, a similar process is at work. Chiropractic research is only accepted for publication if it conforms to the medical model of mechanical alleviation of low back pain. The truly revolutionary effects that can be achieved -- everything from NVD for neurological injury and internal disorders to cranial adjusting for head injuries and cerebral palsy or ADD -- are dismissed out of hand because they don't fit the prevailing medical paradigm. And, no amount of data will convince the powers that be otherwise.

This is not the fault of individual doctors. It is the result of a system dominated by drug companies and attorneys. Doctors are constrained by liability worries. Always wondering when the next resourceful young lawyer will discover a unique -- and heretofore unknown -- cause of action, a new way to sue for malpractice. Adhering to well-established standards of care protects the individual doctor to some degree from these overzealous entrepreneurial lawsuits.

However, it is the public that suffers. Have you ever wondered why a physician is so anxious to establish a diagnosis? Because once your illness has a name, the doctor knows exactly what to expect -- how to treat it, how it will progress, whether you will live or die. Everything he or she needs to be protected from a potential malpractice lawsuit. The trouble is, in many instances, medical texts define many diseases as "incurable." For these illnesses, your doctor knows that you can't get better. She knows this because no one else treated for the same condition has ever gotten better, except for those rare cases labeled "spontaneous remission." Voila! A self-fulfilling prophecy -- one with no room for other options.

Of course, the missing piece is that there may be another treatment that offers hope. There's a hint in those pesky, unexplained, "spontaneous" remissions, if only the medical community would pay attention. But, since the prevailing belief is that only a medical approach has any value, all other bodies of knowledge and treatment modalities are automatically excluded. Any patient who was treated by unorthodox means automatically gets dumped into the "spontaneous remission" category – thus, totally eliminating any chance to broaden the medical landscape. What a vicious circle!

I have come to believe very strongly that the most serious threat to the health of the American public is the number of doctors trained to know that you can never get well.

And, there are consequences to the medical profession's assumption of omnipotence. Not only are some medical treatments ineffective; some of them are downright dangerous. This is certainly true of the medical model of "prevention through vaccination."

Were you aware that, according to the Centers for Disease Control web site (www.cdc.gov), all the cases of polio in the U.S. in the 1990s were the result of the attenuated virus vaccine? The "attenuated" virus still had the ability to infect. It was transmitted through exposure to infected fecal matter. So, who was most at risk? Parents changing dirty diapers and those individuals who were exposed to recently vaccinated people where there was a lack of hygiene. In 1999, the CDC and the United States government finally took action and mandated that only inactivated virus be used in polio vaccines.

The full story about vaccines is well documented. If you are interested in more detail, I highly recommend Dr. Tim O'Shea's book "Vaccination I$ Not Immunization; The Sanctity of Human Blood." You can obtain a copy of this book on Amazon.com or by contacting Dr. O'Shea directly at thedoctorwithin.com, or by calling his San Jose, California office at 408/298-1800. It contains hundreds of references -- all documenting the dangers of vaccines. When last I was updated, the book was in its tenth edition, and I recommend it highly.

Although the side effects of vaccines are bad enough in themselves (brain damage, including cerebral palsy and mental retardation, and in extreme cases even death), we are creating a public health nightmare for the future. There are three examples that I believe will clearly illustrate the dangers.

The first is flu vaccine and Alzheimer's Disease. There is a single documented study of the effect of the flu vaccine on cognitive abilities. It was done retrospectively for the decade 1970 to 1980. (Fudenberg, H., MD, "Hazards of vaccines.", J Clin Investigation, vol 4, p. 97-105, 2000) The researchers found that adults given the vaccines five consecutive times in that ten-year period had a nine-fold increase in the incidence of Alzheimer's disease. In drug research, a statistically significant effect may be as little as 15% or 20%. Here, we are talking about 800%! Why hasn't anyone raised a hue and cry about the need for more studies to look into this potential threat? Why hasn't the information been reported? Have you seen it anywhere?

My personal experience may be illuminating. You may be aware of Dr. Isadore Rosenfeld, who is the medical expert on Fox News every Sunday morning. In October of 2009, after one of his morning broadcasts wherein he routinely touts drugs and vaccines, I called this study to his attention. In his nasty and dismissive email, he said that since the CDC doesn't acknowledge that study, it is meaningless. But why would the CDC dismiss such a potentially alarming side effect? More on that topic in a moment.

This nasty effect on the brain is probably the result of the mercury used to preserve the vaccine. Although, nobody knows for sure since no further research has ever been done. An additional word of caution: Some of my patients have been told that a vaccine is "mercury free." Maybe that's because the person they asked -- a nurse or nurse's aid -- didn't know that thimerosal, the preservative in vaccines, is actually an organic mercury compound; and, therefore, much more absorbable than the inorganic mercury that we all played with as children. The CDC web site actually states that a vaccine may be labeled "preservative free" if the thimerosal is "diluted out" during the purification process, even though the vaccine still contains traces of the chemical! No one knows if a safe level of thimerosal even exists; it is that toxic. And, in 2009, there was no mercury-free version of the swine flu vaccine available. After all, without mercury, the vaccine has a very short shelf life.

The second example I want to illuminate really makes me angry, because the "at risk" population is unborn babies and infants. Let me explain a few inconvenient background facts first. The vaccine under discussion is MMR -- short for mumps, measles and rubella. More about mumps later -- that's my third example. Right now, I want to focus on measles and rubella.

Both of these are normal, self-limited childhood diseases. A case in childhood imparts lifelong immunity -- an immunity that protects the fetus in the womb and that can be passed through mother's milk to the breastfed infant. Why is this important? Because these viruses are very damaging to the nervous system of underdeveloped humans. Rubella (or, German measles) can pass through the placenta and severely damage the child within, resulting in blindness, deafness, heart defects and mental retardation. Measles (or rubeola) is a relatively minor disease when contracted during childhood, but in infancy -- while the immune and nervous systems are underdeveloped -- measles can cause life-threatening pneumonia and encephalitis. (The Merck Manual, 16TH Ed.)

And, the unacknowledged, and unpublicized, fact is that vaccination does not impart this type of lifelong, transmissible immunity. I say "unpublicized" because vaccination is routinely referred to as "immunization," leading to the false impression that a vaccinated little girl has a lifelong immunity that will protect her -- and also her future babies -- from further exposure to these viruses during the infants' most vulnerable life stage. Not so! A young woman vaccinated in childhood has no immunity to protect either herself or her unborn child, unless she gets "booster" shots.

But, there's an additional problem: Giving the MMR vaccine to teenage girls has caused severe arthritic side effects. The Ontario, Canada, Ministry of Health and Long Term Care reports, "Up to one in four teenage girls and adult women may get painful swelling of some joints within one to three weeks after vaccination. . . . . chronic arthritis may occur." So, 25% of women may have an arthritic effect from the MMR, attributable to the Rubella vaccine. For many it is transitory, but do you want your daughter to be the one who develops permanent, rheumatoid-like arthritis? So, another shot is not the answer.

If you're wondering why I am quoting Canadian statistics, it's because the American health care system has not made this information available. The first hit on a Google search is the Ontario web site. When I searched the web site of the CDC, there was NO information concerning these effects of the Rubella vaccine. When I looked at the tab entitled "Vaccine Safety and Adverse Events Reporting," there was no information concerning actual adverse effects, but a great deal of reassuring double-talk about how safe vaccines are. In fact, the first topic is "How do you know if vaccine information you find on the internet or in other sources is accurate?" The article then goes on to discredit all other sources of information. The CDC is the official American government source for public health information. So, why such an effort to discredit well-documented research? Do you think there may be something else going on here? Read on, for more detail regarding the power behind the scenes. For me, what comes to mind is the old saying, "Methinks thou dost protest too much."

My third example concerns mumps and adult males. ALL little boys should be exposed to mumps, so that they develop lifelong immunity prior to puberty. In little boys, mumps is a self-limiting, febrile disease of approximately two weeks' duration. In men, it can be devastating. In adults, the target organ is not the salivary glands in the cheeks, but the glandular tissue in the testes. The testicles become hugely swollen, hot and excruciatingly tender. The end result can be sterility. So, I urge you, if you are a man who was vaccinated as a child, but who never had the mumps, to stay away from young children who could infect you. I don't have enough data to comment upon whether exposure to children who have recently received the MMR vaccine could be a source of infection -- as they are in polio. And, I wasn't able to find any information in my on-line research. I just urge you to err on the side of caution.

What are the medical community's solutions to these problems? More vaccines! Now, children are scheduled for upwards of 60 such injections before they start kindergarten! And, the number is rising. What are we doing? And, why aren't we asking more questions? Particularly, in light of the fact that it has now been established in veterinary medicine that one of the side effects of veterinary vaccines is cancer? My cats' vet explained that he only gives these shots in the extremities -- so that he can amputate the malignancy. And, no, I still won't let him vaccinate my animals.

One final comment on a subject that is no longer in the public awareness: When vaccines were first introduced, the loudest objections were raised by scientists in the field of virology. Their concerns were based upon the ability of viruses to splice themselves into DNA strands. I don't believe that this concern has ever been adequately addressed – or that anyone has ever even examined it. We are, essentially, conducting an uncontrolled experiment on our children's genetic future.

Now for the important questions: How many of the American public are aware of these facts? Why aren't these devastating side effects common knowledge?

Because the media and the FDA are controlled by the drug companies and vaccines represent huge profits. I have first hand experience with the controlled media. In 2005, during the height of the West Nile virus incursion into Southern California, I wrote a well-documented article concerning the efficacy of medicinal quality St. Johns' Wort in the prevention and treatment of West Nile virus. My publicist posted the article on a web site where media professionals look for material to publish. We got well over 100,000 hits, but no one picked it up for publication. When we shopped it around to broadcast outlets, the individual reporters were very interested in the herb for personal use, but we were flatly told, "Nothing gets on the air that isn't AMA approved."

Of course, if you think about it, there's a big conflict here. The advertising dollars from drug companies represent a huge percentage of any station's income. The medical profession and the pharmaceutical houses constitute a powerful (and wealthy) unholy alliance when it comes to what health information you are allowed to receive.

You may find it shocking that I assert that the FDA is controlled by the drug companies. But, think about it. First of all, the FDA is funded in large part by the fees paid by the drug companies for approval of their drugs. And, it is common knowledge that for many years directors of the FDA have typically retired to lucrative positions with major drug companies.

The disinformation campaign, disseminated via the media, has far-reaching tentacles. The bird flu scare is just the most recent example. SARS was the "disease of the year" in 2003. Were you frightened by all of the media announcements? Did you know that only slightly over 8,000 people worldwide contracted the disease, and only 774 died? No one in the United States died, and only 8 people became ill after traveling to a part of the world where SARS was endemic. Yet, if you listened to the news you would be certain that we were all going to die from an unstoppable pandemic. Yet, by October 6, 2004, there were no reported cases of SARS anywhere in the world. So, what was the point? Do you suppose the idea was to condition the American people into accepting the idea that a vaccine was their only protection?

In 2006 and 2007, we had the H5N1 virus (bird flu) hysteria. Again, I believe, this was a manufactured "epidemic" designed to frighten the populace into accepting vaccines. As of March 2007, The World Health Organization web site reported that there had only been 281 human cases worldwide. It's true; there is a very high mortality rate -- 169 of those individuals died. But, all of these cases occurred in parts of the world where people live with their poultry and are regularly exposed to their blood and feces. H5N1 is not transmissible from human to human, nor is there any evidence that, even if it does mutate to become transmissible between humans, it will still be so virulent. Mutations are unpredictable, at best.

So, what's the point of all this media angst? With the litany of horrors and the reportage of how hard doctors are working to produce the vital vaccines that will save us all from the next pandemic, people become conditioned to accept vaccines unquestioningly. Gradually, vaccines become sacred icons whose efficacy can't be questioned by any sane person. Only "kooks" raise objections to these scientific marvels.

There are many factors at work here, but one of the biggest ones is an economic consideration. Drug companies spend millions of dollars developing new drugs and vaccines -- a good example is Tamiflu®, developed by Roche Holding AG.

First a bit of historical background: Were you aware that in 1999 the drug manufacturer Roche Holding AG brought out the first patented drug to treat viral diseases? Perhaps you've heard of Tamiflu®. As reported by WebMD in 2006, in most markets, sales of Tamiflu® "were well below the company's expectations. But that changed in 2005, when WHO recommended governments stockpile antiviral drugs, such as Tamiflu®…. Consequently, sales of Tamiflu® from January to June 2005, were nearly double the number in 2004." It is also interesting that Roche is the sole manufacturer of Tamiflu® and has stated that there was no question of relinquishing its patent, which is protected until 2016. This was in response to then U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Anan's suggestion that the usual patent rules may have to be suspended if there is an outbreak of avian flu. His suggestion was that other companies could also make the medicine, increasing the supply.

In the spring of 2007, media coverage was saturated with advertisements advising the public to "consult your doctor" at the first sign of flu symptoms. You see, one of the shortcomings of Tamiflu® is that it's only effective if taken during the first 48 hours of infection. During that time, most people are so miserable that they take to their beds. Furthermore, in the era of HMO health care, how many Americans can hope to schedule a doctor's appointment within 48 hours? Dream on!

There are other problems: Tamiflu® has only been "proven" effective against influenza strains A and B, not the bird flu strain. Furthermore, a partial list of the side effects includes: nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, bronchitis, stomach pain, dizziness and headache. Forbes on October 14, 2005 (FoxNews.com) published an article that pointed out that the bird flu was showing resistance to Tamiflu®.

However, none of that is important to the manufacturer. Their fortune is made; world governments are stockpiling their product while the patent is still active. No generic, low cost version here! I wonder whether those stockpiles are preserved with thimerosal? That's the only way to maintain the doses in long-term storage.

I want to bring one, last disturbing fact to your attention. Are you aware that The Patriot Act contains provisions for mandatory mass vaccination in the event of biological attack? The penalties for refusal include federal prison. Since there is a strong underground of opposition in the U.S. to vaccination, I believe there is a planned public information (or, disinformation, if you agree with my views) campaign to accustom the American public to the notion that vaccines are harmless and lifesaving. However, as I hope I have made clear, this is far from the proven. I, for one, do not intend to be a casualty of vaccine hysteria.

Download the Fox News article on Tamiflu® resistant Bird Flu

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