In the latest quality problem identified by U.S. regulators at Merck’s biggest vaccine-making plant, charred bits of plastic shrink wrap have been found in vials of the vaccines. Merck said it isn’t aware of any adverse health events associated with the problem.
Affected vaccines included Gardasil (for prevention of HPV infection), Varivax (for chicken pox), Pneumovax (for pneumococcal disease), Zostavax (for shingles), and MMR II (for measles, mumps, and rubella.)
According to Fox Business:
“In 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a formal warning letter about deficiencies at Merck’s West Point, [Pennsylvania] plant. Since then, FDA inspection reports have cited more problems: the presence of metal particles in certain products, cracks in vaccine vials and delays in Merck’s reporting to the FDA of adverse events from products made at the plant.”
Francis Collins, the chief of the National Institute of Health, has made the unlikely prediction that a universal flu vaccine that protects against all strains may be within reach in the next five years. Flu viruses mutate yearly, causing small changes in surface coatings, which make old vaccines obsolete.
USA Today reports:
“Recently however, scientists have found ‘there are parts of the viral coat that don’t change … If you designed a vaccine to go after the constant part of the virus, you’d be protected against all strains,’ Collins said.”
Folks, I’d have to say that with over 200 forms of influenza A, B and C known to cause the symptoms of influenza, this projection seems absurd.
Francis Collins, the chief of the National Institute of Health, has made the unlikely prediction that a universal flu vaccine that protects against all strains may be within reach in the next five years. Flu viruses mutate yearly, causing small changes in surface coatings, which make old vaccines obsolete.
USA Today reports:
“Recently however, scientists have found ‘there are parts of the viral coat that don’t change … If you designed a vaccine to go after the constant part of the virus, you’d be protected against all strains,’ Collins said.”
Folks, I’d have to say that with over 200 forms of influenza A, B and C known to cause the symptoms of influenza, this projection seems absurd.
The NPR podcast linked below discusses, among other matters, the fact that:
“Cost is shaping the debate about vaccines … While getting shots for some deadly diseases can lower disease rates among the whole population, others may not be as essential. And as some vaccines become quite expensive, the public health benefits of requiring them have become harder to defend.”
The podcast discusses the high costs, and lack of usefulness, of vaccines such as the meningococcal vaccine. The CDC spends $3.5 billion each year to purchase vaccines for the federal Vaccines for Children program. The actual cost throughout the U.S. is more than double that — half of U.S. children are vaccinated in private pediatricians’ offices, where the vaccines cost more than they do for the federal government.
The fact that NPR is talking about vaccine costs may mean that it is finally a subject being talked about by lawmakers during budget debates.
Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is currently facing intense media and legal scrutiny. But one factor that has not yet been covered is how Murdoch’s London Times c fabricated lies against a respected British doctor.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield began research into digestive problems in autistic children in collaboration with other doctors in the UK, after being called by parents seeking help. His work indicated severe digestive issues and he asked for more investigation of the MMR vaccine. As a result, he was savaged by reporter Brian Deer in the pages of the Sunday Times.
According to the COTO Report:
“Wakefield lost his license to practice and left the UK. What had he done that Murdoch’s machine went into action, creating fictions about him, getting his work pulled from the Lancet, getting him brought before the GMC to ultimately lose his license? Wakefield suggested that until further studies, the measles vaccine should be given as a separate vaccine rather than in combination as the MMR (measles, Mumps, Rubella).”
In a 2009 speech to the Muslim world, President Barack Obama announced a new effort to eradicate polio. But one of the biggest hurdles was persuading Muslim leaders that vaccination campaigns were independent health efforts, rather than programs being run by the CIA. After the Obama administration’s assurance that this was not the case, Muslim scholars issued a decree that parents should vaccinate their children.
Recently, however, it has been revealed that the CIA did use a vaccine program as cover. The vaccination program was employed as a way to try to collect DNA from Osama bin Laden’s family and confirm he was hiding inside a walled compound. Public health officials have criticized the move, saying the independence of health workers must be sacrosanct.
According to the Washington Post:
“Neither the White House nor the CIA would speak about the program. A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the program remains secret, said the decision to use vaccinations as a cover was a rare move that reflected the seriousness of the hunt for bin Laden.”
A recent study used the self-controlled case series method (SCCS), which was developed to analyze the association between a time-varying exposure and an outcome event, to look at the relationship between multidose vaccinations and sudden infant death.
The researchers looked at 300 cases of sudden infant death, and found a 16-fold risk increase after the 4th dose.
In addition, according to the study as reported by Green Med Info:
“A general 2-fold risk increase after [any] vaccination could be detected with a power of 80 percent.”
New data has added more evidence supporting a link between the 2009 H1N1 influenza vaccine and narcolepsy in children and adolescents. The findings suggest that those who were vaccinated had a close to 660 percent increase in risk for the condition.
The Sweden’s Medical Products Agency (MPA) examined cases of narcolepsy with cataplexy reported in young people (19 years and under) in Sweden, and found that out of 81 cases examined, 69 (85 percent) had received the Pandemrix vaccine before illness onset. They also found that the incidence of narcolepsy was substantially higher within 3 months of the vaccination — 14.1 per 100,000 people during that period, compared to just 1.3 per 100,000 people normally.
According to CIDRAP:
“As noted in the new report, signs of a Pandemrix-narcolepsy link has also been seen in Finland, where a population-based registry study pointed to a ninefold increase in risk for vaccinated children and adolescents.”
A growing number of parents believe that vaccines are unsafe, and are refusing or delaying shots for their children. Some pediatricians, in response, are requiring parents in their medical practices to vaccinate their children or seek health care elsewhere
Among those taking the stand are the eight pediatricians of Northwestern Children’s Practice in Chicago, a position that disturbs some medical professionals the wrong way.
According to the Los Angeles Times:
“Overall, vaccination rates remain high in Illinois schools, at 98 percent.”
Twenty years ago, most doctors never saw an autistic child. Today, one child in 150 is diagnosed with autism in the U.S. These children don’t receive the correct treatment because the medical profession is not aware of what exactly causes the condition.
A fascinating article from the Weston A. Price Foundation explains how “all diseases begin in the gut” — a phrase coined by Hippocrates more than two thousand years ago. Healthy gut flora protects you from infections, carcinogenic chemicals and toxic substances — they are the number one barrier for anything toxic. The brains of autistic children are loaded with toxins.
According to the article:
“[B]eneficial bacteria … are extremely vulnerable to broad spectrum antibiotics, to the contraceptive pill, to steroid medications prescribed on a long term basis, in fact to the majority of modern drugs … [T]here are other factors in our modern world that can damage gut flora including the modern junk food diet, prolonged periods of stress, infections, travel diarrhea, salmonella, typhoid, cholera, radiation and other environmental influences. In all those situations it is very important to take good quality probiotics in order to replace the beneficial bacteria in the digestive tract.”
Vaccinations have been designed for children with healthy immune systems, but these problems are leading to a a growing population of children who do not possess healthy immune systems. In a child with a compromised immune system, vaccinations can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Some research is indicating that HPV vaccine may have led to a drop in the number of women being diagnosed with the early stages of cervical cancer. However, when such pronouncements are made, it usually goes unmentioned that the vaccine itself can have serious side effects — up to and including death.
There have been about 18,000 HPV vaccine adverse event reports made to the U.S. government. What’s more, HPV vaccine surveillance data is compromised by the fact that most reports are submitted by drug companies making and selling HPV vaccine.
The National Vaccine Information Center reports:
“Emily Tarsell … described what happened to her only child, daughter Christina, who … died suddenly and without explanation following a series of Gardasil shots that produced vaccine reaction symptoms … She went on to describe other girls who have died after Gardasil vaccination: ‘Another young lady, Megan, died suddenly while taking a shower, as did 13-year old Sparkyl. Jessica collapsed and died in her bathroom. Amber collapsed with seizures in the parking lot on her way to work; she died in the hospital seven days later. Both Santana and Jasmine, like Chris, were found dead in their beds.’”
The website Green Med Info has assembled 44 articles which together list 60 diseases or adverse unintended consequences associated with hepatitis B vaccination.
Among the problems the vaccination may cause are:
Autoimmune inflammatory polyneuropathy
Anaphylactic shock and death in infants
Chronic arthritis
Autism
Bell’s palsy
According to one of the studies linked on Green Med Info:
“Evidence … suggests that hepatitis B vaccine is positively associated with adverse health outcomes in the general population of US children.”
For more information, you can click the link below.
A study of found that infant mortality rates and vaccine doses tend to increase together. The study looked at the total doses of vaccines required before one year of age in 34 different countries, and found that the higher the number of vaccines, the higher the infant mortality rate.
Prior to contemporary vaccination programs, “crib death” was so rare as to go unmentioned in infant mortality statistics. However, in the United States, shortly after national immunization campaigns were initiated in the 1960s, medical certifiers presented a new medical term — “sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).”
According to the study in Human Experimental Toxicology:
“… [T]here is some evidence that a subset of infants may be more susceptible to SIDS shortly after being vaccinated … It appears as though some infant deaths attributed to SIDS may be vaccine related, perhaps associated with biochemical or synergistic toxicity due to overvaccination.”
Pneumonia vaccinations for people over 65 are soon to be halted by the UK government, on the grounds that the injections do not save lives.
Millions of people were injected with the vaccine, which was supposed to offer ten-year protection against an infection that causes pneumonia. But independent expert government advisors say the program has had ‘no discernible impact’ on rates of pneumococcal disease.
According to the Daily Mail:
“… [T]he protection provided by the vaccine is poor and not long-lasting in older people.”
Although a new draft vaccine policy in India backs new and expensive vaccines, many of that country’s health experts are protesting, saying the vaccines are not essential.
Public health activists and pediatricians have called the draft misguided and industry-friendly. Among other changes, the draft policy favors a new five-in-one vaccine for hepatitis B, haemophilus influenza type B, diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus.
Down to Earth reports:
“In March, the petitioners met the Planning Commission and communicated the concerns relating to the pentavalent vaccine. They presented a paper … that highlights the misguided information given by the government to suggest the importance of inclusion of the five-in-one vaccine … [S]everal health experts say the combination is not effective.”
The price of the pentavalent vaccine is also 20 times higher than that of vaccines currently in use.
Scientists are working on using injected vaccines to help addicts kick drug habits. In theory, the vaccines will block some addictive substances from reaching the brain.
Most currently available medications for the treatment of addictions work by mimicking a drug in your brain. However, some medications block activity in your brain’s reward system. Chantix, for example, blocks the pleasure receptors activated when people smoke.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
“By contrast, addiction-treatment vaccines work in the bloodstream, not the brain … They work by tricking the body to reject drugs as if they are foreign pathogens.”
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Hepatitis B vaccine is given to U.S. infants at birth. But there is impressive evidence that for a preventive measure, hepatitis B vaccine is remarkable for the frequency, variety and severity of complications from its use.
Hepatitis B vaccine has been shown in many peer reviewed research papers to be associated with numerous infant deaths in the U.S. and Europe, multiple sclerosis and numerous chronic autoimmune disorders.
According to Child Health Safety, the U.S. government admitted as much when a Court found in favor of a plaintiff (deceased by the time the decision was made) who had developed systemic lupus erythematosus:
“Tambra Harris … filed a petition for compensation alleging that she suffered certain injuries as a result of receiving a vaccination. Among the injuries petitioner alleged that she had suffered as a result of receiving a hepatitis B vaccination was systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) … A lump sum of $475,000.00 in the form of a check payable to petitioner as Administratrix of the Estate of Tambra Harris.”
A new report suggests that, since study suggests that, since parents’ concerns about childhood vaccine safety have greatly increased during the past five years, pediatricians and family physicians should figure out ways to spend LESS time talking with them about it.
According to American Medical News:
“Because of the amount of time needed to address immunization safety for these parents, there is a larger burden on pediatricians and family physicians to address these concerns during well-child appointments.”
In other words, since it’s apparently simply too much trouble for physicians to address the valid concerns of parents, perhaps they shouldn’t bother. After all, the study shows that about one in two doctors may spend up to 19 minutes on the topic with parents who have substantial immunization concerns.
I guess when it comes to the safety of a child, 19 minutes is too much to ask.
The United States has expanded approval for the bacterial meningitis vaccine, Menactra, to include children ages 9 to 23 months.
Menactra, which was already approved for patients aged 2 to 55, is the first bacterial meningitis vaccine to achieve approval in the U.S. approval for children below the age of 2.
According to U.S. News & World Report:
“Bacterial meningitis is rare in the U.S. but those who get can die within days and survivors can suffer paralysis, hearing loss and mental disabilities … The virus spreads through sneezing, coughing and kissing.”
A short 15 second public service message on the CBS Jumbotron on Times Square in New York City has been encouraging everyone to make informed vaccine choices. The message is sponsored by the National Vaccine Information Center, a nonprofit charity, and was made possible by a donation from Mercola.com.
On April 13, the President of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) sent a letter to CBS attempting to strong arm the network into taking the message down. The AAP letter was provided to bloggers and mainstream media outlets, who republished the attack and added more disinformation of their own.
Vaccine Awakening reports:
“In recent years, the public has learned that the AAP has been taking lots of money from vaccine manufacturers and refusing to disclose to the media just how much money it gets from Big Pharma … America’s children would be better served if the American Academy of Pediatrics leadership educated its membership about how to be intelligent, compassionate partners with parents in preventing vaccine reactions, injuries and deaths rather than write off symptoms of vaccine reactions as a ‘coincidence’”.
Robert MacNeil, former anchor of the PBS program NewsHour, takes viewers on a visit with his 6-year-old autistic grandson, Nick, to see how autism affects the whole family.
In the video Nick’s mother, Alison McNeil, states:
“… So we went from a 15-month appointment where this child was A-OK, supposedly, and given the MMR, the DTaP and the Hib vaccines. People say to me, Alison, it’s a coincidence. Alison, how do you know this happened? Well, it’s impossible for me to know. But what I will say is this: It was not a coincidence that my child was diagnosed with autism at the same time that his whole system shut down. Something happened to my child.”
American prosecutors are attempting to extradite a Danish scientist. Paul Thorsen has been charged with 13 counts of wire fraud and nine counts of money laundering; a federal grand jury alleges that Thorsen stole over $1 million from autism research funding between February 2004 and June 2008.
Thorsen is said to have used the proceeds to buy a home in Atlanta, two cars and a Harley Davidson. He is said to have stolen the money while serving as the ‘principal investigator’ for a program which studied the relationship between autism and exposure to vaccines.
The Copenhagen Post reports:
“… [O]ver the four-year period he submitted over a dozen false invoices from the CDC for research expenses to Aarhus University, where he held a faculty position, instructing them to transfer the funds to a CDC account, which was in fact his personal account … Thorsen’s research on autism is widely known in academic circles, where he was until this week a highly respected figure. A paper of his on the subject, which is known as ‘The Danish Study’, is quoted extensively to refute the autism vaccine connection.”
After three years, the OC Register has finally issued a retraction of an containing statements by Dr. Paul Offit, well-known shill for the vaccine industry. The article contained disparaging statements by Dr. Offit about CBS News Investigative Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson.
According to Adventures in Autism:
“Upon further review, it appears that a number of Dr. Offit’s statements, as quoted in the OC Register article, were unsubstantiated and/or false. Attkisson had previously reported on the vaccine industry ties of Dr. Offit and others in a CBS Evening News report ‘How Independent Are Vaccine Defenders?’”
The unsubstantiated statements included a claim that Attkisson “lied”, and a claim that CBS News sent a “mean spirited and vituperative” email. Offit also told the OC Register that he provided CBS News “the details of his relationship … with pharmaceutical company Merck”, but documents provided by CBS News indicate Offit did not disclose his financial relationships with Merck.
The United States has made a global agreement with the World Health Organization and vaccine makers to share virus samples in exchange for vaccines produced for them. The vaccines would be sold at a reduced price or donated to countries that can’t afford them. According to Reuters, the negotiations for the deal began four years ago after the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus emerged in southeast Asia.
“A year later, Indonesia stopped sharing flu virus samples with the WHO’s network, demanding its share of vaccines,” Reuters said. The deal allows drug companies to decide between donating “significant amounts of vaccines or antivirals” or transferring “technology for manufacturing pandemic vaccines,” Reuters quoted an anonymous diplomatic source as saying.
While Reuters listed GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, and Sanofi-Aventis as major flu vaccine makers, it apparently forgot that Baxter Healthcare of Deerfield, Illinois was the flu vaccine maker that instigated Indonesia to stop sharing its sample viruses in the first place. As reported by The New York Times and other media in February 2007, Indonesia stopped sending flu virus samples to the WHO and other countries after it signed a contract to sell them to Baxter. Two months later, Bloomberg reported that Indonesia was trying to negotiate the same deal with GSK and Novartis. And in November 2007, Reuters reported that Indonesia said it would not share any more viruses until there was a “guarantee” from richer nations and drug companies that poor countries would get affordable vaccines.
Every jab of a vaccine needle injects a DNA-altering soup. The injections can contain live or killed diseases, and also carcinogens, heavy metals, wild viruses, and mutated proteins. The DNA in the vaccine can be transfective and recombinant, meaning it can combine with human DNA and mutate.
Many parents routinely subject their children to more than 63 vaccinations before the age of five, and exhibit anger towards another parent refusing to allow their child to be infected with vaccines. But in fact, it is the vaccinated child who becomes virally active for 21 days after an injection, shedding the virus every time he or she enters a room, coughs, sneezes or just breathes.
According to the PPJ Gazette:
“As the use of toxin riddled vaccines increased, so has the rate of autism; now one in every 110 children in those who have been vaccinated … The increase in Alzheimer’s is now thought to be directly linked to early vaccines in the 60’s and 70’s … The Rotarix vaccine that admittedly is a transfection which can cause spontaneous genetic mutations including mutations to cancer, is now recommended by the WHO and CDC for use around the world. The flu vaccines have caused more deaths than the flu itself.”
Historian Michael Willrich stumbled across an article from The New York Times archives about a 1901 smallpox vaccination raid in New York. 250 men came to a tenement house in the middle of the night and vaccinated everyone they could find. It was not an isolated incident.
His research led him to write the book Pox: An American History, which details how a turn-of-the-twentieth-century smallpox epidemic had far-reaching implications for public health officials and civil liberties. There were little to no regulations governing the pharmaceutical industry, and many people were forced to receive the vaccine against their will. And from the very start of the organized vaccination campaign against smallpox, there was public resistance.
According to NPR:
“It wasn’t until 1972 that the U.S. government decided to stop mandatory vaccination against smallpox, in part because the disease had been largely eradicated.”
The New England Journal of Medicine published a freely available Clinical Practice article, “Care of Transsexual Persons.” It covers hormones, surgery, and adolescents. Note that it does use the problematic gender identity “disorder” language as included in the DSM and it also promotes the standard psychological counseling hoops that transgender persons must jump through prior to obtaining treatment – Julia Serano‘s “Whipping Girl” provides a good primer on why those hoops can be problematic. It might be worth checking out what kinds of materials health care providers are seeing regarding these topics, including how they’re problematic.
Relatedly, there’s a possibility that “gender identity disorder” will be renamed “gender incongruence” in the DSM-V.
It’s the acceptance of a level of hatred directed at women, especially poor women, seeking reproductive healthcare and abortions. And it’s the acceptance of threats and violence directed at the doctors, staff, and healthcare workers trying to provide it to them.
Studies presented at meetings always have the caveat that they need to be peer-reviewed and have the methods and data published in order for the public to fully review and understand them. However, I wanted to note this recent news item:
New Orleans residents were found to have three times the rate of heart attacks four years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina than before the storm and levee break that flooded the city, according to a study presented at a major heart meeting on Sunday.
I’ll be interested to see the paper when published; the news item focuses on psychiatric illness, stress, and employment, but I wonder how much people with more financial resources leaving the area and access to care generally play a role.
Shameless Self-Promotion: at work, we’re posting staff profiles to our Facebook page leading up to an open house event; here’s mine. I’d appreciate if any personal comments were left here or on my own Facebook page instead of there.
Unrelated to health, except for the insurance aspect: an employer of 500+ people in my hometown is closing. The employees (largely hourly, relatively low wage) of this furniture factory were called together and basically told that – in addition to the upcoming closing – their health insurance was ending effective immediately. If that doesn’t illustrate a major problem with employer-based insurance, I don’t know what does. The county already has an unemployment rate over 10% so I expect those folks will have a hard time finding work; the company had been in town for more than 70 years.
A new scientific review reveals that there are a host of peer-reviewed, published theories that show possible connections between vaccines and autism. The author of the review, Helen Ratajczak, did something that no one else has apparently has bothered to do — review the complete body of published science since autism was first described in 1943.
The article found numerous documented causes of autism caused by encephalitis following vaccination. Ratajczak goes on to discuss many potential vaccine-related culprits, including the increasing number of vaccines given in a short period of time.
According to CBS news:
“Ratajczak also looks at a factor that hasn’t been widely discussed: human DNA contained in vaccines … She discusses the increase in autism incidences corresponding with the introduction of human DNA to MMR vaccine, and suggests the two could be linked. Ratajczak also says an additional increased spike in autism occurred in 1995 when chicken pox vaccine was grown in human fetal tissue.”
Thimerosal, a mercury based compound, is currently used as a preservative in flu shots, despite a decision made in 1999 by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the U.S. Public Health Service to eradicate it from all vaccines. Most flu shots given to women, children, and our elderly contain Thimerosal, putting them all at risk. Officials have urged that it be removed from vaccines for children and pregnant women, and from medicinal products and cosmetics.
Data from studies suggest that mercury may be the cause of autism, due to the fact tthat autism and mercury poisoning have identical symptoms. The biological abnormalities found in autism are very similar to the side effects seen in someone with mercury poisoning.
In PR Newswire, Dr. Paul G. King states:
“We have scientific studies clearly demonstrating that mercury causes neurological damage, and we have a cost-effective alternate that has already been used to replace Thimerosal as the preservative in vaccines.”
Last year, Saba Button was a thriving 11-month-old. She’d just taken her first steps, and spoken her first words. Then her parents chose to follow the Australian Health Department’s recommendation and give Saba the flu vaccination.
She had her vaccination at lunchtime, and by dinner time she had a raging temperature. After two days in the ICU, her family was told she probably wouldn’t make it. She survived, but now she has an acquired brain injury from prolonged seizures. She is no longer able to walk or talk, or eat by mouth.
Optus Zoo reports:
“What makes this story so desperately sad is her parents believe the injury to their daughter could have been prevented. In the days leading up to Saba’s flu jab, 111 other Perth children had suffered adverse reactions. The Health Department must have known about these terrible outcomes, but didn’t issue a warning to parents.”
