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July 31, 2009
Editor’s note: the article states that every Greek “citizen will have to sign a form registering for his or her inoculation.”
Health Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos yesterday heralded the intended vaccination against swine flu of Greece’s entire population of 11 million, including thousands of illegal immigrants, as the government’s action plan for tackling a possible pandemic was unveiled.
“It was decided under the order of the prime minister to vaccinate all citizens and residents of the country, without exception,” Avramopoulos told reporters after an Inner Cabinet meeting chaired by Premier Costas Karamanlis. Avramopoulos added that authorities will order some 24 million doses of the flu vaccine, to secure the recommended two shots for each resident, and will start administering the drugs once they have been approved by international authorities. The drugs are to be administered from mid-September, when deliveries are expected to arrive, starting with health workers and vulnerable citizens, including children, the elderly and the sick. Each citizen will have to sign a form registering for his or her inoculation.
Another matter discussed by members of the Inner Cabinet was a national action plan for dealing with a possible pandemic of the H1N1 virus. The plan envisages the establishment of special vaccination centers as well as the mobilization of the private health sector and includes seven alternative scenarios for tackling the spread of the virus. The more serious scenarios foresee the use of military and private hospitals and even hotels to treat patients and the mobilization of trainee and retired doctors, according to sources.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Global Research
In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Georgia. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session — only private invitations to fifty-two attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly “embargoed.” There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.
The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency’s massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines — thimerosal — appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. “I was actually stunned by what I saw,” Verstraeten told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants — in one case, within hours of birth — the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.
Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting issues of life and death, the findings were frightening. “You can play with this all you want,” Dr. Bill Weil, a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the group. The results “are statistically significant.” Dr. Richard Johnston, an immunologist and pediatrician from the University of Colorado whose grandson had been born early on the morning of the meeting’s first day, was even more alarmed. “My gut feeling?” he said. “Forgive this personal comment — I do not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on.”
But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry’s bottom line. “We are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits,” said Dr. Robert Brent, a pediatrician at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Delaware. “This will be a resource to our very busy plaintiff attorneys in this country.” Dr. Bob Chen, head of vaccine safety for the CDC, expressed relief that “given the sensitivity of the information, we have been able to keep it out of the hands of, let’s say, less responsible hands.” Dr. John Clements, vaccines advisor at the World Health Organization, declared that “perhaps this study should not have been done at all.” He added that “the research results have to be handled,” warning that the study “will be taken by others and will be used in other ways beyond the control of this group.”
In fact, the government has proved to be far more adept at handling the damage than at protecting children’s health. The CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal, ordering researchers to “rule out” the chemical’s link to autism. It withheld Verstraeten’s findings, even though they had been slated for immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data had been “lost” and could not be replicated. And to thwart the Freedom of Information Act, it handed its giant database of vaccine records over to a private company, declaring it off-limits to researchers. By the time Verstraeten finally published his study in 2003, he had gone to work for GlaxoSmithKline and reworked his data to bury the link between thimerosal and autism.
Vaccine manufacturers had already begun to phase thimerosal out of injections given to American infants — but they continued to sell off their mercury-based supplies of vaccines until last year. The CDC and FDA gave them a hand, buying up the tainted vaccines for export to developing countries and allowing drug companies to continue using the preservative in some American vaccines — including several pediatric flu shots as well as tetanus boosters routinely given to eleven-year-olds.
The drug companies are also getting help from powerful lawmakers in Washington. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $873,000 in contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, has been working to immunize vaccine makers from liability in 4,200 lawsuits that have been filed by the parents of injured children. On five separate occasions, Frist has tried to seal all of the government’s vaccine-related documents — including the Simpsonwood transcripts — and shield Eli Lilly, the developer of thimerosal, from subpoenas. In 2002, the day after Frist quietly slipped a rider known as the “Eli Lilly Protection Act” into a homeland security bill, the company contributed $10,000 to his campaign and bought 5,000 copies of his book on bioterrorism. The measure was repealed by Congress in 2003 — but earlier this year, Frist slipped another provision into an anti-terrorism bill that would deny compensation to children suffering from vaccine-related brain disorders. “The lawsuits are of such magnitude that they could put vaccine producers out of business and limit our capacity to deal with a biological attack by terrorists,” says Dean Rosen, health policy adviser to Frist.
Even many conservatives are shocked by the government’s effort to cover up the dangers of thimerosal. Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana, oversaw a three-year investigation of thimerosal after his grandson was diagnosed with autism. “Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is directly related to the autism epidemic,” his House Government Reform Committee concluded in its final report. “This epidemic in all probability may have been prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at the switch regarding a lack of safety data regarding injected thimerosal, a known neurotoxin.” The FDA and other public-health agencies failed to act, the committee added, out of “institutional malfeasance for self protection” and “misplaced protectionism of the pharmaceutical industry.”
The story of how government health agencies colluded with Big Pharma to hide the risks of thimerosal from the public is a chilling case study of institutional arrogance, power and greed. I was drawn into the controversy only reluctantly. As an attorney and environmentalist who has spent years working on issues of mercury toxicity, I frequently met mothers of autistic children who were absolutely convinced that their kids had been injured by vaccines. Privately, I was skeptical.
I doubted that autism could be blamed on a single source, and I certainly understood the government’s need to reassure parents that vaccinations are safe; the eradication of deadly childhood diseases depends on it. I tended to agree with skeptics like Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California, who criticized his colleagues on the House Government Reform Committee for leaping to conclusions about autism and vaccinations. “Why should we scare people about immunization,” Waxman pointed out at one hearing, “until we know the facts?”
It was only after reading the Simpsonwood transcripts, studying the leading scientific research and talking with many of the nation’s pre-eminent authorities on mercury that I became convinced that the link between thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood neurological disorders is real. Five of my own children are members of the Thimerosal Generation — those born between 1989 and 2003 — who received heavy doses of mercury from vaccines. “The elementary grades are overwhelmed with children who have symptoms of neurological or immune-system damage,” Patti White, a school nurse, told the House Government Reform Committee in 1999. “Vaccines are supposed to be making us healthier; however, in twenty-five years of nursing I have never seen so many damaged, sick kids. Something very, very wrong is happening to our children.”
More than 500,000 kids currently suffer from autism, and pediatricians diagnose more than 40,000 new cases every year. The disease was unknown until 1943, when it was identified and diagnosed among eleven children born in the months after thimerosal was first added to baby vaccines in 1931.
Some skeptics dispute that the rise in autism is caused by thimerosal-tainted vaccinations. They argue that the increase is a result of better diagnosis — a theory that seems questionable at best, given that most of the new cases of autism are clustered within a single generation of children. “If the epidemic is truly an artifact of poor diagnosis,” scoffs Dr. Boyd Haley, one of the world’s authorities on mercury toxicity, “then where are all the twenty-year-old autistics?” Other researchers point out that Americans are exposed to a greater cumulative “load” of mercury than ever before, from contaminated fish to dental fillings, and suggest that thimerosal in vaccines may be only part of a much larger problem. It’s a concern that certainly deserves far more attention than it has received — but it overlooks the fact that the mercury concentrations in vaccines dwarf other sources of exposure to our children.
What is most striking is the lengths to which many of the leading detectives have gone to ignore — and cover up — the evidence against thimerosal. From the very beginning, the scientific case against the mercury additive has been overwhelming. The preservative, which is used to stem fungi and bacterial growth in vaccines, contains ethylmercury, a potent neurotoxin. Truckloads of studies have shown that mercury tends to accumulate in the brains of primates and other animals after they are injected with vaccines — and that the developing brains of infants are particularly susceptible. In 1977, a Russian study found that adults exposed to much lower concentrations of ethylmercury than those given to American children still suffered brain damage years later. Russia banned thimerosal from children’s vaccines twenty years ago, and Denmark, Austria, Japan, Great Britain and all the Scandinavian countries have since followed suit.
“You couldn’t even construct a study that shows thimerosal is safe,” says Haley, who heads the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky. “It’s just too darn toxic. If you inject thimerosal into an animal, its brain will sicken. If you apply it to living tissue, the cells die. If you put it in a petri dish, the culture dies. Knowing these things, it would be shocking if one could inject it into an infant without causing damage.”
Internal documents reveal that Eli Lilly, which first developed thimerosal, knew from the start that its product could cause damage — and even death — in both animals and humans. In 1930, the company tested thimerosal by administering it to twenty-two patients with terminal meningitis, all of whom died within weeks of being injected — a fact Lilly didn’t bother to report in its study declaring thimerosal safe. In 1935, researchers at another vaccine manufacturer, Pittman-Moore, warned Lilly that its claims about thimerosal’s safety “did not check with ours.” Half the dogs Pittman injected with thimerosal-based vaccines became sick, leading researchers there to declare the preservative “unsatisfactory as a serum intended for use on dogs.”
In the decades that followed, the evidence against thimerosal continued to mount. During the Second World War, when the Department of Defense used the preservative in vaccines on soldiers, it required Lilly to label it “poison.” In 1967, a study in Applied Microbiology found that thimerosal killed mice when added to injected vaccines. Four years later, Lilly’s own studies discerned that thimerosal was “toxic to tissue cells” in concentrations as low as one part per million — 100 times weaker than the concentration in a typical vaccine. Even so, the company continued to promote thimerosal as “nontoxic” and also incorporated it into topical disinfectants. In 1977, ten babies at a Toronto hospital died when an antiseptic preserved with thimerosal was dabbed onto their umbilical cords.
In 1982, the FDA proposed a ban on over-the-counter products that contained thimerosal, and in 1991 the agency considered banning it from animal vaccines. But tragically, that same year, the CDC recommended that infants be injected with a series of mercury-laced vaccines. Newborns would be vaccinated for hepatitis B within twenty-four hours of birth, and two-month-old infants would be immunized for haemophilus influenzae B and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis.
The drug industry knew the additional vaccines posed a danger. The same year that the CDC approved the new vaccines, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the fathers of Merck’s vaccine programs, warned the company that six-month-olds who were administered the shots would suffer dangerous exposure to mercury. He recommended that thimerosal be discontinued, “especially when used on infants and children,” noting that the industry knew of nontoxic alternatives. “The best way to go,” he added, “is to switch to dispensing the actual vaccines without adding preservatives.”
For Merck and other drug companies, however, the obstacle was money. Thimerosal enables the pharmaceutical industry to package vaccines in vials that contain multiple doses, which require additional protection because they are more easily contaminated by multiple needle entries. The larger vials cost half as much to produce as smaller, single-dose vials, making it cheaper for international agencies to distribute them to impoverished regions at risk of epidemics. Faced with this “cost consideration,” Merck ignored Hilleman’s warnings, and government officials continued to push more and more thimerosal-based vaccines for children. Before 1989, American preschoolers received eleven vaccinations — for polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and measles-mumps-rubella. A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations, children were receiving a total of twenty-two immunizations by the time they reached first grade.
As the number of vaccines increased, the rate of autism among children exploded. During the 1990s, 40 million children were injected with thimerosal-based vaccines, receiving unprecedented levels of mercury during a period critical for brain development. Despite the well-documented dangers of thimerosal, it appears that no one bothered to add up the cumulative dose of mercury that children would receive from the mandated vaccines. “What took the FDA so long to do the calculations?” Peter Patriarca, director of viral products for the agency, asked in an e-mail to the CDC in 1999. “Why didn’t CDC and the advisory bodies do these calculations when they rapidly expanded the childhood immunization schedule?”
But by that time, the damage was done. At two months, when the infant brain is still at a critical stage of development, infants routinely received three inoculations that contained a total of 62.5 micrograms of ethylmercury — a level 99 times greater than the EPA’s limit for daily exposure to methylmercury, a related neurotoxin. Although the vaccine industry insists that ethylmercury poses little danger because it breaks down rapidly and is removed by the body, several studies — including one published in April by the National Institutes of Health — suggest that ethylmercury is actually more toxic to developing brains and stays in the brain longer than methylmercury.
Officials responsible for childhood immunizations insist that the additional vaccines were necessary to protect infants from disease and that thimerosal is still essential in developing nations, which, they often claim, cannot afford the single-dose vials that don’t require a preservative. Dr. Paul Offit, one of CDC’s top vaccine advisers, told me, “I think if we really have an influenza pandemic — and certainly we will in the next twenty years, because we always do — there’s no way on God’s earth that we immunize 280 million people with single-dose vials. There has to be multidose vials.”
But while public-health officials may have been well-intentioned, many of those on the CDC advisory committee who backed the additional vaccines had close ties to the industry. Dr. Sam Katz, the committee’s chair, was a paid consultant for most of the major vaccine makers and was part of a team that developed the measles vaccine and brought it to licensure in 1963. Dr. Neal Halsey, another committee member, worked as a researcher for the vaccine companies and received honoraria from Abbott Labs for his research on the hepatitis B vaccine.
Indeed, in the tight circle of scientists who work on vaccines, such conflicts of interest are common. Rep. Burton says that the CDC “routinely allows scientists with blatant conflicts of interest to serve on intellectual advisory committees that make recommendations on new vaccines,” even though they have “interests in the products and companies for which they are supposed to be providing unbiased oversight.” The House Government Reform Committee discovered that four of the eight CDC advisers who approved guidelines for a rotavirus vaccine “had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine.”
Offit, who shares a patent on one of the vaccines, acknowledged to me that he “would make money” if his vote eventually leads to a marketable product. But he dismissed my suggestion that a scientist’s direct financial stake in CDC approval might bias his judgment. “It provides no conflict for me,” he insists. “I have simply been informed by the process, not corrupted by it. When I sat around that table, my sole intent was trying to make recommendations that best benefited the children in this country. It’s offensive to say that physicians and public-health people are in the pocket of industry and thus are making decisions that they know are unsafe for children. It’s just not the way it works.”
Other vaccine scientists and regulators gave me similar assurances. Like Offit, they view themselves as enlightened guardians of children’s health, proud of their “partnerships” with pharmaceutical companies, immune to the seductions of personal profit, besieged by irrational activists whose anti-vaccine campaigns are endangering children’s health. They are often resentful of questioning. “Science,” says Offit, “is best left to scientists.”
Still, some government officials were alarmed by the apparent conflicts of interest. In his e-mail to CDC administrators in 1999, Paul Patriarca of the FDA blasted federal regulators for failing to adequately scrutinize the danger posed by the added baby vaccines. “I’m not sure there will be an easy way out of the potential perception that the FDA, CDC and immunization-policy bodies may have been asleep at the switch re: thimerosal until now,” Patriarca wrote. The close ties between regulatory officials and the pharmaceutical industry, he added, “will also raise questions about various advisory bodies regarding aggressive recommendations for use” of thimerosal in child vaccines.
If federal regulators and government scientists failed to grasp the potential risks of thimerosal over the years, no one could claim ignorance after the secret meeting at Simpsonwood. But rather than conduct more studies to test the link to autism and other forms of brain damage, the CDC placed politics over science. The agency turned its database on childhood vaccines — which had been developed largely at taxpayer expense — over to a private agency, America’s Health Insurance Plans, ensuring that it could not be used for additional research. It also instructed the Institute of Medicine, an advisory organization that is part of the National Academy of Sciences, to produce a study debunking the link between thimerosal and brain disorders. The CDC “wants us to declare, well, that these things are pretty safe,” Dr. Marie McCormick, who chaired the IOM’s Immunization Safety Review Committee, told her fellow researchers when they first met in January 2001. “We are not ever going to come down that [autism] is a true side effect” of thimerosal exposure. According to transcripts of the meeting, the committee’s chief staffer, Kathleen Stratton, predicted that the IOM would conclude that the evidence was “inadequate to accept or reject a causal relation” between thimerosal and autism. That, she added, was the result “Walt wants” — a reference to Dr. Walter Orenstein, director of the National Immunization Program for the CDC.
For those who had devoted their lives to promoting vaccination, the revelations about thimerosal threatened to undermine everything they had worked for. “We’ve got a dragon by the tail here,” said Dr. Michael Kaback, another committee member. “The more negative that [our] presentation is, the less likely people are to use vaccination, immunization — and we know what the results of that will be. We are kind of caught in a trap. How we work our way out of the trap, I think is the charge.”
Even in public, federal officials made it clear that their primary goal in studying thimerosal was to dispel doubts about vaccines. “Four current studies are taking place to rule out the proposed link between autism and thimerosal,” Dr. Gordon Douglas, then-director of strategic planning for vaccine research at the National Institutes of Health, assured a Princeton University gathering in May 2001. “In order to undo the harmful effects of research claiming to link the [measles] vaccine to an elevated risk of autism, we need to conduct and publicize additional studies to assure parents of safety.” Douglas formerly served as president of vaccinations for Merck, where he ignored warnings about thimerosal’s risks.
In May of last year, the Institute of Medicine issued its final report. Its conclusion: There is no proven link between autism and thimerosal in vaccines. Rather than reviewing the large body of literature describing the toxicity of thimerosal, the report relied on four disastrously flawed epidemiological studies examining European countries, where children received much smaller doses of thimerosal than American kids. It also cited a new version of the Verstraeten study, published in the journal Pediatrics, that had been reworked to reduce the link between thimerosal and autism. The new study included children too young to have been diagnosed with autism and overlooked others who showed signs of the disease. The IOM declared the case closed and — in a startling position for a scientific body — recommended that no further research be conducted.
The report may have satisfied the CDC, but it convinced no one. Rep. David Weldon, a Republican physician from Florida who serves on the House Government Reform Committee, attacked the Institute of Medicine, saying it relied on a handful of studies that were “fatally flawed” by “poor design” and failed to represent “all the available scientific and medical research.” CDC officials are not interested in an honest search for the truth, Weldon told me, because “an association between vaccines and autism would force them to admit that their policies irreparably damaged thousands of children. Who would want to make that conclusion about themselves?”
Under pressure from Congress and parents, the Institute of Medicine convened another panel to address continuing concerns about the Vaccine Safety Datalink Data Sharing program. In February, the new panel, composed of different scientists, criticized the way the VSD had been used in the Verstraeten study, and urged the CDC to make its vaccine database available to the public.
So far, though, only two scientists have managed to gain access. Dr. Mark Geier, president of the Genetics Center of America, and his son, David, spent a year battling to obtain the medical records from the CDC. Since August 2002, when members of Congress pressured the agency to turn over the data, the Geiers have completed six studies that demonstrate a powerful correlation between thimerosal and neurological damage in children. One study, which compares the cumulative dose of mercury received by children born between 1981 and 1985 with those born between 1990 and 1996, found a “very significant relationship” between autism and vaccines. Another study of educational performance found that kids who received higher doses of thimerosal in vaccines were nearly three times as likely to be diagnosed with autism and more than three times as likely to suffer from speech disorders and mental retardation. Another soon-to-be published study shows that autism rates are in decline following the recent elimination of thimerosal from most vaccines.
As the federal government worked to prevent scientists from studying vaccines, others have stepped in to study the link to autism. In April, reporter Dan Olmsted of UPI undertook one of the more interesting studies himself. Searching for children who had not been exposed to mercury in vaccines — the kind of population that scientists typically use as a “control” in experiments — Olmsted scoured the Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, who refuse to immunize their infants. Given the national rate of autism, Olmsted calculated that there should be 130 autistics among the Amish. He found only four. One had been exposed to high levels of mercury from a power plant. The other three — including one child adopted from outside the Amish community — had received their vaccines.
At the state level, many officials have also conducted in-depth reviews of thimerosal. While the Institute of Medicine was busy whitewashing the risks, the Iowa legislature was carefully combing through all of the available scientific and biological data. “After three years of review, I became convinced there was sufficient credible research to show a link between mercury and the increased incidences in autism,” says state Sen. Ken Veenstra, a Republican who oversaw the investigation. “The fact that Iowa’s 700 percent increase in autism began in the 1990s, right after more and more vaccines were added to the children’s vaccine schedules, is solid evidence alone.” Last year, Iowa became the first state to ban mercury in vaccines, followed by California. Similar bans are now under consideration in thirty-two other states.
But instead of following suit, the FDA continues to allow manufacturers to include thimerosal in scores of over-the-counter medications as well as steroids and injected collagen. Even more alarming, the government continues to ship vaccines preserved with thimerosal to developing countries — some of which are now experiencing a sudden explosion in autism rates. In China, where the disease was virtually unknown prior to the introduction of thimerosal by U.S. drug manufacturers in 1999, news reports indicate that there are now more than 1.8 million autistics. Although reliable numbers are hard to come by, autistic disorders also appear to be soaring in India, Argentina, Nicaragua and other developing countries that are now using thimerosal-laced vaccines. The World Health Organization continues to insist thimerosal is safe, but it promises to keep the possibility that it is linked to neurological disorders “under review.”
I devoted time to study this issue because I believe that this is a moral crisis that must be addressed. If, as the evidence suggests, our public-health authorities knowingly allowed the pharmaceutical industry to poison an entire generation of American children, their actions arguably constitute one of the biggest scandals in the annals of American medicine. “The CDC is guilty of incompetence and gross negligence,” says Mark Blaxill, vice president of Safe Minds, a nonprofit organization concerned about the role of mercury in medicines. “The damage caused by vaccine exposure is massive. It’s bigger than asbestos, bigger than tobacco, bigger than anything you’ve ever seen.”
It’s hard to calculate the damage to our country — and to the international efforts to eradicate epidemic diseases — if Third World nations come to believe that America’s most heralded foreign-aid initiative is poisoning their children. It’s not difficult to predict how this scenario will be interpreted by America’s enemies abroad. The scientists and researchers — many of them sincere, even idealistic — who are participating in efforts to hide the science on thimerosal claim that they are trying to advance the lofty goal of protecting children in developing nations from disease pandemics. They are badly misguided. Their failure to come clean on thimerosal will come back horribly to haunt our country and the world’s poorest populations.
Global Research comments: This story has been updated to correct several inaccuracies in the original, published version. As originally reported, American preschoolers received only three vaccinations before 1989, but the article failed to note that they were innoculated a total of eleven times with those vaccines, including boosters. The article also misstated the level of ethylmercury received by infants injected with all their shots by the age of six months. It was 187 micrograms – an amount forty percent, not 187 times, greater than the EPA’s limit for daily exposure to methylmercury. Finally, because of an editing error, the article misstated the contents of the rotavirus vaccine approved by the CDC. It did not contain thimerosal. Salon and Rolling Stone regret the errors.
An earlier version of this story stated that the Institute of Medicine convened a second panel to review the work of the Immunization Safety Review Committee that had found no evidence of a link between thimerosal and autism. In fact, the IOM convened the second panel to address continuing concerns about the Vaccine Safety Datalink Data Sharing program, including those raised by critics of the IOM’s earlier work. But the panel was not charged with reviewing the committee’s findings. The story also inadvertently omitted a word and transposed two sentences in a quote by Dr. John Clements, and incorrectly stated that Dr. Sam Katz held a patent with Merck on the measles vaccine. In fact, Dr. Katz was part of a team that developed the vaccine and brought it to licensure, but he never held the patent. Salon and Rolling Stone regret the errors.
CLARIFICATION: After publication of this story, Salon and Rolling Stone corrected an error that misstated the level of ethylmercury received by infants injected with all their shots by the age of six months. It was 187 micrograms ? an amount forty percent, not 187 times, greater than the EPA’s limit for daily exposure to methylmercury. At the time of the correction, we were aware that the comparison itself was flawed, but as journalists we considered it more appropriate to state the correct figure rather than replace it with another number entirely.
Since that earlier correction, however, it has become clear from responses to the article that the forty-percent number, while accurate, is misleading. It measures the total mercury load an infant received from vaccines during the first six months, calculates the daily average received based on average body weight, and then compares that number to the EPA daily limit. But infants did not receive the vaccines as a ?daily average? ? they received massive doses on a single day, through multiple shots. As the story states, these single-day doses exceeded the EPA limit by as much as 99 times. Based on the misunderstanding, and to avoid further confusion, we have amended the story to eliminate the forty-percent figure.
Correction: The story misattributed a quote to Andy Olson, former legislative counsel to Senator Bill Frist. The comment was made by Dean Rosen, health policy adviser to the senator. Rolling Stone and Salon.com regret the error.
Kennedy Report Sparks Controversy
“Deadly Immunity,” our story about the link between mercury in vaccines and the dramatic rise in autism among children [RS 977/978], sparked intense reaction from the medical establishment and several leading news organizations. The story, by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — part of an ongoing collaboration with Salon.com — documented the government’s efforts to conceal alarming data about the dangers of vaccines.
What is most striking is the lengths to which major media outlets have gone to disparage the story and to calm public fears — even in the face of the questionable science on the subject. In a segment on World News Tonight titled “A Closer Look,” ABC pointed out that Kennedy is “not a scientist or a doctor” and dismissed his extensive evidence as nothing more than “a few scientific studies.” The network also trotted out its medical editor, Dr. Timothy Johnson, to praise the “impeccably impartial Institute of Medicine” and to again state that Kennedy is not a scientist.
The New York Times, in a front-page story on the subject, devoted only one line to Kennedy’s article, which it said accused public-health officials and drugmakers of “conspiring” to hide the data on autism — a word that our story neither used nor implied. (The Wall Street Journal, in an op-ed attacking the article, was even more misleading, using the word “conspiracy” four times.) The Times then went on, for more than a full page, to portray concerns over vaccines as nothing more than the misguided fears of parents who suffer from “scientific illiteracy,” unable to understand the medical studies that prove immunizations to be safe. It depicted studies reviewed by the Institute of Medicine as definitive without even bothering to address the host of serious questions raised about their validity: conflicting diagnoses of autism, mixed-up data from HMOs and research skewed to exclude many sick kids.
Rolling Stone and Salon fact-checked the article thoroughly before publication, insisting on primary documentation for every statement in the story, and posted links to the most significant materials online to enable readers to judge for themselves. The final article contained six errors. These ranged from inadvertently transposing a quote and confusing a drug license for a patent to relying on a figure that incorrectly calculated an infant’s exposure to mercury over six months, rather than citing the even more dangerous amount injected on a single day. (The mistakes were corrected online as soon as they were discovered and can be viewed in detail at both RollingStone.com and Salon.com.)
It is important to note, however, that none of the mistakes weaken the primary point of the story. The government’s own records show that it has failed to do the science necessary to put to rest reasonable concerns about vaccines. If the scientists had simply done their job rather than covering their tracks, there would be no controversy today. Instead, the government cannot even provide a definitive figure of the number of cases of autism among American children — a number obviously critical to any serious scientific investigation — and yet expects the public to believe that it has ruled out any link between vaccines and an illness it does not even track.
“Science,” as one doctor in our story insisted, “is best left to scientists.” But when the scientists fail to do their job, resorting to closed-door meetings and rigged studies, others in society have not only a right but a moral obligation to question their work. In the coming years, further research may indeed demonstrate that mercury in vaccines is not responsible for the rise in autism. For now, though, we can only raise a very real and legitimate alarm — and hope that the government’s well-documented mishandling of its own research did not needlessly jeopardize the health of hundreds of thousands of children.
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Source: medicine-no.com/Vaccinations.htm
The fall of the pharmaceutical industry as we know it today will begin with the exposé of the vaccination hoax.
Autism is not the only disorder that can be traced to vaccinations. Down Syndrome is another. The list is great. A board of statisticians, with no interest in the sales, manufacture or promotion of medical products, would find that scores of diseases for which there is no apparent cause can be traced to vaccintions. Diseases ranging from tumors. severe allergic reactions both acute and chronic, to alzheimers and many, many others.
Anti-Vaccination Activists Past and Present
The Vaccination Monster
A mighty and horrible monster, with the horns of a bull, the hind of a horse, the jaws of a krakin, the teeth and claws of a tyger, the tail of a cow, all the evils of Pandora's box in his belly, plague, pestilence, leprosy, purple blotches, foetid ulcers, and filthy running sores covering his body, and an atmosphere of accumulated disease, pain and death around him, has made his appearance in the world, and devores mankind —especially poor helpless infants—not by sores only, or hundreds, or thousands, but by hundreds of thousands (vide Vaccinae Vindicia: 413, 423).
This monster has been named vaccination; and his progressive havoc among the human race, has been dreadful and most alarming.
Yet, strange to tell, this monster has found not only a multitude of friends but worshipers, who prostrate themselves before him, and encourage his voracious appetite.
Do not the men, the heroes—who first dared to stand forth to arrest the progress, and stop the fatal havoc of this most dreadful and destructive monster, and at length have bravely subdued and put him to flight with all his mighty host, merit an obelisk created to their fame, with their names inscribed upon it, in indelible characters, to be held in grateful remembrance through all future generations?
And are not these names MOSELEY, ROWLEY, BIRCH, SQUIRREL, LIPSCOMB?
London, 1807
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1123944
Death caused by vaccination is rarely attributed to the vaccination. When my friend died, hours after his flu shot, the death certificte read "heart failure".
There is no doubt that autism is caused by the brain's reaction to the morbid matter injected into the bloodstream. Nothing will be done about this by the promoters of vaccines until the lawsuits outweigh the profits which will never happen while our elected officials prevent these lawsuits. The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) is a federal program that was passed by US congress in 1986 to compensate families for injuries and death as a direct result of vaccinations. The program "shielded" vaccine-makers so they would not go bankrupt as a result of being sued for vaccine-injuries. The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has already paid out $1 Billion in claims for vaccine-caused injuries and deaths; and with forced vaccinations, the industry will reap giagantic profits while the American People will pay, not only physically, but financially, for the devestation caused by these products.
1. “Up to 90% of the total
decline in the death rate of children between 1860-1965 because of whooping cough, scarlet
fever, diphtheria, and measles occurred before the introduction of immunisations and
antibiotics.”
Dr. Archie Kalokerinos, M.D.
2. Vaccine Information Service
(Australia)
http://www.vaccination.inoz.com/
3. Measles deaths declined by 99.4% before
vaccination in 1968!
http://www.whale.to/m/measlesdeaths1.html
4. The Vaccination Hoax and
Holocaust
http://www.whale.to/b/hoax1.html
5. The Truth Behind The Vaccine
Coverup
www.alkalizeforhealth.net/Lhealthfraud6.htm
6. Government misleading
country on Hepatitis B vaccination
http://www.newindpress.com/Newsitems.asp?ID=IE120051013110422&Title=Bangalor
8. "I also opposed the Homeland
Security Bill, H.R. 5005, which, in section 304, authorizes the forced vaccination of
American citizens against small pox. The government should never
have the power to require immunizations or vaccinations." Presedential cadidate Ron Paul
10. "I found that the whole
vaccine business was indeed a gigantic hoax. Most doctors are convinced that they are
useful, but if you look at the proper statistics and study the instances of these diseases
you will realize that this is not so."
Dr Kalokerinos MD June 1995
| 11. Cal-Oregon Unvaccinated Survey |
 |
| "We surveyed over 9,000 boys in California
and Oregon and found that vaccinated boys had a 155% greater chance of having a
neurological disorder like ADHD or autism than unvaccinated boys." -Generation
Rescue, June 26, 2007 http://www.generationrescue.org/survey.html |
12. The Psychology of Vaccine
Awareness
http://thedoctorwithin.com/index_fr.php?page=articles/psychvax.php Dr. Tim O'Shea
13. Dr J. Anthony Morris
"There is a great deal of evidence to prove that immunization of children does more
harm than good."---Dr. J. Anthony Morris, former Chief Vaccine Control Officer and
research virologist, US FDA "There is no evidence that any influenza vaccine thus far
developed is effective in preventing or mitigating any attack of influenza. The producers
of these vaccines know that they are worthless, but they go on selling them,
anyway."----
14. (Washington, DC) --
Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government
corruption, today released documents obtained from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, detailing 1,637 reports of
adverse reactions to the vaccination for human papillomavirus (HPV), Gardasil. Three
deaths were related to the vaccine. One physician’s assistant reported that a
female patient “died of a blood clot three hours after getting the Gardasil
vaccine.” Two other reports, on girls 12 and 19, reported deaths relating to
heart problems and/or blood clotting.
http://www.judicial
15. Millions in Iraq to get MMR jab: BBC News
http://news.
Next step is to find out which officials received money from the companies that
produce this product.
16. Letter from Ray Gallup to Congressman Burton and read at the December 10, 2002 hearing:
I was set to go with Albert Enayati tomorrow for the Government reform hearings but couldn't make it. Our family is in living hell with our 17 year-old son, Eric who is 6 feet tall, 150 pounds. He attacked Helen, Julie, my daughter (14) and myself. He head butted Julie and bit my wife on the head. Eric bit one of my fingers. It isn't the first time and is getting worse. We have no help and I'm afraid for the safety of our family and my son.
He is a victim of Merck....with the MMR vaccine....having elevated measles antibody titers.
Eric was like he was 6'5 and 300 pounds on Sunday when he had his tantrum. I held him down but he tried to bite me and kick and scratch me. I was so exhausted I couldn't breathe and thought I would have a heart attack. When we closed the doors to lock ourselves in from Eric, Eric kicked on the door....breaking some of the wood.
I don't know what to do anymore short of calling the police....we are at our wits end.
This is our lot in life for trusting the medical profession that vaccines are safe. We are paying a bitter price for that trust. It is hard to have any holiday feelings when we see what has happened to our son.....and our family.
Again, I'm sorry I couldn't attend but we are under siege.
Ray Gallup
17. Dr. J. R. Shannon, former director
of the National institute of health declared, "the only safe vaccine is one that is
never used.
http://www.conspira
18. The truth about the real danger of
vaccines
Shocking Documentary Will Convince You to Stay Away From Vaccines For Good
19, Military Personnel Suffer More Heart Troubles
Than Expected After Smallpox Vaccinations, Researcher Says
http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2004_5_13.html#2720EB81
20. H E Sri A P J Abdul Kalam Azad,
Hon'ble President of India,
Rashtrapati Bhawan,
New Delhi.
Dt: 29.08.2006
Most Respected Sir,
We vaccine damage victims and the parents of vaccine damaged children have been raising
our voices against the vile practice of vaccines for quite a long time now. We know that
nobody is really interested in our problems, created by Govt sponsored mass vaccine
programs indulged in without apprising us of the dangers involved. But we continue
regardless not for our sake, our lives have already changed forever for the worst, but for
the children who are choosing this country to evolve in their spiritual quest.
Little do those children know that India is no longer the country it once was. Today the
love for mankind the country posessed, the spiritual nature of its people and its great
system of education aiming at generating and advancing humane knowledge has been lost. In
the name of science we have changed. Science is supposed to be a search for the truth but
today the truth is being suppressed in the name of science.
Where will our movement end? As the enclosed report stating that the Chinese Govt is now
arresting vaccine protestors, we too may be arrested and put behind bars. We are being
termed "hazard to public health". What health Sir? We no longer see health
around us but only death and disease. Yet we talk of public health. We spend billions so
that the medical industry prospers and thrives. Nobody thinks of the patients anymore and
what they are being forced to go through, health wise and finance wise, at the hands of
this evil industry.
We are at fault for pointing out that vaccines are a bundle of extremely toxic,
carcinogenic and contaminated elements that are being forcibly pushed into young
defenceless children who cannot protest, whose parents are not aware of the dangers, whose
sacrifice of life, and its oppurtunities go towards filling the coffers of the medical
industry which prefers to bow down to the diktat of agencies who have long since lost
their sanctity and credibility in the eyes of the general population all over the world.
What sort of an age do we live in Sir? We are forced to part with both our health and
lifes income to promote an industry that peddles death and disease in return. Is this what
our freedom fighters laid down their lives for? Is this what Gandhiji gave his life for?
Is this the expression of love that Panditji had for our children?
What sort of a country are we that cannot protect our children from the machinations and
manipulations of the most corrupt industry in the whole world? Yes Sir, the Global
Corruption Report 2005 has stated categorically that the $3100 billion medical industry is
the most corrupt industry in the world. And yet we continue to pour billions down the
throat of this monster. This corrupt industry is headed by the WHO, the UN, and the US
based FDA and CDC whose shennanigans are now being probed by investigative journalists and
the reports find place in such prestigious newspapers like the New York Times, The
Guardian, and even The Lancet, one of the most prestigious medical journals of our times.
The people all over the world are pointing out the flaws and fallacies of this industry.
In the US it has been revealed that 7,83,936 people die every year due to medical
malpractices, more than the combined number that die from road accidents and terrorist
attacks. In India, the doctors say that in our towns alone 2,00,000 people die every year
from adverse drug reactions, and 80,000 due to medical malpractices.
In the TV channels we watch in horror as the doctors kill children in the womb, burn new
born infants in the cots, cut the limbs of healthy people at the instance of the beggar
mafia, trade in organs of the innocents, photograph female patients in the raw and sell
the footage to the porn industry, and experiment new drugs and vaccines on eight day old
toddlers and infants in the creches. Recently all of India has been shocked at front page
headlines that said that the JE vaccine has already killed 22 children and seriously
affected 504 others.
How long will this go on Sir? How long before this vile so called science is replaced by
more humane methods of treatment? Why should we forced to be perennial guinea pigs at the
hands of doctors who openly admit that they are clueless as to why epidemics of chronic
autoimmune disorders are spreading like wildfire across the world?
It is said that in a society where people are unjustly imprisoned, the true place for a
just man is also a prison. Therefore I request you Sir that we vaccine victims and other
victims of the medical industry be arrested en masse and put behind bars. At least it will
relieve us of the tension of seeing infants and adults being recklessly and systematically
mauled in the hands of the cannibalistic medical industry.
Please forgive me for being emotional. But after 27 years of personal suffering and the
realisation that things are not going to change despite our protests, I am finding it
difficult to keep my mouth shut.
President Sir, once again we appeal to you, please intervene and save our children. Please
ensure that 1.74 million autistic children of India, who have been incapacitated by the
use of mercury and aluminium in vaccines and the use of live measles virus, and of
uncounted others who have died or rendered disabled due to toxic vaccine ingredients get
the attention they deserve and that their parents are at least helped financially to
ensure that their children are rehabilitated and lead some semblance of normal life after
they are gone.
Is this too much to ask of you Sir?
Respectfully yours,
Jagannath Chatterjee,
Vaccine damage victim,
Health Reform Activist.
(Vaccinations, Yahoo Groups
Wednesday, 30 August 2006 (NWBC 202) Protests in India and
China against vaccinations
21. http://www.newswise
"Of the 54 cases studied, Guillain-Barre syndrome was observed in 57% of the patients
who had received an influenza vaccine, followed by 22 % of the patients who had received a
hepatitis vaccine either as a single vaccine or in combination with other vaccines. In the
same study group, 11% of the patients with GBS had received the measles, mumps, and
rubella (MMR) vaccine in combination with other vaccines, with the remaining study cases
having received haemophilis B conjugate vaccine, tetanus and diphtheria toxoid, or typhoid
vaccine. Up to 20 % of the patients developed GBS after receiving more than one type of
vaccine." (Yahoo Vaccinations)
22. " Chinese police hauled off a small group
of people on Thursday who had arrived in Beijing's Tiananmen Square to protest what they
say are bad vaccines which have crippled their children, one of the demonstrators said.
They say that their children were vaccinated against Japanese encephalitis B in 2003 in
the southern province of Guangdong, and that the vaccine has paralysed their sons and
daughters. China's Health Ministry told Reuters last month that they had found no problem
with the vaccines." - Reuters,
Beijing, Aug. 17, 2006.
23. Study: Annual flu death toll could be
overstated.
Peter Doshi, a graduate student at Harvard University, says the estimate by the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention of 36,000 flu-related deaths each year is based on
"flawed" statistics.
"I found a number of inconsistencies and poor assumptions being made," he says. An example is the CDC's use of "pneumonia and influenza" deaths, taken together, as a basis for estimating deaths caused by flu. He says that link is "arbitrary" and "has the effect of biasing their estimates of flu mortality."
Lab-confirmed flu cases and flu-related deaths, except for those in children, are not reported to the CDC, so estimates of cases are based on a variety of measures, including deaths from pneumonia or circulatory diseases during flu season compared with deaths from those causes when there is no flu around. If the pneumonia deaths jump in January and February, health experts assume some are caused by flu.
About 10% of pneumonia deaths are associated with flu, says William Thompson of the CDC's National Immunization Program, but flu also contributes to deaths from other causes.
If you go by death certificates alone, says Martin Meltzer, a CDC expert in health economics, almost nobody dies of flu.
"Somebody can have flu and go to a hospital and die of a heart attack, but he might not have had the heart attack if he hadn't had the flu," Meltzer says. "The death certificates don't read 'influenza,' " he says. "They read 'heart attack,' 'diabetes' and all the fancy things people write down because they don't know what they died of."
The statistical model used to come up with the estimated average of 36,000 deaths each year takes these less obvious cases into account, Meltzer says. They are deaths associated with flu, but not necessarily caused primarily by flu.
By Anita Manning, USA TODAY (Excerpt)
How many people die from the flu vaccine? We'll never know. When someone dies shortly after the flu shot, it's called 'heart failure', or 'due to pre-existing causes'.
24. How many Americans really
die of the flu each year? Ask the American Lung Association. Better yet, read their own
report from August 2004, titled "Trends in Pneumonia and Influenza/Morbidity and
Mortality". This report comes from the Research and Scientific Affairs Epidemiology
and Statistics Unit. At the bottom of the document, the source is listed as the National
Center for Health Statistics, "Report of Final Mortality Statistics,
1979–2001".
Get ready for some surprises, especially since the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
keeps trumpeting flu-death annual numbers as 36,000. Like clockwork. Year in and year out,
36,000 people in the US die from the flu every year. Killer disease. Watch out! Get your
flu shot. Every autumn. Don't wait. You might fall over dead in the street!
Here are the total influenza deaths from the report (from 1979 to 1995, the stats were
released every two years):
1979: 604;
1981: 3,006;
1983: 1,431;
1985: 2,054;
1987: 632;
1989: 1,593;
1991: 1,137;
1993: 1,044;
1995: 606;
1996: 745;
1997: 720;
1998: 1,724;
1999: 1,665;
2000: 1765;
2001: 257.
Extracted from Nexus Magazine, Volume 13, Number 2 (February
- March 2006)
25. Immunization (the act of injecting vaccines) depresses and disables brain and immune function. Honest, unbiased scientific investigation has shown vaccinations to be a causative factor in many illnesses including:
*Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (aka SIDS, crib or cot death)
*developmental disorders (autism, seizures, mental retardation, hyperactivity, dyslexia, etc.)
*immune deficiency (i.e. AIDS, Epstein Barre Syndrome, etc.)
*degenerative disease (i.e. muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, cancer, leukemia, lupus, fibromyalgia, etc.) Source: Vaccine Liberation.
26. Classen Immunotherapies, Inc.
Contact: J. Barthelow Classen, M.D., M.B.A.; President
Vaccines Proven To Be Largest Cause of Insulin Dependent Diabetes in Children, Diabetics Advised to Seek Legal Counsel Now, Before Their Right to Compensation Expires.
Arlington, September 11, 2000: Dr. J. Bart Classen, an immunologist at Classen Immunotherapies, presented data yesterday at the International Public Conference on Vaccination which proved vaccines are the largest cause of Insulin Dependent Diabetes in Children. His data indicated that vaccines cause approximately 80% of cases of insulin dependent diabetes in children who have received multiple vaccines starting after 2 month of life.
Dr. Classen presented data supporting a causal relationship between many different vaccines and the development of insulin diabetes. His data included the pertussis, mumps, rubella, hepatitis B, hemophilus influenza and others. The data indicated people with vaccine induced diabetes may not develop the disease until 4 or more years after receiving a vaccine.
27. Ten Reasons to Just Say 'No' to Vaccinations
1. Vaccinations are toxins by definition.
2. Vaccinations are aggressively promoted by those who have a financial stake in
their consumption.
3. Vaccinations are promoted using fear, intimidation, and coercion.
4. Vaccinations are big business.
5. Vaccine manufacturers are nearly liability proof for their products.
6. Vaccinations are not only forced upon us, but those who deny us the exercise of
our free will refuse to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions.
7. Evidence suggests that vaccinations damage the immune system, the nervous system
and the spirit-mind-body connection.
8. Compulsory vaccinations ignore biochemical and psychospiritual individuality.
9. Vaccinations are misrepresented by government agencies as a public health issue
which they are not.
10. Vaccinations are heavily subsidized, heavily propagandized and can be seen as a
wake-up call for us to see how we allow ourselves to be programmed by huge vested
interests.
Idaho Observer
28. Dr Viera Scheibner, retired Principal Research Scientist for the NSW Government with a doctorate in Natural Sciences, has published 3 books and some 90 scientific papers in refereed scientific journals in Australia and overseas during her distinguished career.Dr Scheibner studied some 30,000 pages of medical papers dealing with vaccination. She found no evidence that vaccines are safe or effective. Vaccines are highly noxious. They contain formaldehyde, aluminium phosphate, thiomersal (mercury compound), foreign proteins (antigens) and contaminating animal proteins and viruses from the tissues used as growth medium to culture the viral and bacterial components of vaccines. None of these substances should ever be injected into human beings. They erode the immune system and alter the immunological response to diseases.
The appearance of many new, autoimmune diseases
like asthma, affecting alarming numbers of children, childhood leukaemia, and cancer, the
enormous upsurge in the incidence of cerebral palsy and infantile convulsions seen in
children of vaccination age and not before, should all be taken as serious warnings.
Infectious diseases contracted at the appropriate age and allowed to run their course are
beneficial because they serve to prime and mature the child's immune system.
http://www.pnc.com.au/~cafmr/index.html
29. Science News, in an article entitled "The Dark Side of Immunizations" (Nov. 22, 1997), reviewed several studies by New Zealand and by British researchers showing that vaccinated children have a higher incidence of asthma and diabetes than do unvaccinated children. The article notes that animal studies indicate that an absence of contact with naturally occurring viruses increases the risk of diabetes, and that research in humans suggests that some childhood infections may be advantageous in priming the child's immune system to fight off asthma. A 1994 study suggested that the pertussis vaccination of infants may increase the risk of asthma five-fold during childhood. (Odent MR, Culpin EE, Kimel T., "Pertussis vaccination and asthma: is there a link?" JAMA, 1994; 272:591-592.)
30. The French Health Ministry has
suspended hepatitis B vaccinations in schools because of evidence they can cause
neurological disorders or multiple sclerosis?
(New York Times, Oct. 3, 1998).
Across this country, newborn babies were being injected with hepatitis B vaccine only hours after birth and children are told they must present proof of having received three hepatitis B shots before they can be admitted to daycare, kindergarten, fifth grade or high school. Phyllis Schlafly Report-Eagle Forum-February 1999.
31. The truth is that vaccinations do not reduce the incidence of childhood diseases. To the contrary, they increase them. They can also cause a multitude of illnesses that are far worse than the childhood diseases themselves. http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=13924
32. People receiving the flu vaccine five years in a row are ten times more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease..
33. Vaccine Dangers and Vested Interests.
A retired vaccine researcher goes public on what the pharmaceutical industry and the
health authorities don't want us to know: that vaccines are unsafe, untested and one of
the greatest frauds of our time.
http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/VaccineResearcher.htm
35. Published June 16, 2005 by Salon.com
|
When a
study revealed that mercury in childhood vaccines may have caused autism in thousands of
kids, the government rushed to conceal the data -- and to prevent parents from suing drug
companies for their role in the epidemic. |
36. Immune System Damage From Vaccines
http://www.cure-
37. Parents watch with proud
satisfaction as their infant, just a few months old, begins to reach out into the
world—tiny hands grasping at toys and gently twirling locks of their mother's hair.
Just when they have begun to take a lively interest in the world, rolling-over, cooing,
and smiling, the first illnesses strike.
The baby's runny nose develops into a fever, fussiness, and night-waking. Her previously
placid demeanor suddenly changes to obvious discomfort—crying, clinging, refusing to
leave her mother's arms. The pediatrician sees red eardrums and prescribes antibiotics.
That first infection starts a seemingly endless battle against viral and bacterial
illnesses that persists despite repeated treatment with a barrage of different
antibiotics. Something is dreadfully wrong. Frequent visits to the pediatrician do nothing
to prevent the continuous pattern of illness—antibiotic—
Why do these illnesses begin when babies are three or four months old? What event triggers
this frustrating scenario? What happens to babies at two to four months that could
initiate this relentless course of symptoms? Perhaps maternal antibodies are beginning to
wear out, making babies susceptible to these environmental microbes. But why don't these
babies develop their own antibodies in response to the initial viral or bacterial
infections? What prevents the immune system from mounting a vigorous response? And why
does this pattern of illness with recurrent ear infections occur now, a pattern that
seldom occurred prior to thirty years ago? What is weakening the immune function of
today's infants?
The only event that all infants routinely encounter at two months of age is vaccination
with at least five different vaccines (Diphtheria-
One answer came in a careful study of illness patterns observed in babies before and after
vaccination. If vaccines cause a weakened immune system, then we would expect to see a
higher incidence of illness following vaccination. In that study the incidence of acute
illnesses in the 30 day period following DTP vaccine was compared to the incidence in the
same children for the 30 day period prior to vaccine. The three-day period immediately
following vaccine was excluded because children frequently develop fever as a direct
response to vaccine toxins. A total of 82 healthy infants received DTP, and their symptoms
were reported by parents and observed by a pediatrician at weekly intervals. Those babies
experienced a dramatic increase in fever, diarrhea, and cough in the month following DTP
vaccine compared to their health before the shot.
38.The incidence of asthma has
steadily increased in the modern era. During the period 1980 through 1989 the prevalence
rate of self-reported asthma in the United States increased 38 percent, and the
death rate for asthma increased 46 percent (Centers for Disease Control, 1992). In the
five years from 1985 through 1990, projected estimates for asthma's medical costs
increased 53 percent. The total estimated cost of asthma rose from $4.5 billion to $6.2
billion, or 1 percent of all US health-care costs (Weiss et al., 1992). This dramatic
increase has been attributed to increased exposure to environmental pollutants, and to the
toxic effect of asthma medications themselves.
Could vaccines be weakening the immune system of our populations and causing asthma and
allergies at unprecedented levels? A recent study suggests the answer is yes. A team of
New Zealand researchers, found a greater rate of asthma and allergy episodes among
immunized children. Of 1,265 children born in 1977, the 23 who did not receive the
diphtheria/pertussi
39. How do researchers investigate
immune system reactions to vaccines? First, they can observe the incidence of serious
disease onset soon after vaccination. They can also study immune functions following
vaccines given to children and adults. Two research models have been used to discover the
possible adverse effect of vaccines on the immune system. Laboratory researchers observe
whether vaccines have any negative effect on white blood cells, the body's primary immune
defense system. Clinical researchers study illness patterns preceding and following
vaccination. All of these investigative channels have reached the same
conclusions—vaccines can trigger immune system suppression.
Vaccines are destroying our immune systems. Amazingly, the medical profession ignores the
incriminating evidence against vaccines, and continues to inflict more unnecessary and
harmful vaccines on our nation's infants. A recent study from the New England Journal of
Medicine reported by Time magazine and the Associated Press revealed that tetanus vaccine
disables the immune system in HIV patients. Tetanus vaccination produced a drop in T cells
in 10 of 13 patients, a classic sign of immune deficiency. HIV viral replication increased
dramatically in response to tetanus vaccine. Finally, white blood cells from 7 of 10
uninfected individuals became more susceptible to HIV infection following tetanus
vaccination. Despite these findings, the authors made no comment about the immune
depleting effect of the vaccine (Stanley et al.,
1996).
40. Why is the public unaware of these
findings? Why has the medical profession kept these reports hidden from the public eye?
With typical condescension, Dr. Martin Smith, president of the American Academy of
Pediatrics, explained that the inclusion of this type of information in vaccine brochures
"would confuse many parents and could even needlessly alarm them" (AAP News,
1989). An uninformed patient is compliant.
The cover-up of immune system failure following vaccination is reminiscent of the tobacco
industry's continuous denial and disinformation campaign about the dangers of cigarettes.
In both instances huge profits are at stake in multibillion-
Doctors have often stated that broadcasting adverse effects of vaccines to the public
would hinder the vaccine campaign. This attitude emerged in congressional hearings more
than thirty years ago.
It is hard to convince the public that something is good. Consequently, the best way to
push forward a new program is to decide on what you think the best decision is and not
question it thereafter, and further, not to raise questions before the public or expose
the public to open discussion of the issues (Intensive Immunization Programs, Hearings,
1962).
41. The medical profession has been
aware of the damaging effects of vaccines on the immune system since their introduction.
For example, the ability of pertussis and DTP vaccines to stimulate the onset of paralytic
polio was first noted in 1909. In every polio epidemic since then DTP injections have
caused the onset of polio disease.
In 1950, two careful studies were conducted in the state of New York to evaluate the
reports of an association between the onset of paralytic polio and recent injections.
Investigators contacted the families of all children who contracted polio during that
year, a total of 1,300 cases in New York City and 2,137 cases in the remainder of New York
State. A history of vaccinations received in the previous two months was obtained on each
child and from a group of matched controls in the same population. Those studies
discovered that children with polio were twice as likely to have received a DTP
vaccination in the two months preceding the onset of polio than were the control children.
(Korns et al., 1952; Greenberg et al.,
1952).
42. The association of vaccines with
the onset of polio continues in the modern age. During a recent polio epidemic in Oman,
DTP vaccination again caused the onset of paralytic polio In that epidemic, 70 children 5
to 24 months old contracted paralytic polio during the period 1988-1989. When compared to
a control group of children without polio, it was found that a significantly higher
percentage of these children had received a DTP shot within 30 days of the onset of polio,
43 percent of polio victims compared to 28 percent of controls (Sutter et al., 1992). The
DTP vaccine suppresses the body's ability to fight off the polio virus.
The destructive effect of vaccines on the immune system can persist over an extended
period of time. One study documented a long-term depressive effect on interferon
production. Interferon is a chemical produced by lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell)
that renders the host resistant to infection. Interferon production is stimulated by
infection with a virus to protect the body from superinfection by some other organism. In
this study, vaccination of one-year-old infants with measles vaccine caused a precipitous
drop in the level of alpha-interferon produced by lymphocytes. This decline persisted for
one year following vaccination, at which time the experiment was terminated. Thus, this
study showed that measles vaccine produced a significant long-term immune suppression. (Nakayama et al., 1988)
43. Autoimmune Reactions to Vaccines
An 11 year old girl received a routine tetanus booster dose and three days later developed
blindness in the right eye and light perception only in the left eye. Her optic discs were
swollen on exam. Two days later she had partial paralysis of her legs and loss of bladder
control, then more widespread sensory loss including a lack of vibrational and positional
senses. Seven weeks later she still had some vision loss and decreased muscle power.
Within one year she recovered. (Topaloglu et al., 1992).
44. A 20 year old woman experienced pain and swelling of her right wrist and fingers 4 days after a hepatitis vaccination. The pain and swelling resolved, but returned again 6 months later with more severe swelling and pain, following a second hepatitis vaccination. Nine years later, X-ray of the hands showed destruction of the bones throughout her wrist joints (Gross et al., 1995).
45. A 42 year old man received tetanus toxoid on three separate occasions over a period of 13 years. Following each vaccination he developed acute nerve symptoms diagnosed as Guillain-Barré syndrome, a disease of the nervous system characterized by rapid onset of motor weakness and loss of sensation. (Pollard & Selby, 1978). A nerve biopsy revealed destruction of the myelin nerve sheath. Following his last injection he continued to experience multiple recurrences, and continued to show abnormal findings on examination 15 years later (Pollard, 1993).
46. What is the effect of long-term
immune suppression? Some investigators are concerned that vaccines could be disabling our
body's ability to react normally to disease, and creating the climate for autoimmune
self-destruction. The many reports of autoimmune phenomena that occur as reactions to
vaccination provide incontrovertible proof that tampering with the immune system causes
devastating disease.
Federal legislation of 1986 commissioned the Institute of Medicine to establish a Vaccine
Safety Committee. The purpose of that committee was to search the medical literature for
reports of adverse events associated with the vaccines routinely administered to children,
and report their findings. Computer searches revealed 1,800 relevant articles. However,
the committee's rigid criteria for establishing a causal relationship between vaccine and
adverse event made it nearly impossible for a disease condition to make their short list.
Without a case-controlled study proving a relationship, the hundreds of case reports of
immune system destruction following vaccines were relegated to coincidence.
Case-controlled studies are expensive. They must include tens or hundreds of thousands of
children.
Even the Vaccine Safety Committee acknowledged the onset of several autoimmune
diseases as a result of vaccination (Guillain-Barré syndrome following tetanus and polio
vaccines, that causes muscle weakness and paralysis; thrombocytopenia, destruction of
blood platelets responsible for blood clotting, following MMR; and chronic arthritis
following rubella). These types of symptoms have occurred following every vaccine
routinely given to children—the suppressed immune system begins to attack the body's
own cells, usually the nerves and joints. Thousands of autoimmune incidents following
vaccines have been reported in the medical literature and adverse event reporting systems
(Neustaedter, 1996). These autoimmune responses to vaccines have resulted in permanent,
chronic disease conditions—deforming arthritis and muscle wasting and paralysis.
In their attempt to explain the repeated occurrence of autoimmune diseases that attack and
destroy the myelin sheaths of nerves as a direct result of vaccines, the committee members
explain:
It is biologically plausible that injection of an inactivated virus, bacterium, or live
attenuated virus might induce in the susceptible host an autoimmune response by
deregulation of the immune response, by nonspecific activation of the T cells directed
against myelin proteins, or by autoimmuniity triggered by sequence similarities of
proteins in the vaccine to host proteins such as those of myelin (Institute of Medicine,
1994).
Since the committee's report, a large ecological study in New Zealand revealed that an
epidemic of diabetes followed a massive campaign to vaccinate children against hepatitis
B. This report, published in the New Zealand Medical Journal in 1996 revealed that a 60
percent increase in childhood diabetes occurred in the years following the
1989-1991vaccinatio
47.
http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=115342006
Family sues over alleged MMR link to autism
TANYA THOMPSON HOME AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT
A SCOTS family will launch a multi-million-pound lawsuit at the High Court
in London today, claiming the MMR vaccine was responsible for causing
autism in their child.
The test case, which could open the floodgates to hundreds of similar
actions, is set to reignite the fierce debate over the safety of the mumps,
measles and rubella jab.
The family, from Glasgow, is among nine suing the government in a joint
action. They cannot be identified for legal reasons.
Legal experts said that if the challenge is successful, each child could
receive £5 million in compensation.
The parents are seeking a judicial review at the Court of Appeal over a
decision by the Legal Services Commission to withdraw legal aid. Denied
financial assistance, they have been forced to bring the case to court
themselves.
Arguments over the triple vaccine have divided families and even elements
of the medical fraternity, both at home and abroad.
Dr Andrew Wakefield first spoke of the possible link between autism and MMR
back in 1998, but since then several studies have concluded that the jab is
not linked to such disorders.
Jackie Fletcher, the founder of JABS, a "support group for vaccine-damaged
children", has campaigned for more than a decade on behalf of hundreds of
families affected by autism.
She said today's case was a final attempt to access justice for children in
the UK courts. If unsuccessful, the parents will go to the European Court
of Human Rights, she said.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health insisted MMR was safe and urged
parents to have their children vaccinated.
48. "The willing soldier became an unwitting
victim to the vaccinations he was required to take to deploy. And as CBS Correspondent
Sharyl Attkisson reports, he's not the only one."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/01/eveningnews/main603284.shtml
49. Cal-Oregon Unvaccinated Survey
"We surveyed over 9,000 boys in California and Oregon and found that vaccinated boys
had a 155% greater chance of having a neurological disorder like ADHD or autism than
unvaccinated boys."
http://www.generationrescue.org/survey.html
50. SEX VIRUS VACCINE LINKED TO THREE DEATHS
Sunday June 24,2007
By Lucy Johnston
THREE deaths have beenlinked to the controversial sex virus jab health officials want to
give to all 12-year-old girls.
8. Doctors suspect the jab, which protects against a sexually transmitted human papilloma
virus that causes cervical cancer, may also be linked to 1,700 “adverse
reactions. Daily Express
51. Michael Belkin
Testimony to Congress
Tuesday, May 18,1999
18. My daughter Lyla Rose Belkin died on September 16, 1998 at the age of five weeks,
about 15 hours after receiving her second Hepatitis B vaccine booster shot. Lyla was a
lively, alert five-week-old baby when I last held her in my arms. Little did I imagine as
she gazed intently into my eyes with all the innocence and wonder of a newborn child that
she would die that night. She was never ill before receiving the Hepatitis B shot that
afternoon. At her final feeding that night, she was extremely agitated, noisy and feisty
-- and then she fell asleep suddenly and stopped breathing. The autopsy ruled out choking,
The NY Medical Examiner ruled her death Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).
But the NY Medical Examiner (Dr. Persechino) neglected to mention Lyta's swollen brain or
the hepatitis B vaccine in the autopsy report. The coroner spoke to my wife and I and our
pediatrician (Dr. Zullo) the day of the autopsy and clearly stated that her brain was
swollen. The pediatrician Dr. Zullo's notes of that conversation are "brain
swollen...not sure cause yet...could not see how recombiant vaccine could cause
problem."
52. A report in Infectious Diseases in Clinical Practice showed that the incidence of diabetes in Finland was stable in children under four years of age until the government made several changes in its childhood vaccination schedule. The introduction of these new vaccines in that country were followed by a 62% rise in the incidence of diabetes in the 0 to 4 year-old age group, and a 19% rise of diabetes in the 5 to 9 year-old age group between the years 1980-82 and 1987-89. (October 22, 1997)
54. Consider the DPT shot. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been paid out to parents of vaccine-disabled or vaccine-killed children, generally due to the pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine in particular. According to statistics compiled by the National Vaccine Information Center, in a 39-month period between July, 1990 and November, 1993, "1,576 children died from adverse reactions to common vaccines" in the U.S. (Rochester, NY Democrat & Chronicle March 3, 1994. Figures do not include deaths following the vaccine that were attributed "pre-existing condition", or "heart failure".
55. The generation of children injured by vaccines containing thimerosal is now reaching puberty. Many of these children will require life-long care and support. The cost to their parents by today's standards, will reportedly exceed $2 million dollars for each child. Conspiracy PlanetRj
56. Alternative Medicine Digest
The rate of chronic illness in children has tripled since 1960,
possibly due in part to the overuse of childhood vaccinations. The surprising news is that
the standard childhood
illnesses these
vaccines suppress may actually benefit the immune system.
One of the best ways to ensure your children's health is to allow them
to get sick. At first hearing, this concept may sound outrageous. Yet standard childhood
illnesses, such as measles, mumps, and even whooping cough, may be of key benefit to a
child's developing immune system and it may be inadvisable to suppress these illnesses
with immunisations. Evidence is also accumulating that routine childhood vaccinations may
directly contribute to the emergence of chronic problems such as eczema, ear infections,
asthma, and bowel inflammations. Philip Incao, M.D.
57. Arlington, September 11, 2000: Dr.
J. Bart Classen, an immunologist at Classen Immunotherapies, presented data yesterday at
the International Public Conference on Vaccination which proved vaccines are the largest
cause of Insulin Dependent Diabetes in Children. His data indicated that vaccines cause
approximately 80% of cases of insulin dependent diabetes in children who have received
multiple vaccines starting after 2 months of life.
Dr. Classen presented data supporting a causal relationship between many different
vaccines and the development of insulin diabetes. His data included the pertussis, mumps,
rubella, hepatitis B, hemophilus influenza and others. The data indicated people with
vaccine induced diabetes may not develop the disease until 4 or more years after receiving
a vaccine.
58. Third Heart Attack Death Reported
Following Smallpox Vaccination
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,82487,00.html
59. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been paid out to parents of vaccine-disabled or vaccine-killed children, generally due to the pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine in particular. According to statistics compiled by the National Vaccine Information Center, in a 39-month period between July, 1990 and November, 1993,
60. Mandatory Vaccines are one of the more devastating horrors being foisted upon people all over the world.
Vaccines are all about money. When the cost of a shot goes from 11 cents to 11 dollars, it’s clear that manufacturing costs are not driving the price.http://www.halexandria.org/dward054.htm
62. "We must get vaccines removed from the
marketplace, and prevent our corrupted government from forcing these poisons down our
"throats".
http://www.rense.com/general58/vacc.htm
63. DOCTORS AND SCIENTISTS CONDEMN
VACCINATION
http://www.vaccinationdebate.com/web3.html
64. A 1992 study published in The American
Journal of Epidemiology shows that children die at a rate 8 times greater than
normal within three days after getting a DPT vaccination.
http://www.mercola.com/article/vaccines/statistics.htm
65. Thousands Have Gotten Sick from Gardasil HPV
Vaccine
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2007/12/22/thousands-have-gotten-sick-from-gardasil-hpv-vaccine.aspx
66. Dr. W. Torch was able to document 12
deaths in infants which appeared within 3½ and 19 hours of a DPT immunization. He later
reported 11 new cases of SIDS death and one near miss which had occurred within 24 hours
of a DPT injection. When he studied 70 cases of SIDS two thirds of these victims[6] had been vaccinated from one half day to 3 weeks prior to their
deaths. None of these deaths was attributed to vaccines. Vaccines are a sacred cow and
nothing against them appears in the mass media because they are so profitable to
pharmaceutical firms.
http://www.newswithviews.com/Howenstine/james.htm
67. I am a moderator of an epilepsy group and I am
so saddened at how many parents keep coming to our group due to seizures after
vaccinations. I know personally what it is like to have a child with uncontrollable
seizures all day long. It is so hard for me to understand why the big issue with vaccine
dangers is always autism, but the other conditions are "swept under the rug". I
know autism affects a larger number of kids. When I have spoken with new parents about
vaccinations, they are falsely assuming that since mercury has been taken out of vaccines,
they don't have to worry about autism. But what about everything else? Is this the type of
thing that people have to wait until it happens to them before they will take notice?
Stephanie Precourt, Yahoo Vaccination Group
68. Judicial Watch, the public interest group that
investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released new documents obtained
from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the provisions of the Freedom of
Information Act, detailing 1,824 reports of adverse reactions to the vaccination for human
papillomavirus (HPV), Gardasil, including as many as eight deaths related to the vaccine.
Judicial Watch had previously obtained 1,637 reports relating to Gardasil on May 15, 2007,
bringing the known total to 3,461 adverse reactions including eleven deaths since FDA
approval.
http://www.docuticker.com/?p=16896
69....information we have found about
pediatric brain tumors and about childhood vaccinations..
http://www.ouralexander.org/
70.EIGHT DEATHS LINKED TO LABOUR’S NEW SEX JAB
FOR SCHOOLGIRLS
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/23410/Eight-deaths-linked-to-Labour-s-ne
71. A TV documentary screened in Norway showed the
shocking long-term effects of a vaccine recently injected into one million healthy New
Zealand children.
tp://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/GE0610/S00065.htm
72. "Fever and rashes afflicted Gina, now 9,
each time she received a vaccination, her mother said. But when Gina became reclusive and
introverted after five vaccinations in one day when she was about 15 months old, Neil
wondered if those treatments were causing her daughter's health problems."
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/health/s_536338.html
73. "A recently released survey indicates a
strong correlation between childhood vaccinations and rates of neurological disorders,
such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and autism."
http://www.mywire.com/pubs/Mothering/2007/09/01/4472360?cl=false&pbl=261
74. Shingles Vaccine, Zostavax, Causing Severe
Reactions
http://sayingnotovaccines.blogspot.com/2007/08/shingles-vaccine-zostavax-causing.html
75. "We surveyed over 9,000 boys in California
and Oregon and found that vaccinated boys had a 155% greater chance of having a
neurological disorder like ADHD or autism than unvaccinated boys." - Generation
Rescue
http://www.generationrescue.org/survey.html
76. Vaccines Often The Cause of "Multiple
Sclerosis & Other DEMYELINATING Diseases"
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2007/03/27/vaccines_often_the_cause_of_multiple_sclerosis_other_demyelinating_diseases.htm
77. FOUR leading Midland doctors who deemed the
controversial MMR vaccine safe have links to the drug giants who make or supply the jab. Sunday Mercury; 2/29/2004
http://www.vaccinetruth.org/conflict_of_interest.htm
78. Nationwide Revolt continues to grow as
Presidential candidate denounces FDA and forced immunization
http://www.infowars.net/articles/january2008/230108Vaccines.htm
79. "Every time you hear of the tragic death of an infant, carried off in the first weeks of life by 'viral meningitis', you have the right to suspect that BCG TB vaccine (tuberculosis) is at work,.." http://www.vaccinetruth.org/viral_meningitis.htm
80. A SLOW-ONSET TETANUS VACCINE REACTION
http://www.whale.to/a/tet2.html
81. The Hindu -
Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Children had seizures
after vaccine shots, central team told
http://www.hindu.com/2008/04/26/stories/2008042653670400.htm
82. When Doctors Don't Vaccinate Their Own Children
http://cure-guide.com/Natural_Health_Newsletter/Doctors_Decline_Vaccines/doctors_decline_vaccines.html
83. According to the Sunday Telegraph, a secret
government report details cases of 18 deaths of infants following vaccination during the
last four years.
Four deaths followed MMR vaccination.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1510273/Secret-report-reveals-18-child-deaths-following-vaccinations.html
84. If two dozen once-jittery mice at UBC are
telling the truth postmortem, the world's governments may soon be facing one hell of a
lawsuit.
http://www.straight.com/article/vaccines-show-sinister-side?#
85. Ten Reasons to Just Say 'No' to Vaccinations
http://www.alternative-doctor.com/vaccination/james.html
86. Four leading Midland doctors who deemed the
controversial MMR vaccine safe have links to the drug giants who make or supply the jab.
http://icbirmingham.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/mercury/page.cfm?objectid=14001726&method=full&siteid=50002
87. Childhood Vaccinations = DEATH
http://home1.gte.net/carriet/ChildVaccinations.htm
88. http://prelive.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23974632-2,00.html
Cancer vaccine linked to illness in women
89. Massive jump in cancer jab reactions
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23974703-5006010,00.html
90. Vaccines Cause Micro-Vascular Strokes: Dr.
Andrew Moulden, Canadian Doctor
http://newsblaze.com:80/story/20080927170755tsop.nb/topstory.html
