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Vaccines Safe Say Those Who Gave Us Vioxx, Bextra, Baycol, Trovan, Phen-Fen, Xarelto, Raxar, Seldane…

two blue latex gloves and a syringe
The truth is not all vaccines are safe, life-saving or necessary and conflicts of interest do exist.

It is not surprising mainstream scientists are vaccine absolutists who vilify anti-vaccine activists given that their medical centers, hospital wings, universities and sometimes personal paychecks are funded by Pharma. What is surprisingly is that progressive news sites that challenge government pronouncements on every other level also vilify anti-vaccine activists as “unscientific.”

Are progressive news sites forgetting Vioxx, Bextra, Baycol, Trovan, Meridia, Darvon, HRT, Phen-Fen, Raxar, Seldane, Ketek, Avandia and Xarelto—-all called safe when they were making millions?

Neither mainstream or progressive news sites want to acknowledge the existence of the federal National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) which, since 1988, has settled more than 16,000 claims and awarded $3.18 billion in injury settlements. When I asked a vaccine expert why the court existed if vaccines are unremittingly safe he told me that vaccines are so basic to public health yet so non-lucrative (compared to billion dollar pills), the government does not want vaccine makers bankrupted by lawsuits.

But ignoring the court and the ghastly injuries it settles—I was told, off the record, about a woman who lost her fingers and toes from vasculitis caused by a vaccine—mainstream scientists are the ones who are “unscientific.” The truth is not all vaccines are safe, life-saving or necessary and conflicts of interest do exist. Consider the case of Gardasil, a vaccine against the human papillomavirus vaccine types 6, 11, 16, 18.

The Case of Gardasil

A few years ago, Merck aggressively marketed Gardasil, a vaccine against the HPV virus (which is linked to venereal warts and cervical cancer)—even in poor countries where cervical cancer is hardly a leading cause of death compared to malaria or diarrheal diseases. (In developed countries, a Pap test is as effective as a vaccine in preventing cervical cancer.)

Last year, judges in India’s Supreme Court demanded answers after children died during a trial of Gardasil and Cervarix, GlaxoSmithKline’s counterpart vaccine, a few years earlier.

According to CBS News there was another cloud over Gardasil. “Merck gave $6,000 to [Texas Gov. Rick] Perry’s election campaign fund as part of a national lobbying effort to persuade states that it ought to require Gardasil as one of the vaccines all kids should have before attending school,” it wrote. The director of a Merck-funded pro-Gardasil group was also Perry’s then-chief of staff’s mother-in-law.

Nor did the departure of former CDC director Julie Gerberding to head Merck’s vaccines division look right to many ethics specialists.

Docs Gone Bad

Mainstream scientists have savaged Andrew Wakefield, a British medical researcher found to have conducted fraudulent research linking the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR). His corruption is said to disprove any scientific doubts about vaccine safety.

Yet when researchers in the U.S. have been so corrupt they have gone to jail, mainstream scientists still accept their research. Scott Reuben published fraudulent research on Lyrica, Effexor, Celebrex and other drugs for Pharma. He went to prison for six months but the “science” behind the drugs he promoted stands. Richard Borison, former psychiatry chief at Augusta Veterans Affairs (VA) medical center and Medical College of Georgia, went to prison for 15 years for using clinical trials on veterans of the antipsychotic Seroquel to line his own pockets. The drug went on to earn billions and his for-profit “research” still stands.

As a reporter I have interviewed a man whose blindness was caused by a 1976 flu vaccine for which the government compensated him. More recently I interviewed a parent whose normal toddler was never the same after a vaccine and is now institutionalized. “He cried hysterically for 24 hours,” the parent, who is a medical practitioner, told me.

Pharma is unwise to cast such parents, of whom there are many, as “nuts.” The degeneration of their child is not their imagination. Also, there is no defensible reason for vaccines to be given all at once to a child, which many say heightens risks. Administering clusters of vaccines—once not given to children—has been called a major, new profit center for pediatricians.

But anti-vaccination activists should also not be absolutist. Vaccines are not a “conspiracy”—they are Pharma business as usual. Many are life-saving. Would anyone refuse a rabies vaccine after being bitten by a rabid raccoon? A tetanus shot after a serious wound? Would responsible parents deny their child a whooping cough or polio vaccine?

Like all drugs aggressively marketed these days, patients and parents need to do their own research and weigh benefits and risks—never forgetting Pharma’s spotty safety record.


Note: This article was reprinted with the author’s permission. It was originally published in The Huffington Post, but was subsequently removed. Martha Rosenberg is a nationally recognized investigative health reporter whose food and drug expose, Born with a Junk Food Deficiency, won an American Society of Journalists and Authors honorable mention. Rosenberg has appeared on CSPAN, National Public Radio and lectured at the medical school and university levels.

13 Responses

  1. Let’s be clear that following a serious wound where it’s thought an exposure to tetanus may have occurred, tetanus toxoid would be indicated, not a tetanus shot.

  2. I appreciate the general sentiment of this article, but I find some of the assertions to be dubious.

    “What is surprising is that progressive news sites that challenge government pronouncements on every other level also vilify anti-vaccine activists as “unscientific.””

    This does not agree with my experience. I have found that progressive news sites (with a few exceptions) rarely challenge government pronouncements, unless of course the Republican party is in power.

    “Mainstream scientists have savaged Andrew Wakefield, a British medical researcher found to have conducted fraudulent research linking the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR). His corruption is said to disprove any scientific doubts about vaccine safety.”

    Yes, but the article leaves unsaid that this libeling of Wakefield was completely without foundation.

    “But anti-vaccination activists should also not be absolutist. Vaccines are not a “conspiracy”—they are Pharma business as usual. Many are life-saving. Would anyone refuse a rabies vaccine after being bitten by a rabid raccoon? A tetanus shot after a serious wound? Would responsible parents deny their child a whooping cough or polio vaccine?”

    The author thinks that all of these scenarios support the use of vaccines, yet all are highly debatable. I agree that a dogmatic approach here may not be optimal, but she should at least realize that she may not have the whole story in regard to the vaccines in question. She herself may be a hostage to dogmatic thinking.

    But more importantly, an absolutist approach is definitely warranted, but not in the way that many in the movement have approached the issue in the past. We should be 100% against the government vaccine program and push for its abolition. Whether and to what extent vaccines have a place in our health care may be open to question and subject to individual research, but there is no reason whatsoever to support government central planning and regimentation of health care. That is where our focus should be and where we need to stand firm. We need a separation of vaccines and state.

  3. Actually, I think given the contamination, unpredictability and severity of side effects, mass deception regarding historical efficacy, lies about herd immunity, compromised regulatory environment, and complete lack of liability and accountability for vaccines built in to the entire medical system, it is perfectly reasonable to adopt an absolutist stance against vaccines.

    There is ZERO evidence that ANY vaccine is “safe and effective.” All vaccines include serious risks including permanent brain damage and death, and not a single vaccine guarantees any type of immunity. Immunity to these diseases is not checked before or after vaccine administration, therefore vaccine efficacy has only ever been assumed and has never ever ever been proven.

    So to say that we should not adopt an absolutist position against vaccines is fallacious. That is simply catering to the sensitive feelings of the pro-vaccine zealots who want to pretend that our stance has no credibility. Vaccines *may* prevent *symptoms* of diseases, however they do not prevent transmission, they create assymptomatic carriers. Live virus vaccines, like oral polio, MMR and chickenpox, shed and can cause the very disease that they purport to prevent in other individuals, so there goes the herd immunity hypothesis right there.

    There is no legitimate unbiased science in support of vaccines at all. Only marketing, hyperbole, and the faith of everyone who buys into the paradigm. This is not enough to justify considering anything other than an absolutist stance against vaccines.

    1. I am totally with you and there are so many villains, from Corporate crooks to Government crooks, and from the CDC to MDs, some following blindly and some following treachously just for the money! It’s a terribly messed-up story with many more victims (countless millions) than perpetrators! It is past time to put a nail in this coffin and be thankful for the Whistleblowers like MD Andy Wakefield who was racked over the coals yet never backed down!

  4. Incompetent Doctors giving you a Vaccine , shouldn’t even have a Driver’s License . Organized Crime Pill Pushers . Murdering My Family . MURDER HEALTH CARE SYSTEM . Healthcare Controlled by the Mentally ILL .

  5. Great article until I came to your last paragraph.I would (and have) refused a tetanus shot unless the wound was acquired in and old farm yard barn. You really should do more research also on the polio vaccine where the decline in polio was already 85% complete at the inception of mass polio vaccinations. (and also the same decline was experienced in Europe where there was not mass immunization at the time) Also whooping cough outbreaks you see in the news usually involve far more “vaccinated” children than unvaccinated. I agree with you that vaccines do not involve science. There has never been one single double blind study done on any vaccine (for obvious reasons).

  6. I have a question maybe someone can answer for me. If one suffers a good puncture wound. Can a tetanus vaccination actually help for that SPECIFIC injury ? ..Wouln’t the tetni set up its neurological destructive force before the body can actually set up a proper defense for the bacteria? I have always thought that it was to late for that specific situation but would help for any further puncture wounds? Any thoughts on this..

  7. I have to say I’m confused as to why so many articles, such as this one, describe vaccines as ineffective and dangerous, only to go on and say that if the danger was removed, a responsible person would vaccinate. As if removing the danger would make a vaccine effective. Cognitive dissonance people!

  8. Consider the source–pathological liars and corrupt idiots–follow the money–they need to be replaced and they should be imprisoned and force fed all the vaccines–if I ever see that damn ofit–i will slap his ugly face-name soots the asshole –OFF IT–his rocking chair

  9. Anyone worried about polio should watch Suzanne Humphries YouTube video. I am forever grateful for whoever posted her information on another comment section. I have been reading learning watching since then. Amazing information.

  10. I couldn’t agree more with the writer that on the subject of vaccines, the normally skeptical critics of Big Pharma suspend all logic and reason. Many doctors and nurses and journalists totally ignore science to promote unconditional acceptance of any and all vaccines, and fraudulent vaccine research. As a progressive and spiritual – Christian person, I find this disturbing.
    There are several things in the article I don’t agree with. One is the take on Dr. Wakefield, which I suspect the writer has not investigated personally. As far as I know, his research is not in question and his colleague was exonerated by a judge who wrote a scathing opinion on his disbarment by the British Medical Association.
    There are many readers here who don’t believe that vaccines play any role in preventing disease. I’m not on that band wagon although I understand the thinking of people who are.

  11. I second the concern about the repeated libelling of Andrew Wakefield. Nowadays he is effectively cleared. Wakefield’s co-author J A Walker Smith was completely exonerated and had his medical licence restored. Wakefield did not go down this path as his Medical Defence Organisation refused to fund the challenge, but the conclusion is obvious: If Walker Smith, as an equal co-author in the paper, was found not guilty, then there can’t be anything much wrong with the paper or any of the co-authors- including Wakefield.
    However, the negativity continues and the old libel against Wakefield persists simply by repetition.

    Now, regarding the failure of the “progressive press” to address the vaccine story in an even handed way, I don’t think that is so surprising.

    The “debunkers” have their sights firmly set on those who are pro choice in vaccination, they have their sights set on any “alternative therapy”, they are consistently against individual rights, and they are consistently atheist and hard line materialist. They can be seen on other forums (often using the same names) attacking any research on psi type effects and on any evidence of persistence of consciousness after death (and there is substantial evidence for both of these).

    So in short there is likely to be significant overlap between many of the pro vaxxer followers of scientism, and many in the progressive press– they are also likely to hold very similar views- particularly on the subject of the centrally controlled state with little room for freedom of choice.

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