AGE OF AUTISM

Barbara Loe Fisher: Desperate Times for Vaccine Risk Denialism

Note: This post is from the NVIC site, please add them to your favorites and check frequently for up to date vaccination facts, data and news.  Their vaccine exemption chart by state has helped countless families learn their personal healthcare rights for themselves, and their children.

By Barbara Loe Fisher

These are desperate times for those denying vaccine risks. We know it because we are witnessing so many acts of desperation being committed by doctors determined to shut down the public conversation about vaccination and health. Vaccine risk deniers are working overtime to restrict public access to information, cover up vaccine injuries and deaths and violate the human right to informed consent to medical risk-taking.
 
No Flu Shots? No Employment.
 
2013 was only a few days old when public health agencies and medical trade groups called for veteran nurses and other health care workers to be fired for refusing to obey orders to get annual flu shots – no exceptions and no questions asked. 1 It did not matter that the risky and notoriously ineffective influenza vaccine turned out to be almost useless in preventing infection with the most prevalent influenza strains circulating in the U.S. this year. 2
 
Proposed State Legislation to Force Vaccine Use
 
This was followed by the introduction of legislation backed by public health officials and Pharma-funded medical trade groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics in states like Texas, Oregon, Arizona and Vermont. 3 Their goal is to remove or restrict non-medical vaccine exemptions in state laws so doctors have more power to force vaccine use by children and adults - no questions asked and no exceptions....    Read the full article at NVIC.org.

Autism One Congressional Panel To Feature Dan Burton

“Throughout my decades in public service, I have strived to give consideration to those whose issues fall through the cracks of our government, and to those who become targets of government authorities for daring to deliver or seek alternative therapies.”

Congressman Dan Burton retired from Congress earlier this year. As many of you know, he was a champion for our children with autism, confronted the use of mercury in vaccines and fought to bring accountability and change to federal public health establishment. His leadership of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in the last decade focused our nation on mercury in vaccines for the first time.

As he leaves public service, Congressman Burton continues to urge his colleagues to focus on alternate and complementary medicine, the increase in autism, malfeasance at the CDC and stark injustice in the VICP. Congressman Burton also commented on the implications of Unanswered Questions from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program – the only member of the federal government to do so.

Please take a moment to read through Congressman Burton’s final message to his congressional colleagues in the Congressional Record. Mr. Burton will speak on a panel along with Congressman Bill Posey and retired Congressman Dave Weldon on Friday, May 24, at the Autism One/Generation Rescue Conference.  This session should be exciting. And it will be an opportunity for all of us to say “Thank you, Congressman.” 

Take Action: Ask Your Rep to Sponsor HR 1757 Vaccine Safety Study Act

Take Action: Ask your Rep to Sponsor HR 1757   (Read the bill HERE.)

Take Action!


Requires large scale study of vax v. un-vax   
 
Please click on the Take Action Link above to send a message to your member of the House of Representatives asking him or her to co-sponsor House Resolution H.R.1757, The Vaccine Safety Study Act. This bill directs the National Institutes of Health to conduct a retrospective study of health outcomes, including autism, of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children. The NIH adamantly refuses to do any study that compares health outcomes in these two groups. You have to wonder why.

The bill was introduced several days ago by Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) and is co-sponsored by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), who has long championed this cause. As a bi-partisan effort, we are optimistic that H.R. 1757 can move the House in a positive direction, if we make a strong effort to support this bill.

Now many of you are probably thinking, “Why would we expect the NIH to do an honest study?” That is an excellent question. But at the very least supporting this bill will help educate the house on the shoddy methods that are standard operating procedures in the vaccine industry.

Please share this message with friends and family and please post to Facebook and other social networks. And if you support the work of the Autism Action Network please like us on Facebook.

 
 
 

Trumped Up March UK Measles "Epidemic": 1 Lab Confirmed Case in 183

An important post from Child Health Safety in the UK - the gov't and media trumped up an epidemic for no other purpose other than than to further damage Andrew Wakefield's reputation and ramp up fear among parents to force more MMR jabs.

[ED: CHECK OUT COMMENTS AT END FOR LATEST FIGURES FOR APRIL AND DISCUSSION - ADDED 4 May 2013 @ 10:30 UTC/05:30 EST/11:30 GMT]

Big Headline – but a very short posting to the links to the official figures just published by Public Health Wales.  You will not believe your eyes – so download them and see for yourself. Links to the full official statistics reports below from Public Health Wales.

If you take any notice of the British press you will know that the “epicenter” of this British epidemic of epic earthquake proportions – is Swansea in Wales UK.  That is where all the fuss is about.
Guess how many cases of measles there really were – no – not the huge numbers  the British media reported.

There was just ONE laboratory confirmed case out of 183 notified cases in March – that is 18,200% over-diagnosed – or put another way – 0.005 of notified measles cases were really measles.  And hey, lots of them have not been vaccinated and they still have not caught measles.  How about that.

Read the full blog post and statistics at Child Health Safety.

SaneVax: How Gardasil Changed My Life

Managing Editor's Note: Below is the story of Kirstie, who became "one less" at the age of 12, and whose life was changed. Kirstie, a young woman who reminds me of our own Natalie Palumbo with her spirit, positive attitude and ability to use a trauma as a springboard to a bright future, write about her experience with the genital wart virus that was first sold to American females as a "cancer" vaccine meant to reduce worry. Thank you to Kirstie for sharing her story. And thank you to SaneVax for continuing to educate the American public about the reality of teen and young adult vaccination.

In 2007, Gardasil was a new vaccine which was supposed to make you one less girl who had to worry about cervical cancer. My parents thought it would be a wonderful way to protect me as I grew up. How could we have known the first injection would set off a chain of events that would alter my life forever?

At 12 years old, sports were a huge part of my life. Basketball, soccer, softball, dodge-ball, lacrosse – you name it. If it involved outdoor recreation, you could probably find me there.

I got my first Gardasil shot on the 23^rd of April 2007. Shortly after, I started getting strange bruises on my arms and legs. No one thought much of it because we all assumed I had been injured playing the sports I so dearly loved. None of us thought it might be connected to the vaccine I had recently received.

May 29, 2007, I received the second injection. The unusual bruising got worse. Over the weekend of June 29^th and 30^th I hemorrhaged for two hours during each day. When I went to the doctor on Monday, they immediately sent me to the hospital to meet with a pediatric hematologist. I left the hospital with a diagnosis of Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (ITP).

According to the Mayo Clinic, Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), also called immune thrombocytopenic purpura, is a blood-clotting disorder that can lead to easy or excessive bruising and bleeding. ITP results from unusually low levels of platelets — the cells that help your blood clot.

Because of my low platelet count, I could not play any of the sports I loved for over a year. This was very hard for me to understand and accept. It made me very sad not to be able to participate in the activities that I loved. It was difficult to watch everyone else playing and having fun, while my activities were being limited.

Looking back, I can see how when one door closes, another opens. Because I couldn’t play sports, I had extra time to do other things. I discovered a passion for music and began to take private voice lessons and a musical theater class. Since I was unable to play sports, I began to focus on singing and performing.

In the past few years, I have become a very successful classical singer. I have won some prestigious awards and have been accepted into some excellent colleges for vocal performance with a concentration in music education, or music therapy. Had it not been for the extra time I had, I may have never have discovered my musical talent. Now, I focus most of my energy on singing and the performing arts. I am not sure that would have happened if my life had not been changed by ITP. My career path has definitely been influenced by the diagnosis which set me on a path that I am pleased to be on...   Read the full post at SaneVax.

Transcript: Statement from Andrew Wakefield

Below is the transcript from Dr. Andrew Wakefield's video statement (with special thanks to Jeannette Bishop for correcting the text).

Good morning. The first thing that I want to say is that  I did not seek out this latest media maelstrom. It came about because of an outbreak of measles in South Wales in the United  Kingdom for which I have been blamed by her Majesty's government.  So I did not seek this out but now it seems I have been denied the  opportunity to redress the allegations that have been made against me by members of the government; by members of public health and that is clearly unacceptable.
So legitimate debate about the safety of MMR vaccine and the origin of the measles epidemic in Wales have now been effectively blocked by the government insisting that the British media do not give me air time; do not allow me to respond. And that is the purpose of this. So I did not start this current fight.
     
The important thing to say is that back in 1996 -- 1997 I was made  aware of children developing autism, regressive autism, following exposure in many cases to the measles mumps rubella vaccine. Such  was my concern about the safety of that vaccine that I went back and reviewed every safety study, every pre-licensing study of the MMR vaccine and other measles containing vaccines before they were  put into children and after. And I was appalled with the quality of that science. It really was totally below par and that has been reiterated by other authoritative sources since.

I compiled my observations into a 200 page report which I am seeking to put online once I get permission from my lawyers. And that report was the basis of my impression that the MMR vaccine was inadequately tested for safety certainly compared with the single vaccines and therefore that was the basis of my recommendation in 1998 at the press conference that parents should have the option of  the single vaccines.

All I could do as a parent was to say what would I do for my child. That was the only honest answer I could give. My position on that has not changed.

Andrew Wakefield Responds on Camera to Wales Measles Outbreak

Dr. Andrew Wakefield responds to UK public health officials call for censorship on MMR vaccine safety debate, measles vaccine failure, and issues a further challenge for open debate (full transcript beneath). While he has been booked to appear on several media programs, all have cancelled just prior to airtime.

Below is the transcript.

Good morning. The first thing that I want to say is that  I did not seek out this latest media maelstrom. It came about because of an outbreak of measles in South Wales in the United  Kingdom for which I have been blamed by her Majesty's government.  So I did not seek this out but now it seems I have been denied the  opportunity to redress the allegations that have been made against me by members of the government; by members of public health and that is clearly unacceptable.
So legitimate debate about the safety of MMR vaccine and the origin of the measles epidemic in Wales have now been effectively blocked by the government insisting that the British media do not give me air time; do not allow me to respond. And that is the purpose of this. So I did not start this current fight.

Western NY Family Magazine Getting Wakefield Treatment for Writing Critically about Gardasil

Michele Miller has published Western NY Family Magazine since 1984, starting as newsletter from her kitchen table.  She ran an article about Gardasil safety and has since received threats to pull advertising dollars, and a swift and vicious campaign from the medical community.  That said, the article has comments from many readers saying, "Thank you for sharing some reality with us."  Mark Blaxill wrote an insightful series called "Gardasil: License to Kill that explains the background and reality of this vaccine foisted upon our teen girls and boys. The Buffalo (NY) news wrote about this story.  Read more and comment at The Buffalo News

By Jay Tokasz

A column in a popular local monthly magazine that criticized vaccinating teenagers against the human papilloma virus has outraged area pediatricians and spurred Erie County’s health commissioner to issue a statement defending the vaccinations as safe and effective in preventing the sexually transmitted infection.

The column appeared in the April edition of Western New York Family magazine, a free publication available in the waiting rooms of many area doctors’ offices.

Local writer and radio talk show host Linda O’Connor cited several anecdotal examples of teenage girls who suffered serious physical ailments after receiving Gardasil, one of two vaccines licensed by the Food and Drug Administration to prevent HPV, a virus that causes cervical, anal and throat cancer, as well as genital warts.

O’Connor also wrote that more than 100 healthy girls “have died from the vaccine” since 2006, although she did not indicate a source for the statistic.

Several pediatricians complained to Western New Family magazine founder, editor and publisher Michele Miller, saying the article erroneously portrays the HPV vaccine as dangerous.  Read more and comment at The Buffalo News

The Detail Explores MR Vaccine Death Decision (Dr. Salisbury intervenes)

Their 15-year-old son Christopher was found dead in his bed a week before Christmas in 1994, 10 days after receiving the MR vaccine at school. Ten days is highly significant as this is the exact point when any reaction caused by the vaccine is expected.

Please read and comment on the full article Another rejection but parents maintain vaccine is linked to their son's death at The Detail.   "The Detail aims to help put investigative journalism at the core of the news industry in Northern Ireland. It aims not to challenge existing news outlets, broadcasters or newspaper, but to supplement them.

The site is run and the content produced by Belfast-based independent TV and online production company Below the Radar, which is owned by UK wide independent producer Ten Alps Plc. It is funded by Atlantic Philanthropies and Northern Ireland Screen, and it has five full-time journalists."

BY KATHRYN TORNEY

THE parents of a Co Down teenager who died just days after receiving a combined Measles and Rubella vaccination as part of a government campaign have vowed to continue their fight to prove that the injection caused his death.

Anne and Harry Coulter, from Hillsborough, have spoken to The Detail after learning that an appeal they lodged with the government’s Vaccine Damage Payments Scheme has been refused. They were first turned down for compensation in 1997 and say the system is massively weighted against those who challenge the UK’s vaccination regime.

Please read the full story Another rejection but parents maintain vaccine is linked to their son's death at The Detail.

Mail Online's Peter Hitchens "Some Reflections on the Measles and MMR"

Following a measles outbreak in the UK, this post has been excerpted from Mail Online: Some Reflections on the Measles and MMR.    Peter Hitchens is an English author and foreign correspondent. You can also read a letter we ran from Dr. Wakefield earlier this week titled UK Government Culpable for Measles Outbreaks. From Mr. Hitchens:

I’m asked for my thoughts on the measles outbreak in Swansea. I’m not sure quite why, as most readers here will know my views on the MMR controversy.

Perhaps there’s some intended suggestion that I am in some way responsible for this outbreak, which is also being attributed by some to a long-ago local newspaper campaign against the MMR vaccination. The local newspaper, I should add, says that it covered the controversy fairly, which I have no reason to doubt. I was interested to hear its current editor rather aggressively and righteously questioned on the subject by a BBC presenter the other day.

Longstanding readers will know that I was myself mysteriously targeted, some years ago, by a skilful anonymous letter writer who faked a letter from a mother claiming that her child’s terrible illness was my fault. As it turned out, the woman whose identity the fraud had stolen (and whom I eventually traced) confirmed that no such thing had taken place. Nor, of course, had she written the letter sent to me with her signature faked upon it. The address from which the letter was sent was also a fake, though a very clever and carefully-planned fake which I only uncovered by going to visit it personally, a step the fraud did not think I would take.

The elaborate faking of the letter, the invention of a real-seeming address, the use of an actual name, have always seemed to me quite sinister and unpleasant. And it is things like this, rather than the science of the matter, which have continued to make me question the behaviour of those who petulantly insisted that the MMR injection was the only option for worried parents. I am still astonished that the supposedly beloved National Health Service, every inch of which is paid for by the public, treats the parents of children in this high-handed way. If it is the people’s service, a national benefit, surely its loyalty is above all to those who use it? Is the state our servant or our master?

Andrew Wakefield: British Government Culpable for Measles Outbreaks

UK Measles Outbreaks

Statement from Dr. Andrew Wakefield

 British Government is entirely culpable for measles outbreak

In the wake of further media distortion, misrepresentation, and ignorance in relation to the measles outbreak in Wales, it is important to clarify some key facts.

In 1998, following an analysis of all published pre-licensing studies of MMR vaccine safety I recommended the use of single measles vaccine in preference to MMR. This remains my position.

At that time, in contrast with the false assertions of many commentators, including Richard Horton, Editor of the Lancet, and vaccine millionaire Paul Offit, the single vaccines were licensed in the UK and freely available to the British public.

While MMR vaccination uptake fell from February 1998, there was a reciprocal increase in the uptake of the single vaccines – a fact that is never acknowledged in the press. Vaccination clinics administered many thousands of doses of measles vaccine and children were “protected.”

Six months later, in September 1998, the British Government withdrew the importation license for the single vaccines, effectively blocking this option for parents.  

Measles cases in the UK rose when the government withdrew the importation license for the single measles vaccine leaving concerned parents with no choice.

When I demanded to know why, if the government’s principal concern was to protect children from measles, it would prevent parents with genuine safety concerns over MMR from protecting their children, Elizabeth Miller of the Health Protection Agency responded, “…if we allowed parents the choice of single measles vaccines it would destroy our MMR program.” The government’s concern appeared to be to protect the MMR program over and above the protection of children.    

MMR Vaccine is Not Safe

Despite the claim of David Salisbury, head of the UK’s Immunization Division, that MMR has, “ an exemplary safety record,” two of the three brands introduced in 1988 had to be withdrawn for safety reasons – they caused meningitis.

Latest Vaccine/Autism “Safety” Study Based on Flawed Data

Latest Vaccine/Autism “Safety” Study Based on Flawed Data

The Canary Party calls on reporters to take a second look at the CDC’s biased science.

(Cambridge, MA) “The CDC continued its propaganda campaign on behalf of its bloated vaccine schedule last week,” said Mark Blaxill, Chairman of the Canary Party.  “Despite significant scientific evidence showing connections between vaccines and autism, and deep problems with CDC’s vaccine safety science, few reporters dug deeper into the quality of this new study (DeStefano et al. 2013).”  As recently noted in a peer-reviewed publication, Drs Catherine DeSoto and Robert Hitlan[1] documented major methodological flaws in the 2010 CDC study (Price et al.) said to disprove any link between a mercury preservative in vaccines and autism.   This second paper regarding antigens, by CDC staffer Frank DeStefano and colleagues, uses the exact same flawed data set, again to deny the link between vaccines and autism.

“How deeply flawed was DeStefano’s analysis?” continues Blaxill, “Simply put, the study design could not have been more biased. The number, type and timing of vaccines that US children receive are a function of birth year: recommendations for DTP, Rotavirus and Varicella all changed during the years of the study, depending on the year the child was born.  But the CDC data set used a data sample that matched cases and controls by birth year and then only analyzed the differences within their patched groupings (called “strata” in statistics). Matching on birth year meant nearly all variation associated with how many vaccines were recommended was removed from the study as a starting point.  If they had said ‘we are controlling for the vaccine schedule the child followed’ in an analysis of how safe the vaccine schedule was, this would have seemed absurd. But that is exactly what they did.”

 “The model they were trying to test in their first study was whether exposure to Thimerosal via vaccination was associated with any increased risk of autism.  To do this, they needed to compare persons with different levels of exposure.  They could not do so because they matched on birth-year, which itself defines exposure level.  This ensures that cases were only compared to controls with the same exposure,” said lead author Dr. Catherine DeSoto.  “Children who received high and low exposure were not compared with their methods. It is like testing if smoking causes lung cancer but only comparing persons with and without cancer who smoked exactly the same amount -- and then statistically testing if they smoked different amounts.  The design flaw is called overmatching, and it makes the results of both studies invalid.”

Same Problems in "New" Research on Autism and Vaccines

Same Problems in "New" Research on Autism and Vaccines

“New" study from DeStefano et al., only rehashes a flawed 2008 data set - says SafeMinds

WASHINGTON, DC - A new book chapter on statistical methods in Recent Advances in Autism Spectrum Disorders by University of Northern Iowa researchers, DeSoto and Hitlan[1] documents major methodological flaws in the data set said to disprove the link between Thimerosal-preserved vaccines and autism by Price, et al.[2]   More recently DeStefano et al. [3] used the same data set while attempting to disprove a link between the number of vaccines and autism.

“Both researchers tested whether any increased risk of autism was associated with increased exposures via vaccination.  To do so, they must compare different levels of exposure.  They failed to do so when they matched cases to controls on birth-year and HMO.  Birth-year, by itself, defines exposure level and HMOs further ensures similarity guaranteeing cases and controls were nearly identical on the exposure,” said lead author Dr. Catherine DeSoto.  “This is a design flaw called overmatching, it forces cases and controls to be artificially similar and renders the results invalid.”

 The number, type and timing of vaccines US children receive is a function of birth-year. Formulations purchased and administered would be the same within a given HMO.    

“By matching on birth year and HMO, they eliminated the variability right from the start,” said Sallie Bernard, President of SafeMinds.  “Here’s a perfect example of the cascading impact from problem data analysis. The same statistical flaws in Price’s 2010 research resurface in De Stefano’s 2013 research.”

“Once again, media reported exactly what CDC released last week without critically reviewing the information,” said Eric Uram, Executive Director at SafeMinds. 

The Vaccine Myth: An Issue of Trust Featuring Mark Blaxill

This interview aired on The Vaccine Myth on March 31st, 2013 with host Shawn Seigel.

The guest is Mark Blaxill, editor-at-large of the Age of Autism.

The issue of trust will be the recently-announced studies finding no correlation between the full schedule of vaccines and the continuing foreboding rise in the incidence of autism - brought to us by the good folks at the CDC and the IOM, the same sweet people who created the myth of the success of the polio vaccine and insulted us by covering up the CDC's own study in 1999, that found a direct correlation between the mercury in vaccines and the already-rising rate of speech and learning disorders and autism.

What are The Advisory Council of Childhood Vaccines and the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program?

By Wayne Rohde

Has anyone heard of the ACCV, the Advisory Council of Childhood Vaccines to the Department of Health and Human Services?  Most people have not and what’s worse, a large majority of the public does not know about the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP).

The ACCV was formed as the advisory committee to the program or specifically to the Secretary of HHS.  There are several members, most serving as representatives for industry and medical agencies, a petitioner attorney, and two parent representatives, who have vaccine injured children.  The meetings are held quarterly, the last one Thursday, March 7^th.  The next meeting will be Thursday, June 6^th.  The general public is invited to attend via conference call.  Currently, the meetings are held on one day, for 6 to 8 hours to discuss topics of concern to the committee.  Status reports about the adjudication of petitions are also discussed, as well as the report from DOJ attorneys on the status of cases that are appealed or remanded back to the Vaccine Court.  Lastly, workgroup reports on recommendations that can be sent on to the Secretary of HHS are reviewed.

After reading the transcripts of quarterly meetings for the past several years, I have noticed most of the members are not advocates for the general public or vaccine safety.  The attorney member and parent representatives are the only ones to challenge the status quo of our nation’s vaccine policy during this meeting. 

A topic that should be important to all of us is the committee’s charge and responsibility of conducting public outreach, in other words, educating the general public and medical communities about the VICP.   But as with all issues regarding vaccine policy, special interests and their political clout enters the chambers of the committee and put a damper on what should be a clear and laser focused effort to provide information to the general public about vaccine compensation.

In 2009 and 2010, the committee made an attempt to develop a public outreach program.  Heavy discussion and debate regarding the determination of goals to inform the public was the topic during the meetings.  Was the end result going to be attendance at a few medical tradeshows and handing out a couple dozen brochures to a few doctors who stop by the booth?  Or perhaps the development and expansion of the website to provide more information and links to the program, or even developing a Public Service Announcement and placing it on TV and Radio outlets, or use of social media?

Brian Hooker: "DeStefano et al Autism Vaccine Study is to Science What Ishtar was to Cinema"

Health Impact News Editor Comments

The CDC released a “new” study on “Good Friday” just before the Easter holiday weekend that supposedly showed there was no connection between vaccines and autism. One has to wonder on the timing of the announcement of this study, considering the fact that the CDC just released statistics about two weeks ago stating that the rate of autism among school children in the U.S. has now risen to one out of 50.

So I contacted Dr. Brian Hooker and asked him to respond to this “new” study that the mainstream media is reporting has ended the vaccine-autism debate. According to Dr. Hooker, the study is not so new, as it is based on data from 2010 and is basically a rehash of a “fraudulent” study published then.

Why did we ask Dr. Hooker to comment? There are probably very few people in the world who have spent as much time looking at CDC studies related to vaccines and autism as Dr. Hooker. Dr. Brian Hooker, a PhD scientist, has been fighting the CDC since 2004 in trying to get them to comply with Freedom of Information Acts to see the CDC research that supposedly shows there is no link between mercury in vaccines and autism. The CDC apparently believes they are above the law regarding the Freedom of Information Act, and have fought to withhold most of the information Dr. Hooker has requested. But as you will see from Dr. Hooker’s critique below, even what the CDC does publish and make public doesn’t amount to much of anything that will help us understand the problem of the rising rates of autism, let alone solve it.

Here are Dr. Hooker’s comments on the CDC study just published in The Journal of Pediatrics.

Critique of Destefano et al. 2013 J Peds. Study

By Brian S. Hooker, Ph.D., P.E.

The recent CDC study “Increasing Exposure to Antibody-Stimulating Proteins and Polysaccharides in Vaccines Is Not Associated with Risk of Autism” by Destefano et al. 2013 was released in the Journal of Pediatrics last week. This study purports that “increasing exposure to antibody-stimulating proteins and polysaccharides in vaccines during the first 2 years of life was not related to the risk of developing an ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder).” Of all of the papers I have reviewed over my 26-year career as a research scientist, this is perhaps the most flawed and disingenuous study I have encountered. The Destefano et al. 2013 study is to science what the movie Ishtar was to cinema.  Read the full story at Health Impact News.

Canada’s Health World, The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

By David Burd

Neil Z. Miller’s 3/25/13  AofA Post relating his presentations on dangers of infant vaccines being rebuffed, hindered, or censored by Canadian officials prompt me to specifically convey the bizarre but true World of Flu in Canada compared to the U.S,, though I am confident that much pertains to most every vaccine.

My years of study of Canada versus the U.S. compares “apples to apples” as both health systems have the exact same boilerplate for weekly influenza (flu) reports.  In the U.S. it is the CDC “Fluview” - whereas in Canada their version is the PHAC (Public Health Agency of Canada) “Fluwatch.”  Any layperson or health professional can easily access the Weekly Reports by just googling those websites.

Back in June 2, 2010 AofA ran my Post citing the vast disparity of pediatric “flu-associated” deaths between Canada and the U.S.  I cited U.S. pediatric mortality rate was four times that of Canada, and I made the case terribly toxic drugs such as Ribavirin have been given for years in the U.S. hospitals whereas Canada’s protocols distinctly avoid this nucleoside analogue (basically the same as cancer chemotherapy) that immediately causes hemolytic anemia (quickly kills red blood cells).

At any rate - Neil Z. Miller is a hero and I’ve always wanted to communicate with him.  So in that spirit I hope he reads this Post, and I commend him for all he has done, and does.

First, The Good about Canada: The June 1, 2012 issue of Pediatrics (Epub was 5/14/2012) by five Canadian health professionals cites over six years ending 2009 but an average of 5% of Canadian Ontario babies (up to age 2) had parents that took them to get annual flu vaccinations.  The Province of Ontario includes Toronto and their capital Ottawa, and is 40% -of Canada’s population.  Thus, I contend Ontario is an accurate barometer of all of Canada.   The following is the Pediatrics Paper reference::

Pediatrics. 2012 Jun;129(6):e1421-30. doi: 10.1542/peds.2011-2441. Epub 2012 May 14.
Low rates of influenza immunization in young children under Ontario's universal influenza immunization program.

Canadian Hysterics and the Vaccine Dilemma

 By Neil Z. Miller

The great nation of Canada is experiencing birth pangs and an identity crisis induced by the free exchange of vaccine information. In January, I gave a vaccine presentation to a large group of holistic farmers in Ontario, Canada. There were about 250 people in attendance, including numerous Mennonites. Much like the Amish, or Pennsylvania Dutch, Mennonite families lead simple lives, often avoiding modern technology, including vaccination.   

This vaccine conference was hosted by the owner of a family-owned Canadian company that supplies natural, GMO-free products supporting sustainable agriculture. They also provide consultation services for livestock and crop production. The owner of the company became aware of vaccine problems when several of his own cattle became severely sick after cattle on an adjoining farm were vaccinated. Both the vaccinated and unvaccinated animals were affected.

Only two speakers were invited to this conference: a homeopathic veterinarian and myself. The veterinarian lives in upstate New York and drove across the border at Niagara Falls. She was held up by customs agents for one hour because they claimed she was taking jobs away from Canadians (by giving a two-hour talk). The agents even went online to find other Canadian veterinarians whom they believed could give the same presentation at the conference. Later, after telling me this story, the veterinarian and I suspected that the agents were not happy that her talk was on vaccinations. (Providing homeopathy for horses and cows probably didn't help either.) Perhaps Canada is protective against nefarious American influences!

A few days before I gave my talk in Ontario, I was invited to give another talk in Canada, this time in Vancouver, British Columbia. (I love Vancouver, Canada. I vacationed there a few years ago and came to appreciate the land and people. The Canadians seemed so genuine and civilized.) Joel Lord, who was organizing this event, invited me to speak at his Vancouver Vaccine Summit. However, he told me that he was on a shoestring budget and couldn't afford to fly me up there but that I could give my presentation via Skype. Darn! I always welcome opportunities to share my vaccine knowledge and I readily agreed to participate but I was disappointed that I wasn't going to visit Vancouver once again.

Joel began organizing the one-day event in January and set the date for March 12. He rented out a space for the conference at Simon Fraser University (SFU). One week before the conference, the Centre for Inquiry, a "science-based atheist group," wrote a scathing letter to Andrew Petter, the president of the University, calling for the University to "acknowledge its mistake in allowing the promotion of inaccurate information and dangerous quackery to happen on its grounds." Several members of the University's Faculty of Health Sciences and some local medical doctors also added their signatures to this letter and exerted pressure on the president to deny endorsement of the conference.

Ginger Taylor on Maine's LD 672 An Act Relating to Exemption from Immunization for Schoolchildren

Managing Editor's Note: Thank you to Ginger Taylor for sharing this post from her site Adventures in Autism.

Testimony on Maine LD 672 An Act Relating to Exemption from Immunization for Schoolchildren

Below is my written testimony on LD 672 An Act Relating to Exemption from Immunization for Schoolchildren, urging the state of Maine to provide parents with true informed consent in vaccination.

Vaccine information given to parents does not represent true informed consent.

1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (Vaccine Injury Compensation Act or VICA) http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/authorizinglegislation.pdf:

- Declares all FDA approved vaccines, "Unavoidably Unsafe," which means that they cannot be made safe for their intended use.

"The House Energy and Commerce Committee Report accompanying the Vaccine Act, H. R. Rep. No. 99–908, pt. 1 (1986) (hereinafter 1986 Report), explains in relevant part:

“ Subsection (b)—Unavoidable Adverse Side Effects; Direct Warnings .—This provision sets forth the principle contained in Comment K of Section 402A of the Restatement of Torts (Second) that a vaccine manufacturer should not be liable for injuries or deaths resulting from unavoidable side effects even though the vaccine was properly prepared and accompanied by proper directions and warnings.

The Scotsman Reports: Health Warning For Scots Children Flu Vaccine Plan

Read the full article at The Scotsman.com.

PARENTS have been warned that children’s health will be “risked unnecessarily” by government plans to save money by vaccinating all Scottish youngsters against seasonal flu.

As Scottish health chiefs confirmed yesterday that every child in Scotland between the age of two and 17 is to be offered a flu vaccine from next year, health campaigners claimed the programme will actually put children and 
others in the community at increased risk of contracting the virus and other health problems.

The Scottish Government says vaccinating children is a “cost-effective” way of cutting flu cases in adults, but campaigners said the proposed flu vaccine, Fluenz, a weakened form of the live virus which is administered using a nasal spray, is in fact “a very effective way to spread flu”. They highlighted warnings from the makers that there is a chance the virus in the vaccine could cause infection if it was transmitted to someone who has a weak immune system...

Judicial Watch Seeks Answers to Payouts Made to Victims of HPV Vaccines

HPV Vaccine Gardasil linked to serious side effects, including seizures, paralysis, blindness, speech problems, short term memory loss, Guillain-Barré Syndrome and death

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Obama Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to obtain records related to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), a program that compensates patients who have been adversely affected by certain vaccines, including Gardasil, the vaccine for the sexually transmitted disease human papillomavirus (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No. 1:13-cv-00197)).

Judicial Watch initiated an investigation of HPV vaccine Gardasil after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) fast-tracked the vaccine for through the approval process in 2006. Since 2007, Judicial Watch has uncovered government records documenting thousands of adverse reactions associated with the vaccine, including seizures, paralysis, blindness, pancreatitis, speech problems, short term memory loss, Guillain-Barré Syndrome and death.

Judicial Watch seeks the following records pursuant to its November 1, 2012 FOIA request filed with the Health Resources and Services Administration, a component of HHS:

Read the full article and comment at Judicial Watch.

A Vaccine Injury Case Goes to the Supreme Court

EBCALA recently submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in Sebelius v. Cloer. Nineteen other civil society organizations joined us to support petitioner Dr. Melissa Cloer in her quest that her lawyers receive payment for having brought her good faith, reasonable claim for injury compensation.

Dr. Cloer, an adult physician, petitioned the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) in 2005 after she developed multiple sclerosis (MS) from hepatitis B vaccines in 1996 and 1997. Despite the earliest symptoms appearing only a month after her last vaccination, it was not until 2003 that Dr. Cloer received the diagnosis of MS. In 2004, she learned of the possible link between MS and the hepatitis B vaccine in the scientific literature and applied to the VICP.

After three proceedings on the matter, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ultimately ruled that Dr. Cloer’s claim, filed more than three years after her first MS symptom, was ineligible for compensation. While the Court of Appeals ruled her claim untimely, it did acknowledge that her attorneys had brought the case in good faith and on a reasonable basis, meeting the necessary criteria for them to receive legal fees.

Remarkably, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) contested payment to Dr. Cloer’s attorneys and filed a petition in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the issue on March 19, 2013. The 1986 National Vaccine Injury Act, which established the VICP, provides no time restrictions on legal fees. The Act states only that claims must be in good faith and on a reasonable basis.

Simply put, the issue before the Supreme Court is, will the VICP pay Dr. Cloer’s lawyers for having brought Dr. Cloer’s legitimate vaccine injury claim? HHS argues that lawyers should not be paid for bringing a claim ultimately found to be late.

The outcome will have a tremendous impact. Due to the nature of vaccine injury and the often-murky onset of symptoms, issues of timeliness are common. If attorneys can’t be sure they will be paid for good faith, reasonable claims, families of the vaccine-injured will suffer. While untimeliness may be grounds not to compensate the petitioner, it does not justify failure to pay lawyers for legitimate work. If HHS wins, attorneys will likely turn down all but the most extreme cases of vaccine injury.

Michael Pichichero's Reasoning on Mercury for Global Treaty

By Jim Thompson

Dr. Michael Pichichero is an industry scientist and he endorses a mercury-based compound called Thimerosal as a “safe” and “effective” preservative in vaccines worldwide. 

In a recently published report “Perspective – Report to WHO: No New Concerns About Thimerosal” he acknowledges that his “institution has received research grants from GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi Pasteur, Pfizer, Novartis, and Crucell for new vaccine and product development.”  Also he states in his report that “The evidence suggests the 2008 endorsement of the use of thimerosal as a safe and effective preservative in vaccines for children worldwide should remain.” 

In addition he alludes to his remote presentation to the United Nations Negotiating Committee Meeting on April 3-4, 2012 which was made for “their consideration and vote” regarding the continuation of mercury in vaccines used worldwide.   And it was in that same time frame that the World Health Organization's (WHO's) Strategic Advisory Committee (SAGE) in Geneva recommended that “Thimerosal, a preservative used to prevent contamination in multidose vaccine vials, be exempted from a pending international treaty aimed at reducing global health hazards by limiting exposure to mercury.”  (See WHO Weekly Epidemiological Record).

Now it is possible that this industry scientist’s reasoning is based on an unfounded presumption that mercury leaves the brain faster than mercury from fish.  He states “[a] total of five studies of blood and hair mercury in children have now been published, and all show that the foundational presumption of similar pharmacokinetics between methylmercury and ethylmercury was incorrect.”  But do these studies really indicate what happens in a child’s brain? 

To answer that one cannot rely solely on human studies reporting reduced mercury content in blood and hair.  It is also important to recognize the fact that an animal study clearly shows that Thimerosal vaccine preservative injections result in inorganic mercury levels in brain tissue in infant monkeys at higher levels and longer time frames than from exposure to mercury in fish.  

Study Finds Infants Toddlers on "Slower" Vaccine Schedule Have Fewer Outpatient and ER Visits

A Population-Based Cohort Study of Undervaccination in 8 Managed Care Organizations Across the United States

Jason M. Glanz, PhD; Sophia R. Newcomer, MPH; Komal J. Narwaney, MD, PhD; Simon J. Hambidge, MD, PhD; Matthew F. Daley, MD; Nicole M. Wagner, MPH; David L. McClure, PhD; Stan Xu, PhD; Ali Rowhani-Rahbar, MD, PhD; Grace M. Lee, MD, MPH; Jennifer C. Nelson, PhD; James G. Donahue, DVM, PhD; Allison L. Naleway, PhD; James D. Nordin, MD, MPH; Marlene M. Lugg, DrPH; Eric S. Weintraub, MPH

JAMA Pediatr. 2013;():1-8. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.502.

Published online January 21, 2013

ABSTRACT

Objectives  To examine patterns and trends of undervaccination in children aged 2 to 24 months and to compare health care utilization rates between undervaccinated and age-appropriately vaccinated children.

Design  Retrospective matched cohort study.

Setting  Eight managed care organizations of the Vaccine Safety Datalink.

Participants  Children born between 2004 and 2008.

Main Exposure  Immunization records were used to calculate the average number of days undervaccinated. Two matched cohorts were created: 1 with children who were undervaccinated for any reason and 1 with children who were undervaccinated because of parental choice. For both cohorts, undervaccinated children were matched to age-appropriately vaccinated children by birth date, managed care organization, and sex.

Main Outcome Measures  Rates of undervaccination, specific patterns of undervaccination, and health care utilization rates.

Vaccine Injury Causes Life Changing Narcolepsy in European Children

American doctors, public health and government officials are quick to tell the public that immunization against "vaccine preventable disease" (which is merely a phrase for any vaccine that has been developed, without regard to the severity or danger of the disease it was designed to prevent) is an imperative cornerstone of healthcare. To refuse a vaccine is to rend the American social contract in two. To question vaccine safety is to join the ranks of the "anti-vaccine" (we meet the third Tuesday of every month at the Grange Hall, donuts and coffee provided.)  During the Swine Flu outbreak in 2010, Health and Human Services Director Kathleen Sebelius said in an interview with Reader's Digest:

RD:What can be done about public mistrust of vaccines?  

KS:There are groups out there that insist that vaccines are responsible for a variety of problems despite all scientific evidence to the contrary. We have reached out to media outlets to try to get them to not give the views of these people equal weight in their reporting to what science has shown and continues to show about the safety of vaccines.

"...not to give them equal weight..."  However, when a vaccine issue becomes patently obvious, reports occasionally appear, like this report on European children suffering from narcolepsy. 

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Emelie is plagued by hallucinations and nightmares. When she wakes up, she's often paralyzed, unable to breathe properly or call for help. During the day she can barely stay awake, and often misses school or having fun with friends. She is only 14, but at times she has wondered if her life is worth living.

Barbara Loe Fisher on IOM Vaccine Report

By Anne Dachel

The news that the Institute of Medicine has again cleared vaccines of safety concerns hit the media last week. 

It reminds me of the famous 2004 IOM Report that was supposed to end the debate over vaccines and autism once and for all: THE SCIENCE WAS IN BACK IN 2004---VACCINES DON’T CAUSE AUTISM.  IT’S TIME TO MOVE ON.  This was of course only a little detour and it wasn’t long before the controversy was in full swing as though the IOM Report had never happened.  And although the media still continued to refer to the 2004 Report as conclusive for years, the public didn’t buy it.  There are just too many kids out there whose parents say they were fine until they were vaccinated.  Vaccines triggered their autism.  Doctors have no alternate explanation.  They can only point to studies—all linked to the vaccines makers---showing no link.

Why should we accept another IOM Report?  In 2004, there was not yet Hannah Poling, not yet the 83 children whose cases had been compensated by the federal government, and not yet the two recent cases talked about this past week.  Things are piling up and not in the government’s favor. 

Back in 2004, the U.S. autism rate was one in every 166 children.  Today it’s one in every 88.  And officials remain clueless as to the cause, prevention, or cure. 

Today we have own resources.  Leslie Manookian told me that over a million people (more likely a million and a half) have watched her stunning movie, The Greater Good. 

Today we have more science on our side.  There are over 200 independent studies done by well-credentialed experts that raise serious concerns about vaccine side effects shown on The Greater Good website.

So what’s wrong with this latest attempt to shore up waning confidence in the vaccine program?  Plenty. Despite coverage like the Reuters story, Vaccine timetable for children is safe, experts say, the science simply isn’t there.

Reuters: “IOM's panel of independent scientists looked at the schedule of immunizations and all available scientific literature to determine safety. They also reviewed CDC and the Food and Drug Administration databases that track side effects.”

“In what they called the most comprehensive review to date, scientists at the Institute of Medicine (IOM) said there is no evidence that giving children vaccines according to the recommended timetable causes other problems such as autism or asthma.”

There’s nothing new here.  “Studies show no link” has been around for over two decades and it simply doesn’t work.  Lots of official initials like CDC, FDA, and IOM, don’t impress the public.  As soon as I read about the new IOM Report, I immediately thought of what the late Dr. Bernadine Healy, former head of the National Institutes of Health and past president of the American Red Cross and the American Heart Association, said about the vaccine—autism controversy in 2008 on CBS News.http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500803_162-4090144-500803.html

CBS: “According to Healy, when she began researching autism and vaccines she found credible published, peer-reviewed scientific studies that support the idea of an association. That seemed to counter what many of her colleagues had been saying for years. She dug a little deeper and was surprised to find that the government has not embarked upon some of the most basic research that could help answer the question of a link.

“The more she dug, she says, the more she came to believe the government and medical establishment were intentionally avoiding the question because they were afraid of the answer.

“Why? Healy says some in the government make the mistake of treating vaccines as an all-or-nothing proposition. The argument goes something like this: everybody gets vaccinated at the same time with the same vaccines or nobody will get vaccinated and long-gone deadly diseases will re-emerge. (When I asked about cases of brain damage resulting in autism that have been quietly compensated by the government in vaccine court over the years, one government official recently told me that ‘it's still better overall to get vaccinated than not to get vaccinated."’)...

Mercury Laden Vaccines Exempted From Mercury Treaty

Managing Editor's Note: The American Academy of Pediatrics has won the fight to keep mercury in vaccines exported around the globe.  The AAP has all but disavowed the 1999 decision to remove mercury from pediatric vaccinations as stated in Ban on Thimerosal in Draft Treaty on Mercury: Why the AAP's Position in 2012 Is So Important Louis Z. Cooper, MD ,FAAPa and Samuel L. Katz, MD, FAAPb:

"Had the AAP (and, we suspect, the USPHS) known what research has revealed in the intervening 14 years, it is inconceivable to us that these organizations would have made the joint statement of July 7, 1999. The World Health Organization recommendation to delete the ban on thimerosal must be heeded or it will cause tremendous damage to current programs to protect all children from death and disability caused by vaccine-preventable diseases."

From The Washington Times:

A global treaty to reduce toxic mercury in the environment has been completed and will be presented to countries for their ratification as part of a worldwide bid to control and reduce ways in which mercury is used, released or emitted.

Negotiations on the Minamata Convention on Mercury, named for the Japanese city that suffered severe mercury poisoning in the 1950s, finished in Switzerland on Saturday.

“Everyone in the world stands to benefit from the decisions taken this week in Geneva — in particular, the workers and families of small-scale gold miners, the peoples of the Arctic, and this generation of mothers and babies and the generations to come,” said Achim Steiner, United Nations undersecretary-general and executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, which facilitated the meeting of delegates from 140 member states.

Did MenAfriVac Paralyze 40 Children in Gouro, Chad?

There are reports (The Nigerian Voice) that 40 children have been paralyzed in Guro, Chad in Northern Africa following vaccination with a meninigitis vaccine funded by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation called MenAfriVac.   About MenAfriVac from the Bill Gates's newsletter article titled:  The MenAfriVac An Amazing Success Story in Global Health:

In 2001, our foundation funded a 10-year partnership between the World Health Organization and Seattle-based PATH to develop an affordable, new vaccine that experts hoped would last longer and do a better job of interrupting transmission of the disease. Over the next decade, a remarkable collaboration grew to include many private sector and public sector partners.

In December 2010, the new MenAfriVac vaccine was introduced in three countries: Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. Mothers queued up early with their children, fearful that health workers would run out of the vaccine. They need not have worried. In four weeks, a remarkable 20 million people were vaccinated.

No mother wants to watch her child succumb to disease.  Likewise,  no mother wants to put her trust into medicine only to see a tragic result as bad or worse than the disease she was hoping to prevent.  The seal of The United States reads, "E Pluribus Unum." This translates to "Out of the many, one." Because the individual matters in America. We are not data points, statistics, or... a herd. 
Read additional reports and background on the paralysis at Were 40 Children Paralyzed by MenAfriVac in Gouro, Chad?  at SaneVax and at Video Footage Shows Prime Minister Visits Paralyzed Children, Powerful Groups Involved in Vaccine Campaign at VacTruth.

(PS) Hi, Dr. Kalichman!

Daily Mail Publishes MMR Letter

A slightly edited but not toned-down version of a letter by Bill Welsh, President  of Autism Treatment Trust, Scotland was published in the Daily Mail hard edition on Friday (18 January 2013).  Age of Autism here reproduces the original text for its readers.

Sir,

 A payment of $600,000 in the USA as compensation for MMR vaccine damage leading to autism in a child (Daily Mail 15/1/13) follows a $1 million payout a few days earlier for the same tragic scenario. It is my understanding that up to 100 families in America have now been compensated in recognition of the neurological harm MMR can do, although, as part of the recompense, each family had to sign a 'confidentiality agreement'! There are many more USA cases awaiting a decision.

 Last year a small boy in Rimini was similarly compensated for the autism he developed following MMR. The Italian government did not challenge the court decision. Hundreds more cases are in the pipeline in Italy.

In the UK over 1,500 families entered litigation claiming MMR had led to autism in their child. Legal aid was suspiciously withdrawn and the parents were abandoned with their seriously ill children who had, and still have, known, painful, treatable co-morbid underlying medical conditions.

 What does this tell us of the mindset and morals of the guardians of public health in the UK?

 It tells us that the ancient Carthaginian policy of child sacrifice is alive and well and has full approval in the shadier corridors of  Whitehall. The promotion and protection of a deeply flawed vaccination programme has over-ruled common sense and common decency. To damage perfectly healthy children in a crude experiment is undoubtedly a criminal offence and must be treated as such. It is high time that our politicians realised that they, along with the citizens of the UK, have been misled about the safety of MMR.

Bill Welsh

IOM Fails Again to Pursue Science on Vaccine Injury

SafeMinds Response to 1/16/2013 IOM Report: 

IOM fails again to pursue science on vaccine injury

The January 16, 2013 Institute of Medicine report, The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies, repeats the IOM pattern of failing to call for the appropriate scientific research to be conducted on vaccine-induced autism.  The report ignores the fact that for 6 of the 7 vaccines administered in the first year of a child’s life (HCV, DTaP, PCV, Rotavirus, IPV, and Rotavirus), there has never been a study of autism prevalence in children who received the vaccine versus children who did not receive the vaccine.  These studies were not performed before each of these vaccines was approved, and have not been performed since approval.  The IOM report admits that such a study is the gold standard of science, yet does not call for studies.  The IOM report ignores the fact that for the 7th vaccine (Hepatitis B), there has been only one such study and that this study found a 3-fold increase in autism risk for children who received the vaccine in the first month of life.  The autism epidemic dates to the 1988 birth cohort per an EPA study, the same birth cohort which was administered the Hib conjugate vaccine (an entirely new class of vaccine), and an October 2011 published paper describes a plausible mechanism by which this new type of vaccine could have caused the autism epidemic.  Yet the IOM report ignores the fact that autism prevalence has never been studied for the Hib conjugate vaccine in children receiving versus not receiving this vaccine.

Why would the IOM not call for the obviously necessary research to be conducted?  Safeminds believes the answer lies in an institutional bias within IOM towards protecting the vaccination program.  Leaked transcripts of initial deliberations during the 2004 IOM Immunization Safety Review show that the IOM chair told the committee that they would not ever come down that autism is a true side effect of vaccines; subsequently, the IOM 2004 report had the audacity to call for a halt in further research into a vaccine-autism association.  The IOM 2004 report was not based upon conclusive research, but instead appeared policy-driven based on leaked transcripts.  Now in this January 2013 report, intended to lay the groundwork for future research on vaccine-safety, the IOM instead advertises the benefits of the current testing system which has failed to conduct the necessary research.  While recognizing that “randomized controlled trials are the gold standard for clinical research”, the IOM committee does not call for these trials. The IOM committee also dismisses the feasibility of retrospectively comparing vaccinated vs unvaccinated children citing that population groups often containing unvaccinated children, such as religious communities, would yield sample sizes too small for valid results. This short-sightedness ignores the more obvious solution of utilizing the estimated 1-2M home-schooled population for such a study.

Institute of Medicine Chokes On the Epistemological Obscenity

By Dan Olmsted

It isn't worth spending much time and energy to take on the new Institute of Medicine report on vaccine safety concerns-- bought and paid for by the Department of Health and Human Services -- except to note that as the Feds continue trying to bottle up the truth about the autism epidemic, it keeps leaking out everywhere else. The Vaccine Court rulings this week, uncovered by the outstanding reporting of David Kirby and validated over and over by the Unanswered Questions report of EBCALA, are far more important in the long run than the dying yelps of the medical-industrial complex.

In other words, the fact that vaccines are the main driver of the autism epidemic, validated every day by families across the county and now in the world, is far more important than the ginned-up claim by the special interests that they don't cause autism, or autoimmune disorders, or asthma, or ADHD, or juvenile diabetes, and etcetera and etcetera and etcetera.

But one interesting sign of desperation does shine through in this report. My fellow AOA editor and book-coauthor Mark Blaxill has called it the Epistemological Obscenity -- the idea that the total health outcomes of vaccinated versus unvaccinated groups simply cannot be determined. It's like some mad extrapolation of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle to the macro-atomic level. You just can't measure it!

The EO is a two-part equation. First, you cannot ethically do a prospective study of vax v unvax. Paul Offit has been whining about this for years and he'll just love the IOM report, which says:

"Although randomized controlled trials are the gold standard for clinical research, such a trial cannot be safely and efficiently performed to compare health outcomes among vaccinated and unvaccinated or differently immunized children, the committee concluded.  Among other reasons, children placed in the study group that does not receive vaccines in a timely fashion would be exposed to greater risk for contracting illnesses.  Many parents who refuse immunization may object to their children being randomly assigned to the group that gets vaccines."

So, it's prospectively unethical. OK, then what about a study of people who are already unvaccinated -- you know, the Amish, homeschoolers, the HomeFirst practice in Chicago? Chiropractors, Christian Scientists, Bushmen, Waldorfers, Spenglerians, Hippie-Dippies (not my term!) in Ashland.

No way. The report says: "Some people have suggested comparing vaccinated children with children in "naturally occurring" populations of unimmunized individuals, such as certain religious communities.  With less than 1 percent of the American population refusing all immunizations, however, it would be very difficult to recruit enough willing unvaccinated participants, the committee concluded.  It can take tens of thousands of study participants to discover uncommon health problems.  Moreover, these populations tend to be much less diverse ethnically, racially, socio-economically, and genetically than the general population, and because such factors can influence health, it would be difficult to determine if differences between the study groups are the result of vaccines or these other factors.  The costs of conducting this kind of study or a randomized controlled trial likely would be prohibitive."

Even people with no noses should smell a rat here. As readers of AOA know, a study funded by Our Side, but rigorously independent, is already under way at Jackson State among homeschoolers. How in God's name did such a study ever get approval if this idea is so impossible? Please, please, oh please, let this be the moment that journalists with an ounce of skepticism say, wait a second.

In our book, The Age of Autism, Mark and I addressed this approach:

"A very simple test goes right to the heart of the vaccine controversy. What is the difference in total health outcomes, including autism, between vaccinated and unvaccinated populations? We would argue that we've uncovered a number of natural experiments in human populations that suggests we should should be seriously concerned over the ever-increasing load of childhood vaccinations, especially in the United States. At the same time, we'd argue that the right approach to what we often call the 'vax/unvax' issue is not a single study but a body of science. Oddly, when it comes to doing such studies in human populations, and studying the autism levels in the Amish, the homeschooled, or philosophical objectors, vaccine industry proponents resist mightily.

"Conducting human vax/unvax studies in existing unvaccinated groups would be so fraught with metholodical problems that they are 'retrospectively impossible.' As for controlled studies, they would be so burdened with permission probelems that they would be 'prospectively unethical.' In short, the resistance to the proposal to do vax/unvax work has not only taken the attitude of 'we already know the answers,' but 'we should not seek to know.' It's pretty hard to make scientific progress in the face of this kind of epistemological nihilism."

Tell Congress that Vaccine Court Has Ruled CA Boy has Autism from MMR

Take Action!

This isn't supposed to happen.   
 
It happened again. The federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) has awarded Ryan Mojabi and his family a multi-million dollar settlement for autism as the result of an injury from the Measles Mumps Rubella (MMR) vaccine.  Ryan’s family joins Hannah Poling and at least 85 others who have received judgments for vaccine-induced autism from the VICP. These people aren’t supposed to exist. We are told again and again that vaccines cannot cause autism, vaccines have never caused autism, and vaccines never will cause autism.  Except when they do.

Here is the link to the settlement document.

Please click on the Take Action Link to share this information with your elected representatives in Washington, and ask them to support further hearings into why this thing that supposedly cannot exist keeps on happening. As we saw in the vaccine hearing in November, many members of Congress are clearly skeptical of both the competence and truthfulness of the autism bureaucracy.   

And remember Andrew Wakefield lost his medical license for suggesting that there may be a connection between autism, the MMR and bowel disease, and that further study was warranted (but people should continue to immunize. )

To learn more about the documented VICP  cases of compensated VICP injury cases read. “Unanswered Questions, A Review of Compensated Cases of Vaccine-Induced Brain Injury”. More than 80 cases were documented in a review of the relatively few VICP cases that are available to the public.
     
Please share this message with friends and family and please post it to Facebook and other social networks.
 
 

Breaking News: US Vaccine Court Awards Millions for 2 Autism Diagnosis Cases

By David Kirby

The federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, better known as "vaccine court," has just awarded millions of dollars to two children with autism for "pain and suffering" and lifelong care of their injuries, which together could cost tens of millions of dollars.

The government did not admit that vaccines caused autism, at least in one of the children. Both cases were "unpublished," meaning information is limited, and access to medical records and other exhibits is blocked. Much of the information presented here comes from documents found at the vaccine court website.

Some observers will say the vaccine-induced encephalopathy (brain disease) documented in both children is unrelated to their autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Others will say there is plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise. 

Read David's full post and comment at Vaccine Court Awards Millions to Two Children With Autism

Unvax Study: We still need your help

By J.B. Handley

Thanks to the generosity of this community, the unvaccinated children study has received more than $30,000.00 in contributions to continue their work.

We still need more help, you can donate right here (scroll down and designate your donation to the “vaccinated unvaccinated study”).

Dr. Suzanne Humphries has assembled a Q&A about the unvaccinated study that may prove helpful, please read on. Thanks again for all the support!

Questions and comments on the ongoing study at Jackson State University: Vaccination Status and Health Outcomes among Homeschool Children (From Dr. Suzanne Humphries)

Q: Mississippi is the chosen state? Yes, I am not for this at all. Mississippi is also one of the first states to fluoridate their water and it is virtually impossible to access non-fluoridated water (bottled water contains fluoride...) in Mississippi.

A: Mississippi is actually not “the chosen state”. MS is one of 4 mostly southern states selected arbitrarily for the pilot study, which has just been completed, and the data are being analyzed. There were four states involved in the pilot study. Those states were Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Oregon.

The main (nationwide) study is planned for Year 2 and the overall analysis will be performed in Year 3. This is the study under discussion.

The upcoming study involves a broader reach beyond those four states. Depending on the fluoridation of each state there could be information in the data to actually show a marked detriment to fluoride. No state is entirely fluoride-free, but some towns are and some are mostly on well water—which can also have toxins. Many households filter the water at the intake and at the sink. It may be worthwhile to add a question regarding water filters on the house and the sink and any known fluoride ingestion, dental or otherwise. However, so few households filter the water that this calls for a separate follow-up study IF there are clear differences in outcomes between vaccinated and unvaccinated children.

Q: So if they need Internal Review Board approval, does this mean that there could be other sources of funding? $500,000 is a lot to come up from the grassroots. There needs to be a benefactor or some other creative financing.

A: IRB approval for the study was obtained at Jackson State University, where the study is based, in 2011. Approval was renewed for Year 2 a few months ago. There is no other current funding for the study. The pilot study was funded by Generation Rescue, whose support was financial. They are totally uninvolved in study design and analysis.

Q: It might be a good idea to see why they need $500,000--what is the breakdown of expenses, etc.?

A: The planned nationwide phase of the study will compare the health outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated homeschool children ages 6-15 years, based on responses to an online survey by biological mothers of the children. This phase of the study will require considerable resources in terms of engagement with the homeschool communities in each state, recruitment into the study, and statistical analysis. Mothers will be asked to use their children’s vaccination records and to report physician-diagnosed chronic illnesses. The study was originally budgeted at $850,000 over three years and a detailed budget was prepared, based on that amount. The stated goal of donations totaling $1,000,000 would be to complete the study and then to partially fund a follow-up study comparing the health outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated children based on physician records.

If you recall, the NFIP and Basil O’Connor galvanized the country in order to get over two million dollars in donations in the form mostly of dimes, to fight polio. Just about NO questions were asked back then of anyone. And look what they did. The big difference here is that nobody is going to get rich from this, and nobody is frightening the public in order to get people to donate. And questions will be answered of the public. Most importantly, the end result could be totally opposite of NFIP’s in terms of vaccine value.

Q: But we all feel that there needs to be a place to go for our questions to be answered -- like maybe a commonly addressed Q&A that people can read prior to donating.

A: Hopefully, my responses to these questions will eliminate the doubts and concerns of most readers.

Q: A flagrant design flaw in that they are basing it on home schoolers. If the results come out showing unvaxed are healthier (which we already know), the provaxers will simply dismiss it saying that home schooled kids aren't intermingling with as many kids and are not exposed to as many diseases as conventionally schooled children; therefore, it is unknown what their health would be like if they were "socialized" like vaxed public schoolers. They did the same thing with the Amish, going so far as to say that maybe the Amish have some sort of gene that protects them from becoming autistic! 

Prevenar 13 Pneumococcal Vaccine Damned in Belgian Media Reports

This press release about the safety and efficacy of Pfizer’s pneumococcal vaccine Prevenar 13 - used in US as well as European vaccine schedules - was extensively reported in the Belgian media on Saturday. The report is based on leaked documents from the Belgian medicines agency and includes the reports of 22 deaths over a two year period. It should be borne in mind when reading this data that it relates to a country with a population of only 10.5 million (3% of the US, 15% of the UK) and it provides powerful evidence that the risks of this vaccine now substantially outweigh any benefits. It follows a recent press release from Initiative Citoyenne regarding fatalities from GSK’s hexavalent vaccine Infrarix Hexa  . Initiative Citoyenne also carry an interesting report of a French doctor fined $4000  for failing to inform a patient about the risks of a Hepatitis B vaccine . With more evidence about the risks of vaccines coming to public light this is likely to put substantial pressure on the medical profession  if there are further cases of this kind.

Namur, Belgium, 20^th December 2012.

Initiative Citoyenne Press Release

Confidential Documents on the Prevenar 13 Vaccine: Proof that BOTH the Manufacturers AND the Health Authorities KNOW why we are Concerned!

On the 8^th of December, articles in the press reported on the contents of a substantial 1,271-page confidential GSK document[1] leaked to us by contacts at the Belgian Medicines Agency.  This shocking document on the pharmacovigilance of the Infanrix Hexa vaccine revealed serious safety problems evidenced by a whole range of serious complications, including 36 deaths (over a 2-year period).  None of this information had ever been communicated to parents, representing a clear breach of Belgian law of the 22^nd August 2002 on patient information.

We have now received more confidential documents on the safety of another paediatric vaccine very commonly used on infants and administered alongside the Infanrix Hexa hexavalent vaccine: the Prevenar 13, a pneumococcal vaccine manufactured by Wyeth/Pfizer.

This is an injection targetting13 different strains of the bacterium and reputed to be an improved version of the old Prevenar (targeting only 7 strains).  It was in fact rushed to market in 2010 to replace the older vaccine, presumably an attempt to cover up the fiasco of its predecessor: the original Prevenar had disappointingly resulted in an increase in serious infections making it totally counterproductive.[2]

OK, so the vaccine is not as effective as they tell us but is it at least safe for such tiny babies?

It would appear, according to recent confidential Wyeth (Pfizer) documents and to a reply from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) that both the manufacturer and the agency are aware of a significantly higher number of adverse neurologic effects in children vaccinated with BOTH Prevenar 13 AND Infanrix Hexa, as per the Belgian vaccination schedule at ages 2 and 4 months.

On the 4^th of January this year, at the end of the required 6-week period, two Pfizer group Regulatory Affairs Directors, Mary Allin and Helen Edwards, sent a response to Dr. S. Spinosa of the European Medicine Agency on the topic of “higher number of neurologic events reported in Italy following the co-administration of Prevenar 13 and hexavalent vaccines”.  The two directors specified at the end of this letter that based on data supplied, they did not feel there was any need to modify the vaccine’s reference safety information (RSI), in other words its package insert.[3]

At the same time, another confidential document, nothing more than correspondence between a division of the European Medicines Agency (Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use or CHMP) and Pfizer (MAH)[4], specifies that “the risk/benefit profile of the Prevenar 13 remains positive but the following potential safety concerns required further investigation/discussion by the MAH:

1) Deaths. There were 22 fatal cases during the reporting period which represents 2.6% of the total number of cases. This proportion has increased from 0.3% during the previous reporting period. Additionally, in a large majority of these cases, the time interval between receipt of 13vPnC and death (or onset of symptomatology leading to death) is narrow. The case presentations of the fatal cases is considered inadequate.

2) Lack of efficacy. There were 51 cases reported for lack of efficacy. The MAH notes that it currently uses only 3 MedDRA preferred terms (vaccination failure, therapeutic product effective, and drug ineffective) to capture these reports. There is a concern that cases of reported events of pneumococcal disease, without concomitant coding of one of these three terms are “missed”: at least 10 case numbers were identified by this Assessor from the Infections and infestations SOC which exemplified this concern. Additionally, the large majority of reports relating to “lack of efficacy” appear to report only 3 serotypes: 19A, 3 and 7. The MAH is request to comment upon this. 

Best of AofA: Brian Deer's Second Award - As Meaningless As The First

Author's Note: This post originally ran in 2011, after the vaccine lobby's hired gun Brian Deer received his second "Press Award," to explain why his second such award is as meaningless as his first. Later that same year, Deer won another "award" from the UK pharma front group "HealthWatch." Then just a few days ago, another front group in the UK run by pharma-backed "science" writer Simon Singh gave Dr. Andrew Wakefield - whose Lancet paper was vindicted by colleague Prof. John Walker-Smith's successful appeal earlier this year - a mock award for "quackery." In response, we are re-running this piece to remind readers that Brian Deer's "awards" are just as farcical. 

By Jake Crosby

The UK’s “Press Awards” are not nicknamed the “Hackademy Awards” for nothing, especially in the case of Brian Deer. He has been given not one, but two such awards. The claim, made by Brian Deer, that the UK Press Awards are like the Pulitzer Prize is laughable and absurd.

The UK’s Society of Editors runs the Press Awards. Sitting on the Editors’ advisory council is Les Hinton, who recently resigned as CEO of Dow Jones in the wake of the Murdoch phone hacking scandal. Also on that committee is Rebekah Brooks, who resigned as senior executive of News International - which publishes The Sunday Times - and was then arrested.

For over a decade,  Brian Deer's only award was based on a faulty premise. It was called “Specialist Reporter of the year.” The judges said Deer was “the only journalist in Britain that polices the drug companies.” However, during the year for which he won his award, 1998, Brian Deer wrote an article alleging that patients who suffered neurological injury from the DTP vaccine were not really injured and should therefore not have received legal compensation for their injuries. That is the exact opposite of “policing” the drug companies, but is instead harrassing the victims of defective drug company products. In 2004, Glenn Frankel reported in the Washington Post that one of Brian Deer’s specialties “was tracking down false claims of damage from vaccines.”

Weeks after the bogus premise behind his first award was reported on Age of Autism, Brian Deer was nominated for “News Reporter of the Year” and also for “Specialist Reporter of the year,” the latter of which he won at the ceremony in London’s Savoy Hotel on April 5^th, 2011. That award was given to Deer for his smear campaign against Dr. Andrew Wakefield.

The measure of any great or even good journalist must be his independence. Journalism awards are supposed to be based on independent assessments of reporters’ work, otherwise they are meaningless. Furthermore, it seems too perfect that Brian Deer was nominated for a Press Award (that he would later win) mere weeks after Age of Autism revealed he had only won one award.

How surprising can this really be given that the Academy of Judges for this year’s awards ceremony included Richard Caseby, managing editor of The Sunday Times? Caseby became notorious for his exchange with Rosemary Kessick – one of the few parents of the Lancet 12 children that Brian Deer actually interviewed.

Following a 6-hour interrogation of Kessick by Deer in 2003, during which he falsely gave his name as “Brian Lawrence,” she complained to The Sunday Times executive editor John Witherow. The exchange is detailed by Dan Olmsted in his article,  An Elaborate Fraud, Part 2: In Which a Murdoch Newspaper’s Deceptive Tactics Infect the British Medical Journal.

Unfortunately, Kessick might as well have been complaining to GlaxoSmithKline, the board of which has retained News International boss, James Murdoch, since 2009. John Witherow recently wrote in a self-congratulatory piece about The Sunday Times’ investigative journalism on July 17^th:

There have, of course, been many other investigations, including Brian Deer's outstanding work on exposing the doctor behind the false MMR scare.

This sentence exposes a clear desire to try and shift the arguments off the ground of the Sunday Times and GSK and into a more general arena so showing that what happened to Wakefield was a result of universal investigating and popular will. In fact one of the most staggering things about the Wakefield case was that Deer carried sole responsibility for it prior to lodging it with the GMC; no other investigative journalist in the world uncovered or wrote anything original critical of Wakefield besides Deer. 

Instead of Witherow responding to Kessick’s complaint, Richard Caseby wrote back:

Brian Hooker's Testimony From Congressional Autism Hearing

By Anne Dachel

Brian Hooker is the father of a son with autism and he holds a PhD in Biochemical Engineering, in addition to being a dedicated member of the autism community.  He also played a role in how the House autism hearing came to be.

Brian explained how he became involved in the hearing.

My initial thanks go to Dr. Mark Geier and David Geier, who strategically linked me up with a friend of theirs, who in turn has become my good friend as well. Through the work of this individual, Dr. Andrew Wakefield and I were invited to meet with Rep. Darrell Issa, Rep. Vern Buchanan and their wives in early May, 2012 to discuss malfeasance in the CDC regarding autism and vaccines.  Andy discussed the MMR vaccine and the vaccine schedule.  I talked specifically about thimerosal and the cover-up of CDC data that affirm a causal relationship between thimerosal and neurodevelopmental disorders including autism.  Rep. Issa was concerned regarding the CDC information and stated that this was the type of government misconduct that his committee (Oversight and Government Reform) specifically addressed.

I was in DC for a National Science Foundation function later the same month and had the opportunity to meet with Reps. Issa and Buchanan again, this time with Rep. Dan Burton.  Rep. Issa affirmed his commitment to hold a hearing at that time.  Rep. Burton detailed his valiant efforts to get the CDC and large pharma to remove mercury from vaccines and indicated that they wouldn’t listen to him.

I’ve worked very diligently since May with the Oversight committee staff to convey what I had found via the FOIA and to get additional information from CDC relevant to thimerosal.  Along the way, I gained the support of Barry and Dolly Segal, through Focus Autism and they have become pivotal to this entire effort.  In addition, I received a very significant amount of assistance from Dawn Loughborough, Bob Krakow, Bobbie Manning and Louise Habakus.  They are all amazing sources of insight and have advised me throughout the process.  I also need to acknowledge my friends at EBCALA, especially Louis Conte, Rolf Hazlehurst, Becky Estepp and Kevin Barry, who have been working with the committee staff very effectively regarding NVICP reform. 

I was able to meet with the Oversight committee staff several times between May and November, up to the day before the hearing, to discuss the pertinent details.  I also was corresponding with Beth Clay from SafeMinds who was working very diligently on the issue as well.  When the committee staff finally indicated the participants in the panel, I was disappointed because there was only one participating organization (Safeminds) that included the relationship of vaccines (specifically thimerosal) to autism causation within their mission. The rest of the panel would either avoid the issue or deny any causal relationship.  Given the importance of autism causation, this was just not a balanced panel.

(Here is the testimony that Brian Hooker prepared for the hearing but he was unable to give.)

I asked Brian about his efforts to gather information about the actions of the CDC.

What kind of information were you seeking from the CDC with your FOIA requests?

All kinds.  I have made over 100 FOIA requests to the CDC over the last 8 years and received thousands of pages of information.  This has been a very thorough compilation of work.  David Geier, who is my mentor regarding the FOIA, got me started doing FOIA requests back in 2004.  David has also reviewed nearly everything I have received.

I have specifically requested information for the 5 CDC studies on thimerosal and autism prior to 2004 that led to the IOM Immunization Safety Review Committee report “Vaccines and Autism” released in May 2004.  In this report, primarily due to committee chairperson Dr. Marie McCormick (Harvard University) and study director Dr. Kathleen Stratton (IOM), causation was denied between thimerosal containing vaccines and autism (as well as the MMR vaccine and autism).  This report also effectively shut down government funding for any further "independent" research on vaccines and autism.  This information is crucial, given the constant reference that the CDC and others make to the 2004 IOM report.  Most of the key components of the FOIAed information have been completely redacted by the CDC.

I also requested information on PoulThorsen and his connection to CDC, obviously because of his co-authorship in studies that bolstered the body of evidence denying vaccine causation in autism and his known culpability and fraud indictments, being on the DHHS OIG Most Wanted Fugitive list.  The majority of this information has been withheld by the CDC.

Finally, I have requested information on two of the latest CDC studies again denying causation between neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) and thimerosal exposure including Thompson et al. 2007 (NEJM 357:1281) and Price et al. 2010 (Pediatrics 126:656).  These two publications are indiscernible from an epidemiology standpoint.  This information has yet to be released from the CDC.

For years the CDC has acted as though they’ve seriously addressed the question of a link between vaccines and autism and according to their research; there simply isn’t any.  How would you characterize what the CDC has done?

I would challenge anyone who would rely in the veracity of the CDC studies.  They've repeatedly, purposefully withheld data that clearly show a link between thimerosal and autism (among other NDD's).  They've obfuscated the main issue via obviously biased statistical manipulation.  Clearly, the CDC's conflicted role of vaccine advocate and vaccine safety guardian has contributed to this whole problem.   

How did the agency charged with the oversight of our children’s health instead become complicit in covering up a disaster?

Call in 12/6 Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines Meeting

The ACCV advises and makes recommendations to the Secretary of Health and Human Services on issues relating to the operation of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). There are nine voting members who provide oversight of the VICP and recommend ways to improve the VICP. Parklawn Building, 5600 Fishers Lane, Rockville, Maryland

Agenda

Conference Room 10-65
December 06, 2012
(1:00 pm – 5:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time)
Dial: 1-800-369-3104
Passcode: ACCV

SafeMinds' Mark Blaxill Testimony at Autism Hearing

Testimony of Mark Blaxill Board Member, SafeMinds Before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform US House of Representatives

November 29, 2012

Good afternoon Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee.  I am honored to be here today on behalf of the non-profit organization, SafeMinds, grateful to Chairman Issa for today’s invitation and humbled by the opportunity to represent the community of autism families.

In addition to my comments, I have provided a more extensive report from SafeMinds and documents for the record.

In 1935, a John Hopkins professor named Leo Kanner wrote the world’s first textbook on Child Psychiatry. In 527 pages and 43 chapters, Kanner described every psychiatric condition in children know to medicine at the time.  There was no condition remotely resembling autism.

In 1938, Oliver and Mary Triplett left Mississippi with their five year old son Donald to visit Kanner, by then considered the world’s leading authority on children’s development. When Kanner met Donald he was fascinated. He had never seen a child like him. 

In 1943, Kanner wrote a paper inspired by Donald. “Since 1938,” he wrote, “there have come to our attention a number of children whose condition differs so markedly and uniquely from anything reported so far, that each case merits-and, I hope, will eventually receive-a detailed consideration of its fascinating peculiarities.”

The oldest child of the eleven described was born in 1931. Kanner subsequently diagnosed hundreds of children with autism, but never found a case born before 1930. The historical record is clear: before 1930, the rate of autism was effectively zero.

CDCs Dr. Coleen Boyle Suggested Manipulating Autism Dx Age in 2000

CDC's Dr. Coleen Boyle who presented at the autism hearing today is one of the major architects of the the perpetuation of the autism epidemic. In April 2000, 6 weeks before the Simpsonwood meeting, Boyle suggested manipulating the data by adding 1 and 2 year olds to the data set - kids too young to have an ASD diagnosis - in order to dilute the danger. She belongs in prison. See the full email below (esp. #2).

Tuesday, April 25, 2000 3:55 PM
E-mail by Coleen Boyle to Frank DeStefano Cc to Tom Sinks.
Subject: comments of analysis

... "2. Since most of the dx's are generally not picked up until the 2nd or 3rd year of life had you considered eligibility criteria of at least 18 months or 2 years?? What happens if you do this?" ....

Unvaccinated Children and Autism: Study Funding Needed Right Now

DONATE HERE.

By J.B. Handley

“In a complex system, however, mistakes are not measured in degrees but in whole orders of magnitude.”

-                Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise

In the above quote, author Nate Silver is discussing the fact that Moody’s and S&P--the pre-eminent financial ratings agencies in the world-- underestimated the default risk of CDO funds by a factor of over 200, facilitating the implosion of the housing bubble and a worldwide recession.

Put another way, the financial experts at S&P and Moody’s predicted that certain financial instruments would have a default rate of just 0.12 percent (just over one tenth of one percent), when the actual default rate turned out to be 28%.

How could so many smart people be so stupid?

This question lies at the heart of a battle and debate that so many of us are currently fighting—is it possible that our health authorities, in an attempt to prevent every infectious disease they could through the use of vaccines, ended up creating a whole different set of problematic health outcomes in our children?

Here are the facts we know to be true:

-  Vaccines can cause immune system, brain, gut, and other neurological damage. There is simply no dispute about the ability of vaccine’s to injure some portion of the children who receive them.

-  The number of vaccines given has risen dramatically since the mid-1980s, from 10 or less to nearly 40, and the majority of vaccines are given during the first 2 years of a child’s life.

-  There has been an explosion in autism, ADHD, food allergies, and so many other auto-immune disorders during this same period of time

-  There has never been any testing for the cross-reactivity of vaccines or any monitoring of the potential damage that layering on so many new vaccines to the US immunization schedule might be doing to our children—it has been an experiment of unprecedented scale.

Dr. Donald Miller, University of Washington, corroborates many of these points:

The [vaccine] schedule states, "Your child can safely receive all vaccines recommended for a particular age during one visit." Public health officials, however, have not proven that it is indeed safe to inject this many vaccines into infants. What's more, they cannot explain why, concurrent with an increasing number of vaccinations, there has been an explosion of neurologic and immune system disorders in our nation's children. 

Fifty years ago, when the immunization schedule contained only four vaccines (for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, and smallpox), autism was virtually unknown. First discovered in 1943, this most devastating malady in what is now a spectrum of pervasive developmental disorders afflicted less than 1 in 10,000 children. Today, one in every 68 American families has an autistic child. Other, less severe developmental disorders, rarely seen before the vaccine era, have also reached epidemic proportions. Four million American children have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. One in six American children are now classified as "Learning Disabled."

Our children are also experiencing an epidemic of autoimmune disorders — Type I diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, and bowel disorders. There has been a 17-fold increase in Type I diabetes, from 1 in 7,100 children in the 1950s to 1 in 400 now. Juvenile rheumatoid arthritis afflicts 300,000 American children. Twenty-five years ago this disease was so rare that public health officials did not keep any statistics on it. There has been a 4-fold increase in asthma, and bowel disorders in children are much more common now than they were 50 years ago.

*       *       *

In a system with this much complexity, as Nate Silver has explained, the chance to make a huge predictive error grows exponentially, and I personally believe that’s what has happened with our kids. In trying to do the right thing, our health officials may have created a world far worse than they ever knew possible, and 1 in 84 children (and so many more with other conditions like ADHD, deadly food allergies, etc.) are perhaps paying a huge price for their mistakes.

Vaccine Safety Debate at Drew University

On Thursday, November 29, Drew University in Madison, NJ will hold a debate about vaccines.  One of the panelists will be Jonathan Rose, a professor at Drew and author of "What the Autism Community Can Learn From Silent Spring"

The event takes place from 7 to 8:30pm at Room 28 in the Learning Center. It is free and open to the public.  Here's a map of the campus: http://www.drew.edu/map/
 
You can park in the Tilghman Parking Lot, which you can reach by turning off Rt. 124 onto Lancaster Road.  The Parking Lot is straight ahead.

Q & A – How About a Half Cup of Mercury Hazardous Waste?

By Jim Thompson

How much mercury is in the flu shot when it has Thimerosal as a preservative?

There are 25 micrograms of mercury in each flu shot that uses Thimerosal as a preservative[1].  And a half cup of water (4 ounces) with that much mercury has 0.2114 parts per million mercury and is considered a hazardous waste by the USEPA[2].

Why is there a concern about mercury?

Mercury is a known neurotoxin[3]. 

How much mercury is in the blood after receiving a flu shot with Thimerosal? 

The mercury blood level in human newborns has been measured at a peak levels with an average of 5 nanograms per milliliter (5 parts per billion)[4].

How much mercury ends up in the brain?

The mercury level in the human infant brain after receiving a shot with Thimerosal is unknown.   However tests have been performed on infant monkeys.  Burbacher et al[5] gave infant monkeys shots with Thimerosal--with the same mercury weight per body weight, on average, as received by human infants.  This study reported that “The inorganic form of Hg was readily measurable in the brain of the thimerosal-exposed infants. The average concentration of inorganic Hg did not change across the 28 days of washout and was approximately 16 nanograms per milliliter (16 parts per billion).” 

Thank Jim Kirk of Chicago Sun Times for Hiring Best Selling Author Jenny McCarthy

Last week Every Child By Two asked the Chicago Sun Times newspaper to remove Jenny McCarthy's parenting column because of her pro-vaccine-safety stance.    JB Handley wrote about ECBT yesterday, you can read his post Every Child By Two: A Frozen Caveman Pharma Front Group. We invite you to email Mr. Jim Kirk (feel free to use the letter below) to thank hm for hiring Ms. McCarthy and show your support for his newspaper.

jkirk@suntimes.com

Jim Kirk
Editor-in-Chief, Chicago Sun Times

Dear Mr. Kirk

I am writing in regard to “Every Child By Two’s” campaign asking “parent advocates” to write to you and request that actress/author Jenny McCarthy not be allowed to have a column in your newspaper. 

Every Child By Two (ECBT) is primarily funded by vaccine makers whose products have fallen under criticism for inadequate safety by Ms. McCarthy.  In 2010 (the most recent year for which funding information is available), Wyeth vaccines provided  $307,000 to ECBT and Sanofi Vaccines provided ECBT with $245,171.  Furthermore, ECBT’s board members include Dr. Paul Offit – vaccine industry spokesman and co-inventor of the Rotavirus vaccine that has been estimated to have earned him in excess of $10 million.

These funding sources were not disclosed in ECBT’s letter urging the media’s censorship of Ms. McCarthy.  Instead, ECBT presents itself as an unbiased public service organization.

ECBT’s states on its home page:

“11,000 children are born every day. We must vaccinate all of them on time.”

This statement is an example of ECBT’s disregard of the established medical fact that all individuals are not tolerant of all pharmaceutical products. The federal government has compensated families over $2 billion for vaccine injuries and deaths, and thousands of Americans have reported serious adverse affects to VAERS (the government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System).

Every Child By Two: Frozen Caveman Pharma Front Group

By J.B. Handley

Can a website actually accumulate dust? If one could, I’d nominate VaccinateYourBaby.org as perhaps the web’s dustiest. Remember them? Waaay on back in 2008, actress Amanda Peet called non-vaccinating parents “parasites” and--in full retreat immediately after that PR disaster--did just enough interviews to not look like she was sprinting for the hills…and then sprinted for the hills! Nowadays, she does her work advocating with the United Nations for third world vaccination awareness, perhaps reasoning that Masai tribesman are less likely to send her nasty emails.

Peet’s aging pro-vaccine website links you to the VaccinateYourBaby YouTube Channel, where the last video was posted in 2011…and, as I’m writing this, has the following views for their 5 most recently posted videos: 67 (posted in 2011), 168 (2011), 216 (2011), and 38 (2011). Back in 2008, when the Amanda Peet campaign was rolled-out, the flagship video of Peet being interviewed has, today, 4 years later, a total of 11,965 views--not particularly robust when you consider that Jenny McCarthy, arguing the other side of the vaccine-autism debate, routinely garners hundreds of thousands of views for any number of interviews she gives (or, heck, 80,000 views for me here yelling at The Doctors.)

Before moving on to talk about the real topic of this post, I’d like to point out a few delicious ironies about all of this:

-                The Amanda Peet campaign was engineered by none other than the lord-vader-in-chief himself, Paul “Pharma Pimp” Offit. Peet’s brother-in-law worked at CHOP where Merck sponsors Offit’s activities, and Offit used his connection to Peet and his medical degree to hatch a brilliantly disastrous marketing campaign that nearly ruined Amanda Peet’s career. Good stuff!

-                Recently, Amanda Peet has told the story in interviews that her daughter, in 2010 (2 years after the VYB campaign), contracted whooping cough AFTER being vaccinated, and this series of events somehow made her even more pro-vaccine. Now, I’m certainly not going to celebrate a 2 year-old child contracting a very painful bacterial illness--I don’t wish that on anyone--but I will celebrate the lunacy of becoming more pro-vaccine after the vaccine doesn’t work for your own daughter!

Which brings us to Every Child By Two, the pharma front group that bankrolled the Vaccinate Your Baby campaign. If the VYB website looks dusty, Every Child By Two’s website looks like it was designed by a 10 year-old in 1994. If you click to the “news” section of the website, their last newsletter was issued in August, 2008, more than four years ago.

By the way, I wrote about Every Child By Two, waay back in August of 2008, the very same month of the last newsletter they ever wrote. As I clearly demonstrated back then, ECBT is really just a Wyeth vaccine division marketing organization:

“First, a little background. By nonprofit standards, ECBT is a rat-shit organization. With a grand total of 3 employees, a tiny office suite in a crummy Washington D.C. neighborhood, and an annual budget under $1 million, they are a blip on the radar screen. As usual, the devil is in the details… And, how much did Wyeth [the vaccine maker] give ECBT? 
Wyeth gave $350,769. That's 68% of their non-contract revenue and 48% of their total revenue. From one company. A vaccine manufacturer named Wyeth. And Craig Engesser, a Wyeth spokesperson, has been on the board of ECBT for as long as I can track it. He even served as the organization's treasurer!”

*       *       *

What’s different about ECBT in 2012 versus 2008 is that four years ago ECBT actually appeared to be doing something. They had Amanda Peet, they had a new marketing campaign, they had timely newsletters, and they had Pharma funding. Today, nearly everything looks like it’s stopped, like the money dried up, and everyone went home.

Unfortunately, 990 forms for non-profit organizations have a time delay. At present, I can only find financial information on ECBT through 2010, but I find their 990 forms for 2009 and 2010 raise all sorts of interesting and delicious questions. Consider:

-                The organization appears frozen in time after about August of 2008, yet Amy Pisani, the Executive Director, was still making $136,000 a year in 2010, two years later.

-                As of today, Amy Pisani no longer works out of Washington DC where ECBT still maintains a small office next door to the Vietnamese consulate office, but rather out of her house in Connecticut (which ECBT’s voicemail calls the “Connecticut Office”)

-                Their sources of funding have become even more clear and blatant. In 2010, they were: Wyeth vaccines ($307,000), Sanofi Vaccines ($245,171), and Public Health Solutions, aka The NY Dept of Health ($182,136).

President Obama Will You Acknowledge and Act on Vaccine Injury?

Congratulations to President Obama on winning a second term.  Healthcare has been a priority for him.  Will the President acknowledge the grim side of the ever rising childhood health epidemics including vaccine damage like this adverse reaction to birth dose vaccination against Hepatitis B?

Meet Ian Gromowski.  He died at 47 days old, never having left the hospital after a severe reaction to his Hepatitis B vaccination.   Hep B is an IV drug and sexually transmitted disease which his mother did not carry and so could not have transferred to him during delivery. 

I think of him - and how the media, AAP and public health and pharma rank non-life threatening "vaccine preventable disease" so far above his tragic story. He mattered. He matters. And I for one am not going to forget him. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not over the next four years.  Read about Ian's story at IansVoice.org KIM

WANTED BY THE FEDS: Poul Thorsen, Who Helped Pull Off CDC Vaccine Autism Heist

Poul Thorsen is the man whose research is used by the AAP, media, public health establishment and pharma spokespeople like Dr. Paul Offit, and Bill Gates and Dr. Nancy Snyderman to "prove" that there is no connection between vaccines and autism.  He is a fugitive wanted by American authorities - see below.  We've been writing about him for years:

Read The Indictment of Poul Thorsen at Age of Autism We have a pdf of the indictment of Dr. Poul Thorsen the Danish researcher held in highest esteem for having "debunked" the autism vaccine connection (Poul Thorsen's Mutating Resume) many years ago. As Dr. Max Wiznitzer said about another doctor recently, "If you can't trust the researcher, you can't trust the research."

Poul Thorsen: Autism Speaks' Original Trailblazer  Poul Thorsen, indicted last week (HERE)  by US Attorneys for embezzling tax payers money via the Centers for Disease Control, also received $1 Million in funding through an Autism Speaks grant in 2008 (HERE). Now Autism Speaks is trying to hide their Thorsen affiliation. Why is that?

Poul Thorsen's Mutating Resume  In bits and pieces, in Danish and English, from three universities in two hemispheres and the CDC in Atlanta, a picture has begun forming in the past few days that is already startling in its outline: Paul Thorsen, one of the key scientists involved in CDC-backed studies exonerating vaccines as a cause of autism, is under investigation for collecting millions of dollars in bogus “grant” money, misrepresenting himself to his employers and the world and possibly forging the documents that enabled the scam.
 
Even more astonishing, it appears the CDC and several other major autism research centers have known about this for months and stayed publicly silent, even as the debate over autism and vaccines has reached several decisive moments -- and a new decision is expected any day from U.S. vaccine court. The CDC in particular would have a hard time claiming ignorance about the suspected crime -- at least three of the forged documents were in the agency’s name, and it helped uncover the fraud last year.

https://oig.hhs.gov/fraud/fugitives/profiles.asp#thorsen

• From approximately February 2004 until February 2010, Poul Thorsen executed a scheme to steal grant money awarded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). CDC had awarded grant money to Denmark for research involving infant disabilities, autism, genetic disorders, and fetal alcohol syndrome. CDC awarded the grant to fund studies of the relationship between autism and the exposure to vaccines, the relationship between cerebral palsy and infection during pregnancy, and the relationship between developmental outcomes and fetal alcohol exposure.
  
  
• Thorsen worked as a visiting scientist at CDC, Division of Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, before the grant was awarded.
  
  
• The initial grant was awarded to the Danish Medical Research Council. In approximately 2007, a second grant was awarded to the Danish Agency for Science, Technology, and Innovation. Both agencies are governmental agencies in Denmark. The research was done by the Aarhaus University and Odense University Hospital in Denmark.
  
  
• Thorsen allegedly diverted over $1 million of the CDC grant money to his own personal bank account. Thorsen submitted fraudulent invoices on CDC letterhead to medical facilities assisting in the research for reimbursement of work allegedly covered by the grants. The invoices were addressed to Aarhaus University and Sahlgrenska University Hospital. The fact that the invoices were on CDC letterhead made it appear that CDC was requesting the money from Aarhaus University and Sahlgrenska University Hospital although the bank account listed on the invoices belonged to Thorsen.

Canary Party Responds To Brian Deer's Rebuttal

When Brian Deer was introduced at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse earlier this month to give his version of events in the Wakefield/MMR controversy,  the audience was told, "There is no debate.”   That statement was swiftly refuted by WKTV news whose top story was: "Vaccine-Autism Debate Reaches La Crosse," (See video here.)    Among the many vaccine safety advocates who had contacted university officials was Jennifer VanDerHorst-Larson, President of the Canary Party and mother to a child with regressive autism, triggered by vaccines.  Her e-mail, critical of Deer,  was also sent to Canary Party's 5,000 members. Deer posted a response to her on his personal website, and VanDerHorst-Larson has now answered him in an e-mail to the more than 30 sponsors of  Deer's lectures at La Crosse. Her hope is to enlighten the La Crosse community and others about the side of the controversy the media does not report. In the latest installment of the debate, it looks like Deer is caught the headlights. Her response, running on the Canary Party website is below:

OPEN LETTER to the Sponsors of Brian Deer’s Lectures at The University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, October 2012

Allergy Associates of La Crosse (Drs. Vijay Sabnis, James Thompson, Ted Habel, David Morris, George Kroker, Mary Morris)

Marshfield Clinic and Labs  (Brian H. Ewert, MD, C. Todd Stewart, MD, Gene R. Shaw, MD)

Gundersen Lutheran Clinic  (Jeffrey E. Thompson, MD, Julio J. Bird, MD, Mary Kuffel, MD)

U of W La Crosse Foundation, Allen Trapp, President, Greg Reichert, Asst. Chancellor

College of Science and Health, Dean Bruce Riley

Departments of Biology, Microbiology, Chemistry, English, Health Education and Promotions, Communication Studies, Exercise and Sports:

Dr. David Howard, Chair, Biology Dept., Dr. S. N. Rajagopal, Chair, Microbiology Dept., Dr. Aaron Monte, Chair, Chemistry Dept. Dr. Susan Crutchfield, Chair, English Dept. Dr. Dan Duquette, Chair, Health Education and Promotions Dr. Linda Dickmeyer, Chair, Communication Studies, Dr. Mark Gibson, Chair, Exercise and Sports Science

Faculty of the Dept. of Microbiology: Sue Anglehart, Marisa Barbknecht, Bonnie Jo Bratina, Michael Hoffman, Michael A. Lazzari, Marc A. Rott, William Schwan, Diane Sewell, Bernadette C. Taylor, Peter Wilker, Mike Winfrey

Susan Betts, Dept. of Microbiology

Premed Club,  Jordan L. Ludwigson, President

Biology Club 

Microbiology Club, William Close, President

Institute for Biomolecular Sciences

Members of Distinguished Speakers Committee

cc:        Editor, Racquet Student Newspaper, Chancellor Gow

My name is Jennifer VanDerHorst-Larson, and my open letter to university officials was singled out by Brian Deer for response. As you know, Mr. Deer recently lectured at the university about the Wakefield/MMR vaccine controversy. On his website, Mr. Deer referred to my letter as a form of “abuse.”  (Please judge for yourself if it’s abusive.) My letter.  Mr. Deer’s response.

I am the mother of a boy with autism who developed normally – exceeding his milestones - until he received his Measles/Mumps/Rubella (MMR) and other vaccinations at 15 months. He reacted immediately and showed clear evidence of regression the day after his 15-month shots. By 18 months, he had lost all of his skills.  By 19 months, all he did was cry, bang his head and say “go” – his only remaining word. I was told to consider an institution for him, and he wasn’t even two.

At age 12, he is now diagnosed as severely autistic and in need of 24-hour supervision. He will never be independent. My son is also diagnosed with colitis – the bowel disease that was diagnosed in the Lancet 12 children with autism – denied by Brian Deer who spoke at La Crosse University. The gut-autism hypothesis has been placed under prolonged attack by those defending the vaccine program, including Brian Deer whose unsupported statements about the Lancet 12 children’s health  (“They don’t have bowel disease!”) have resulted in UK parents being unable to find medical help for their autistic children with bowel disease, the effects of which are profound and tragic.

High Court Judge Mitting has since rejected Mr. Deer’s claim that the 12 children were not seriously ill and did not require the medical attention they received from Professor Walker-Smith’s team at the Royal Free Hospital where Dr. Wakefield co-authored the controversial Lancet paper. 

 I am one of thousands of parents who have reported that their child (or children) regressed following vaccination. I was given the official medical explanation by Minneapolis doctors that my son’s regression was coincidental, even though no other pediatric medicine or procedure is associated with large numbers of “coincidental” reports of regression into autism.  To my knowledge, there is no case of a completely unvaccinated child developing normally and then spontaneously, dramatically regressing into autism. I think that’s significant. A retrospective, vaccinated vs. unvaccinated study would tell us more, but the government refuses to undertake such a study.

To Mr. Deer’s claim that the vaccine/autism link is a “fringe” theory put forth by “small groups of ill-informed, misguided” and “malicious people,” “desperate for attention,” I can only respond by asking you to watch this brief CBS interview of former NIH Director Dr. Bernadine Healy describing how medical authorities have refused to consider the possibility of an autism/vaccine link in susceptible children, for fear of scaring the general public.

There is also the case of Hannah Poling, a child who developed normally until she received 9 vaccine doses at one doctor’s visit. Her family will be compensated in the amount of $20 million over her lifetime by the U.S. government for her autism resulting from MMR and thimerosal-containing vaccines.  The Cochrane Review is not reassuring of MMR safety either, concluding: “The design and reporting in MMR safety studies both pre- and post marketing are largely inadequate.”  Please see the last page of my letter for links to independent studies that support Dr. Wakefield’s work, including peer-reviewed papers that duplicate his original findings in five additional countries.

Age of Autism Science Summary: Death after Quadrivalent Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Vaccination

Pharmaceutical Regulatory Affairs: Open Access

Research Article            Open Access

Death after Quadrivalent Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Vaccination: (Read the full study  HERE.

Causal or Coincidental?

Lucija Tomljenovic1* and Christopher A Shaw1,2,3

1Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of British Columbia, Canada 2Program in Experimental Medicine, University of British Columbia, Canada 3Program in Neuroscience, University of British Columbia, Canada

Abstract

Background: The proper understanding of a true risk from vaccines is crucial for avoiding unnecessary adverse reactions (ADRs). However, to this date no solid tests or criteria have been established to determine whether adverse events are causally linked to vaccinations.

Objectives: This research was carried out to determine whether or not some serious autoimmune and neurological ADRs following HPV vaccination are causal or merely coincidental and to validate a biomarker-based immunohistochemical (IHC) protocol for assessing causality in case of vaccination-suspected serious adverse neurological outcomes.

Methods: Post-mortem brain tissue specimens from two young women who suffered from cerebral vasculitis- type symptoms following vaccination with the HPV vaccine Gardasil were analysed by IHC for various immuno- inflammatory markers. Brain sections were also stained for antibodies recognizing HPV-16L1 and HPV-18L1 antigen which are present in Gardasil.

Results: In both cases, the autopsy revealed no anatomical, microbiological nor toxicological findings that might have explained the death of the individuals. In contrast, our IHC analysis showed evidence of an autoimmune vasculitis potentially triggered by the cross-reactive HPV-16L1 antibodies binding to the wall of cerebral blood vessels in all examined brain samples. We also detected the presence of HPV-16L1 particles within the cerebral vasculature with some HPV-16L1 particles adhering to the blood vessel walls. HPV-18L1 antibodies did not bind to cerebral blood vessels nor any other neural tissues. IHC also showed increased T-cell signalling and marked activation of the classical antibody-dependent complement pathway in cerebral vascular tissues from both cases. This pattern of complement activation in the absence of an active brain infection indicates an abnormal triggering of the immune response in which the immune attack is directed towards self-tissue.

Conclusions: Our study suggests that HPV vaccines containing HPV-16L1 antigens pose an inherent risk for triggering potentially fatal autoimmune vasculopathies.

Practice implications: Cerebral vasculitis is a serious disease which typically results in fatal outcomes when undiagnosed and left untreated. The fact that many of the symptoms reported to vaccine safety surveillance databases following HPV vaccination are indicative of cerebral vasculitis, but are unrecognized as such (i.e., intense persistent migraines, syncope, seizures, tremors and tingling, myalgia, locomotor abnormalities, psychotic symptoms and cognitive deficits), is a serious concern in light of the present findings. It thus appears that in some cases vaccination may be the triggering factor of fatal autoimmune/neurological events. Physicians should be aware of this association.

Spotlight On Gardasil

Vaccine Epidemic, now available in paperback from Skyhorse Publishing, turns the spotlight onto Gardasil, Merck's HPV vaccine. I saw a Tweet last week that referred to Gardasil as Merck's "Help Pay for Vioxx" Hail Mary pass. Vioxx was a painkiller that resulted in lawsuits that cost Merck almost $4 billion dollars. Most Americans are aware that when a drug harms or kills, the consumer has rights, including the right to sue for wrongful death or injury. Most are unaware that this is not so with vaccines, which are exempt from liability except in a tightly administered Federal court.  Mark Blaxill wrote a 3 part series on Gardasil called, A License to Kill:

• A License to Kill? Part 1: Gardasil
• A License to Kill? Part 2: Gardasil
• A License to Kill? Part 3: Gardasil

Mark and Dan Olmsted also wrote a chapter for The Vaccine Epidemic that you can download. 

The Vaccine Epidemic site has updated info on Gardasil, which has been controversial because of its connection to sexual activity (HPV, or genital warts, are sexually transmitted), its target patient of 11+ year old girls and the shift to offering it to boys after having marketed it as a cervical cancer vaccine for girls. The mere mention of Gardasil and injury may have cost Michelle Bachman her Presidential bid.

Gardasil, the controversial HPV vaccines given to teenage girls and boys. Learn about the money that's being made and the damage being done. See how other countries are banning the vaccine.

We wanted to share some important new and updated information:

• A new report of infertility following HPV vaccination reported by the British Medical Journal
• France bans aluminum containing vaccines, including Gardasil
• Health professionals in Spain seek ban on Gardasil
• The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine asks if cervical cancer data justifies HPV vaccination in India
• Class action lawsuit against Gardasil in Australia
• Ireland offers a Frequently Asked Questions guide for health practitioners that may oversimplify safety concerns
• Adverse events following HPV vaccination continue to pile up

GARDASIL FACTS Brand New to Must-Have Vaccine, to Billion $ Blockbuster for Merck

Gardasil was licensed for use in 2006 for females aged 9 to 26 years. The CDC recommended it for sixth grade girls in 2007. In 2009, the FDA approved its use in males aged 9 to 26 years.

Twenty-four states introduced bills in 2007 to make Gardasil mandatory for school admission.

Gardasil is currently mandated for sixth graders in Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Gardasil sales:
2007 $1.5 billion
2008 $1.4 billion
2009 $1.1 billion
2010 $998 million
2011 $1.2 billion
Second quarter 2012 sales are up 17% over the prior year.

Read more at The Vaccine Epidemic site.