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).
Doing some research on front groups like ECBT, it turns out these "Special Interest Dot-Orgs"—SIDs for short—are nothing new. Unfortunately, the 501(c)3 code of the IRS is very vague on what constitutes a non-profit organization and there are very few disclosure requirements for funding sources any public filings nonprofits have to make. As an example, if you wanted to find out where Generation Rescue gets its funding, you wouldn't be able to. No filing requirements exist.
As we’d all expect, drug companies have taken full advantage of this murky area. To my surprise, the press has been covering this story for years, just not specific to vaccines. In a 2005 expose titled, "A little too cozy? Not-for-profits may have undisclosed funding ties to for-profit drug companies", Sacramento Bee reporters Dorsey Griffith and Steve Wiegand went after the practice:
"The public may be getting hoodwinked because they may think these nonprofits are independent," said Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy, a watchdog group that provides information about nonprofits.
"But how can they do it independently if they are paid by the drug companies?"
Borochoff and other critics say that even the best-intentioned advocacy groups can ignite public fears about conditions that may not be medical problems, divert attention from more serious health issues and put pressure on doctors to prescribe medications that may not be necessary. While some of these advocacy organizations begin as true grass-roots associations that later come to rely on financing from the pharmaceutical industry, others sprout directly from drug company seed money. And some are hybrids.
* * *
OK, we all get it. ECBT is a pharma front group. Their activity seemed to stop after 2008. So what, you say? Well, I say, what are they actually doing with the hundreds of thousands of dollars they claim to be spending on behalf of pharma? For example:
In 2010, ECBT claims that, on behalf of vaccine maker Sanofi, they spent almost $250,000 doing the following [with my remarks in parenthesis]:
“Sanofi – This program allowed Every Child By Two to continue our online activities outreach initiatives and website hosting [website not updated since 2008]; set up RSS feeds for vaccine news to keep users up to date [you could do that for free]; develop a widget which will allow parents to create a personalized immunization schedule and email reminders of appointments [my web guy told me he could do this for about $250]; set up and maintain vaccine twitter feeds [Amy Pisani has a twitter account with 364 followers, she makes $136,000 per year]; run Google keyword ads [I couldn’t find any keyword ads at all using 50 of the most obvious search terms], do media outreach and provide media training to coalitions [if they are doing this, they sure aren’t publicizing it, can’t find info anywhere].”
For a quarter of a million dollars, I’d argue Sanofi got a whole lot of nothing. Worse, perhaps, is the $300,000 ECBT spent on behalf of Wyeth, to host what appears to be a Las Vegas boondoggle at the Four Seasons Hotel:
“Wyeth Vaccine- This program allowed Every Child By Two to host a series of meetings in Las Vegas with several groups including WIC and private provider offices.”
A series of meetings in Las Vegas? According to the Las Vegas Review Journal, Every Child By Two sponsors an early December conference in Las Vegas at the Four Seasons. Who was last years featured speaker? Read:
“The Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was in Las Vegas December 9 to speak at the Immunization Update at the Four Seasons Las Vegas, sponsored by the Southern Nevada Immunization Coalition (SNIC) and Every Child by Two, Carter/Bumpers Champions for Immunization. The Immunization Update was held to inform Nevada's immunization providers of the latest immunization information, deliver updates about influenza vaccinations and discuss the importance of whooping cough prevention, a concern for the CDC, particularly in Southern Nevada.”
Yes, the CDC needs to send their Directors to the Four Seasons in Vegas in December because they are so worried about Southern Nevada’s immunization practices. What a joke! Here’s how it works:
- Wyeth gives ECBT money
- ECBT holds a “conference” at the most expensive venue in Vegas
- ECBT invites CDC employees as featured speakers and pays for their whole trip
- Wyeth pays CDC employees without paying CDC employees-presto!
You might be wondering what got me back to writing on AoA and, of all things, writing about ECBT. Well, for all their dormancy, ECBT has been busy very recently, with an email I recently received that reads:
Dear Jonathan,
As some of you may have heard, Jenny McCarthy was recently hired by the Chicago Sun-Times to write a daily blog on parenting, dating and family. McCarthy has been a staunch advocate for the debunked vaccine-autism myth and should not be given the opportunity to influence readers of the Sun-Times about her dangerous claims against life-saving vaccines.
We are asking you as parents passionate about protecting your children from the spread of infectious disease to write to Chicago Sun-Times Editor-in-Chief Jim Kirk and explain how McCarthy's dangerous stance on immunizations and new role puts all of our children at risk. Sample language for your letter has been provided below, should you need it.
To learn more about the benefits of immunizations, visit our Vaccinate Your Baby page for more information. Thank you again for your continued voice in support of childhood immunizations!
Amy Pisani
Executive Director, Every Child By Two
|
|
Pisani, the $136,000 a year Executive Director working out of her house, goes on to offer parents a form letter to sign your name to. Brilliant! Editor-In-Chiefs of national newspaper are really moved when a person they don’t know sends them a form letter! (Do pharma trolls sign their real names to form letters?) In return, I have prepared a form letter for all of you guys to send the CEOs of Wyeth and Sanofi:
Dear Pharma Big Wig,
It has recently come to my attention that you have been paying Every Child By Two hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to do almost nothing with your money. With today’s cost-efficient web, most of the things they claim they are doing could be done for less than $2,000, yet somehow they are spending, in total, almost a million dollars of your money!
Their Executive Director works out of her house, their Twitter account has less than 400 followers, their websites haven’t been updated this decade, and Amanda Peet’s campaign was over before it started. Can you please fly me to Vegas instead of all those CDC employees?
[INSERT PERSONAL EXAMPLE OF WHAT YOU COULD DO WITH ALL THE MONEY ECBT HAS WASTED HERE]
I ask you to seriously reconsider giving ECBT so much money every year, you’d be far better off just setting it on fire.
Sincerely,
[INSERT NAME]
I think the front group that has inherited the banner, Shot of Prevention, is spending hundreds of thousands of this largesse a year paying their commenters, some of whom appear to be there shooting down vaccine-damaged families 24-7-365. They've hired an Aussie now, and an ex-pat living in the U.K., in addition to their core of five, some of whom move on once their contracts are up, and are replaced by others. I think it's interesting that they realize they need to have real live people who spend their days repeating the same old pharma-lies ad infinitum, trying desperately to counter the intelligent, well-informed fury of the tens of thousands of vaccine-damaged families who are quite effectively waking the public up to the dangers of vaccines. In 2000, when my baby was born, less than 1% of families refused any recommended vaccines: now, in places like Oregon and Alaska, between 5 and 10% of families are refusing all or some of the vaccines, because they believe us and not the pharma shills.
Posted by: cia parker | July 10, 2013 at 11:30 PM
It never made sensen that some organization picks this as their charity case when such supposed charity case already has the backing of two federal government agencies the CDC and the NIH and their huge army of doctors and nurses to back up said charity.
It is kind of like setting up an organization charity to help out the government with it's gold reserves or the government to supply the army with enough hand weapons.
Posted by: Benedetta | November 21, 2012 at 10:52 AM
Every child by two website needs to be upfront and transparent by stating on their front page that all or most of their funding is provided by vaccine companies or big pHarma. If they really care about the babies and children,
why not show all the ingredients and side-effects and provide informed choice to the parents? Inform the parents about the presevatives,adjuvants,emulsifiers,etc. and contaminants in the vaccines. This is just another agressive and controlling website supporting and promoting this dangerous vaccine policy while protecting big pHarma's interest.ONE SHOE DOES NOT FIT ALL.
I said it before and I say it again:
THE CHILDREN BELONG TO THE FAMILY,NOT TO THE STATE.
That money could be used to create Supported Living Centres
to help those with vaccine damage and aging parents.
Posted by: oneVoice | November 17, 2012 at 02:06 PM
136,000 sounds like a lot of money to me. How many people are getting paid out of that?
Plus there is those little trips, conferences and all. Wonder how much goes sort of under the table on them from money laundering -- Mike?
Posted by: Benedetta | November 17, 2012 at 12:15 PM
There you have it:
"$136K for an executive director of even a small non-profit is not a great deal of money."
Mike, for ordinary people, for someone who is apparently not doing anything, it is a lot of money.
Posted by: John Stone | November 17, 2012 at 11:22 AM
I've never seen a more poorly written smear campaign, but it's not surprising coming from a disreputable source such as JB Handley. He never seems to have encountered a fact that he couldn't deny or twist into something sinister and shady when nothing of the sort exists.
So what if the websites are old, out of date, and rarely read? Seems to me that's Every Child By Two's problem (he also seems unaware that both ecbt.org and vaccinateyourbaby.org are owned by Every Child By Two). If they don't update their website, their message doesn't get out...it's as simple as that.
He repeatedly mentions Amy Pisani's salary and that she works from home...again, so what? Perhaps it's jealousy that he doesn't make her salary, and is unable to work from home? $136K for an executive director of even a small non-profit is not a great deal of money.
That's not even the least of his libelous comments. He accuses Every Child By Two of being nothing more than a laundering unit for the pharma companies. As anyone who bothers to do any research into it's origins would find out, the organization was founded by (former Senator Dale Bumper's wife) Betty Bumpers and former first lady Rosalyn Carter. Both women have given a tremendous amount of time and effort...even to this day...to serve the people of this country in forthright manner to better their lives. Neither woman would take part in any operation that launders money.
Mr Handley, on the other hand, underhandedly uses the domain name everychildbytwo.org (the actual organization Every Child By Two uses ecbt.org as their domain name) as a means to redirect people who are legitimately seeking information about Every Child By Two to this very website. If his goals were so noble and so pure, why use such a dirty and underhanded trick to fool others?
Seems to me, that JB Handley is the nefarious seeking to misinform and libel others...
Posted by: Mike Howard | November 17, 2012 at 11:02 AM
Hopefully the viewing figures are equally as weak for LeftFootMyFoot & the laughable ScienceBasedMedicine . 2 truly despicable websites , and the totally pathetic SullivanCarey , and the GormlessSki .
Good news that Amanda is finding life so tough , cant wait to meet you Amanda and set you straight on a couple of vaccine things.
Posted by: Very Angry Very Hairy Man | November 14, 2012 at 05:21 AM
Dan E. Burns, I do know that for the 4th quarter of 2011 Pfizers top selling product was Lipitor at about 2.2 million a quarter and number 2 was the Prevnar vaccine. To put this in perspective Viagra was at number 8. Since then Liptor's patent has expired and Prevnar is now being pushed on people over 50 years old, in addition to infants. I would bet Prevnar is now the largest selling product of the world's largest pharmaceutical company. So much for the money losing proposition that we are bombarded with concerning vaccines.
Posted by: Hmmmmm! | November 12, 2012 at 03:24 PM
I've missed your articles, J.B., as always, great article! I just posted a comment which has disappeared, in the interim I looked up something similar regarding Every Child By Two's tactics. Every Child By Two sponsors another website, A Shot of Prevention, which publishes pro-vax articles by Chrisine Vara about twice a week, and it acts as though it allowed comments, but it has a panel of about five in-house vaccine defenders who try to eviscerate anti-vax comments. Chrisine deletes some of the comments and blocks some of the senders at the proxy level (ask me how I know). There were a couple of articles on the Discovery Channel's Learning Channel site about vaccines last April: I read one of them, it was middle-of-the-road, but did mention several of the now well-known dangers of vaccines. Shot of Prevention posted articles the week of May 16, 2012, one called "Concerned Parents Call Out Irresponsible Media," and one called "Medical Community Response to Irresponsible Media," in which they called upon parents to protest the articles published by Discovery Channel, a move some of us would call censorship. And enough parents did so that Discovery Channel pulled the articles from its website and they were no longer available by the following week (at least I was no longer able to pull them up, when I had done so when the protest was being announced).
I don't know what action I would propose, but it's not good if pharmaceutical companies are allowed to orchestrate censorship campaigns through their pharma-funded websites to prevent access by concerned parents to information about the dangers of vaccines.
Posted by: cia parker | November 12, 2012 at 09:34 AM
".. So now our children get to die from the NEW preventable disorders- Disorders that we could prevent , but wont......"
********************
I completely agree with you, except my research leads me to take that one step further.
Vaccines have never prevented a disease of any kind. That is just the lie upon which this crime has been based.
So not only do our kids get to die from these new avoidable disorders, they are dyeing for nothing. Because although these poisonous vaccine are crippling our children's immune systems, they do not now, nor have they ever prevented diseases.
Posted by: Barry | November 12, 2012 at 07:28 AM
To Carter's Daddy, Total agreement here. When those two punk doctors are 80 years and autism is gone and the mercury is out of the vaccines and no intelligent person eats fish any longer and houses near crematoriums or coal fired plants sell for a tenth of their previous value, these stooges will remember the days of autism and the mercury in the vaccines and say casually, " They shouldn't have done that" ( Scene: The Golfcourse)
And I am sick and tired of hearing about children who died of now preventable diseases- Because they probably would not even have had those diseases if doctors had not damaged the kids' immune systems with mercury through the DTP vaccines, laden with mercury. (Ever stop to think why so many diseases were most common starting at age 9 months?)(Example: Hib meningitis)
So now our children get to die from the NEW preventable disorders- Disorders that we could prevent , but wont.
Posted by: Cherry Sperlin Misra | November 12, 2012 at 04:54 AM
I remember seeing that episode of The Doctors when it was first aired. That Bachelor punk didn't deserve your breath, JB! Neither of those doctors were qualified to say anything about vaccines, but they were plenty qualified to say what pharma told them to say. Who are they impressing wearing scrubs and smocks in a studio anyway?
Posted by: Carter's Daddy | November 11, 2012 at 09:35 PM
Interesting how the principles of money laundering are being applied to this greed-based government/industry courtship.
Posted by: nhokkanen | November 11, 2012 at 09:09 PM
Good to see you back, J.B.!
Posted by: Cat Jameson | November 11, 2012 at 05:28 PM
J.B. you are a leader, you are back and it is time for you to get out there and get your face on the news programs. Or better yet run for office. I know you are from Oregon, and I am a Democrat but I would vote for you even if you are a Republican. (but your best bet in Oregon would be go Democrat)
Posted by: Nora | November 11, 2012 at 02:12 PM
Thanks for the laughs as always, JB.
We all ought to let the Sun-Times know we look forward to reading Jenny's column--no surprise that the Chicago Tribune didn't give her one.
Jenny and JB got my boy on the road to recovery. Forever grateful to you both.
Posted by: Michelle | November 11, 2012 at 10:27 AM
JB, you are somewhat like a "one man" 60 Minutes episode. Of course that show is now owned by pharma, like everything else in phamerica.
Nice to see you back. I thought you had made a friendly visit to the CDC offices and then were never seen exiting the building.
Posted by: cmo | November 10, 2012 at 08:48 PM
I am so sick of the lies - just went to a TACA meeting and somthing needs to be done. We need to tell the truth and all the buy that paper need to stop until Jenny M can say what she wants to say. As for Amanda Peep - who is she again? Some one who bared who upper torso so she could act? I stopped watching aything she was in because of what she did - of course there was a connection for her - help your family who cares about helping innnocent children.
Posted by: Trina Aurin | November 10, 2012 at 08:34 PM
There is a bit more to this story. Vaccinate Your Baby does have a facebook page. Main focus is pushing vaccines and attacking anyone who dares to raise a question. I will admit that even the vaccine admirers on that page expressed an unwillingness to volunteer THEIR babies for the anthrax vaccine clinical tests. Glad to know there is a limit beyond which they will not go.
They also have a fairly active blog called Shot of Prevention which never saw a vaccine they didn't love.
Amy Pisani came to Vermont to argue in favor of pulling the philosophical exemption. Some of the legislators asked her some tough questions about how her organization is funded and she said "we get unrestricted grants from pharma". Eventually. First she tried to fudge.
I think that a lot of what they do is a bit undercover...just a suspicion.
Posted by: Deborah Kahn | November 10, 2012 at 05:57 PM
Maybe these creeps are spending their money to pay off the front desk ladies at nursery schools where they turn away applicants who don't have complete vaccine records by two years of age--and I mean complete!! My niece tried to enroll her adorable unvaccinated two year old in a school and was turned away. He would have to get about 10 vaccines to get in... and it wasn't worth it. I tried to tell her about religious exemptions, etc. But you know how it is when faced with the front desk lady....you wait....you ask for the paperwork...you smile and she scowls...you feel as unwanted as a rat in the pantry...you slink out the door with toddler in tow. Almost makes me want to start a nursery school for unvaccinated only...
Posted by: Kapoore | November 10, 2012 at 04:31 PM
A preliminary review can quickly identify some accessibility problems on a Web site. A preliminary review does not check every accessibility issue and will not .
Posted by: sujit | November 10, 2012 at 01:25 PM
Great to have a new post from JB.
When it comes to non-profits we should also not forget Univadis - the alleged non-profit information arm of Merck - which is in partnership with British Medical Journal, and which BMJ still will not disclose as a competing interest.
I suppose I got tired of writing about it but the charade of philanthropy and financial disinterest continues. While this was first brought to light by Martin Walker in March of last year BMJ editor Fiona Godlee got away with limited acknowledgement of Merck's sponsorship of a BMJ award but not this much more powerful business association. Let's be clear, BMJ are joined at the hip to Merck and a non-profit is the medium (perhaps it could be called a slush fund?) while 'Holier than thou Godlee' continues to pose as the Savonarola of research ethics.
http://www.ageofautism.com/2011/08/holier-than-thou-bmj-editor-godlee-fails-to-acknowledge-merck-mmr-conflict.html
As to the Masai tribesmen, it wouldn't surprise me if Peet's possible assumption was wrong and they are quite as capable of sending nasty emails as anyone else these days.
Posted by: John Stone | November 10, 2012 at 01:12 PM
LOL, the "continuing our on-line activities outreach initiatives" and "media outreach" means paid bloggers to participate in the "Scienceblogs" vaccine discussions and paid bloggers to infiltrate the mom discussions on- line. They're probably right in there with SEED media group.
Posted by: Jen | November 10, 2012 at 01:03 PM
could it be that Pisani and others(who knows how many there are?) are paid instead for shilling on forums?
Posted by: just saying | November 10, 2012 at 12:44 PM
I agree, great article and great to have you back!
Is it me, or does it seem like pharma funded reprobates are cropping up all over these days??
From front groups who barely even try to hide their agenda, to "first time/one time" posters to this other sites, who always seem to appear with stories of the unvaccinated autistics that no-one else can find. Does it not feel like the propaganda parade is getting bigger and louder all time??
Maybe, just maybe we are starting to make a difference. And with people finally starting to think for themselves..... the big vaccine lie is getting a harder and harder to spin.
Posted by: Barry | November 10, 2012 at 12:10 PM
This reminds me, isn't there a study finally being done on the safety of the CDC vaccine schedule. I wonder what the status of that study is. Promoting multiple vaccines to "Every Child By Two" as this group has done for years without safety studies to back it up is both arbitrary and dangerous.
Posted by: Sarah | November 10, 2012 at 11:59 AM
Donna Lee:
They are now going to bill boards?
TOO tempting!
So ECBT is a money laundering organization.
Posted by: Benedetta | November 10, 2012 at 11:19 AM
Love it!!
I don't know, to me it looks like they are taking their message away from the web and straight to the supremely uneducated sheeple. Does anyone else have these billboards up all over their town?http://www.oaaa.org/press/pressreleases/news.aspx?NewsId=1357
We have at least three of them plastered along less than one mile of our town's main drag. (I'm getting sick of having to drive with my eyes closed.)
Posted by: Donna L. | November 10, 2012 at 10:41 AM
Thank you so much for this article, JB. I needed a good laugh as nothing has seemed very funny to me lately.
I, too, am glad you are back.
Posted by: Not an MD | November 10, 2012 at 10:40 AM
Great article J.B. So good to see you writing here again.
Posted by: Adam M | November 10, 2012 at 08:24 AM
JB, good to hear from you. Your name came up in a conversation recently. Any idea what percent of their income Merck, Glaxo, Sanofi Pasteur, Pfizer-Wyth, and Novartis receive from vaccine sales? Or where I can get that information?
Posted by: Dan E. Burns | November 10, 2012 at 08:19 AM
"Special Interest Dot-Orgs"—SIDs for short
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Love the sample letter too! Great digging, JB. IT's really good to have you back. I'm glad your dormancy period has finally lifted.
We need a real letter now - and fast - that tells the Chicago Sun Times that Wyeth is lying to the public by posing as a public service organization and promoting its vaccines through deception.
Posted by: Welcome back JB | November 10, 2012 at 07:45 AM