Dachel Media Update: Oliver's (Vaccine) Army
By Anne Dachel
Read Anne's commentary and view the links after the jump. The Dachel Media Update is sponsored by Aperture International.
Josephine B. Yurcaba at Bustle.com featured comedian John Oliver's views on vaccine safety in piece on Nov 29, 2015, entitled, What Has John Oliver Said About Vaccinations? His Reason For Supporting Them Is Simple
Yurcaba wrote:
The vaccination debate has resurfaced in the last year because a number of the Republican presidential candidates have supported the medically false and dangerous idea that vaccines can cause autism. ...
Science has repeatedly disproven any link between vaccines and autism, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ....
Oliver has never done an episode about vaccinations, but he put any worry that he might be an "anti-vaxxer" to rest with a simple and hilarious photo that his show, Last Week Tonight, posted to Facebook: "Last Week Tonight is proudly sponsored by vaccines! Vaccines: They work, dummies!"
...So, Oliver left vaccines out of that big pharma episode for a reason, and shared his views via the straightforward photo for a reason: vaccines just work. Duh.
Yurcaba explained that while Oliver might make the pharmaceutical industry his target when he's talking about the marketing of drugs, when it comes to vaccines, he has nothing critical to say. He's willing to believe the CDC when they say their vaccines are safe.
It's interesting that John Oliver was on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart for eight years starting in 2006. Stewart was one of the few media outlets that gave air time to Robert Kennedy, Jr in 2005 when he wrote the piece Deadly Immunity, about the effects of thimerosal use in vaccines. Too bad Oliver wasn't with Stewart at the time. He might have learned something.
The Daily Show/Jon Stewart, July 20, 2005 Robert Kennedy, Jr on vaccines with thimerosal http://www.cc.com/video-clips/uwf623/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-robert-f--kennedy--jr-
Robert Kennedy, Jr.: "Between 1989 and 2003, almost all of our vaccines included a material called thimerosal, which breaks down to form mercury. It was a preservative, it was unnecessary to add to the vaccines, and we saw during that period a dramatic increase in neurological disorders among American children.
"Today one in every six American children, born during that period, has some kind of neurological disorder: speech delay, language delay, dyslexia, and at the opposite end of the range, autism. Autism rates in 1988, before they started adding all these vaccines, one in every 2,500 children had autism. Today, one in every 166 children have autism. And there is very, very strong science, really overwhelming science, linking those autism rates to the thimerosal that was in the vaccines.
"The thimerosal, people should know, has been removed from most of the vaccines in America. We still have it in the flu vaccine and one or two other, but we are still giving it to children all over the world. There has now been a dramatic increase in the Third World in autism rates. A few years ago, six years ago, autism was unknown in China, today, we started giving them our vaccines in 1999, today there's 1.8 million cases of autism in China.
"...If you actually read the science--which most journalists don't do--the science is overwhelming that there is a link between the autism and the thimerosal."
Jon Stewart then asked why, if this link has been shown to be true, do officials continue to defend the use of thimerosal. "Why are they fighting so hard? Is it purely to save their asses, or are they concerned about people then rejecting vaccines in general, and then the public health suffers?..."
Kennedy: "There appear to be two concerns: One is the pharmaceutical industry is terrified of litigation. This is literally trillions of dollars... There's also a concern with the scientists at CDC, and at FDA..."
Kennedy cited former U.S Congressman Dave Weldon (who's also an MD, by the way), and posed the question, "How many of us would want to admit that a decision we made had poisoned a whole generation of American children?..."
Kennedy continued, "What I've been saying is, people are going to be frightened about vaccines if they don't the federal regulators to be honest with the American people. And the biggest threat to our vaccine program is that these people have now been caught red-handed conspiring to hide this information from the American people."
Stewart asked Kennedy about what happened to ABC's plan to air his report on vaccines with mercury called, Deadly Immunity.
Kennedy: "ABC told us theyhad read the piece, ...they told us they believed in the story, that they were behind it. They wanted to be the network to expose this to the American people. The night before the piece aired, I received a call from the producer saying, 'ABC has cancelled the piece; the order came from higher ups at the network. They won't explain why they're doing it.'
"Two days later, ABC was deluged with letters from the autism community, mainly mothers who have autistic kids, hundreds and hundreds of emails--this is what the producer told me-- and he said, we are no longer going to cancel it, we're now going to air it. We're going to recut it.
"They recut the show, but they recut it to make it virtually an advertisement for the pharmaceutical industry.
"And as if to emphasize the capitulation to Big Pharma, they bracketed the segment that they did on thimerosal with two ads for pharmaceutical products."
Jon Stewart ended the interview saying "it seems there must be something there," when it comes the dangers of mercury use in vaccines.
What a stunning contrast between these two satirists. While Stewart recognized that there are reasons to be skeptical about vaccine safety claims that come to us from heavily conflicted health agencies, Oliver believes whatever he's told.
Just who is the dummy, Mr. Oliver?
Aperture International provides visionary products that translate scientific breakthroughs into outstanding health benefits for our clients worldwide. Based on 24 years of research and clinical experience, the Aperture line of supplements was formulated for individuals who require the highest level of quality and purity. Visit us at Aperture International.
Anne Dachel is Media Editor for Age of Autism and author of The Big Autism Cover-Up: How and Why the Media Is Lying to the American Public, which is on sale now from Skyhorse Publishing.
Maybe there's a chance that John Oliver would have Robert Kennedy Jr on his program? Bill Maher (also HBO) did. What a full circle moment that could turn out to be: from Comedy Central to HBO back to HBO/Comedy Central.
Who's your dummy now?
Posted by: Annie | December 01, 2015 at 11:13 PM
From France a few months back...
France Opting Out Of Vaccines
http://foodmatters.tv/content/france-opting-out-of-vaccines
Posted by: go Rand | December 01, 2015 at 09:31 PM
But did in fact John Oliver say he supported vaccines? I'm not so sure. Let's deconstruct this text:
"Last Week Tonight is proudly sponsored by vaccines! Vaccines: They work, dummies!"
This was posted by a TV satirist. TV satirists deal heavily in irony. Perhaps Ms. Yorcuba never took an English course, but there she would probably have been taught the meaning of "irony". It's the use of words to express the opposite of their literal meaning, usually for sardonic effect (as in "yeah, right").
Moreover, Oliver states outright that his program is "sponsored by vaccines" -- that is, he is beholden to pharmaceutical advertisers. And the sentence "Vaccines: They work, dummies" strikes me as a lampoon of other TV personalities who hurl crude insults at people who question vaccines.
And Oliver would have a clear motive for using irony to mask his true beliefs. He has criticized pharmaceutical companies on his program, and he knows that such criticism is permitted only up to a point: if he were to raise any doubts about vaccines, he would be yanked off the air. He might want the Dark Side to think he's on their side, while subtly signalling to the rest of us that he really believes quite the opposite. How can he do that? In a word, irony. He may be hoping that the Dark Side is too thick to recognize irony, and if that's the case, his strategy succeeded brilliantly.
Posted by: JerseyGuy | December 01, 2015 at 10:47 AM
Bob "follow the money" doesn't account for water fluoridation of 8 English speaking countries after WW2.
And the constant rumours of the origin of the first water fluoridation policies in ww2 .(concentration camps)
Dr William Hirzy covers it all brilliantly on Youtube 28mins
The film is 15 years old now . Fluoride causes cancer .
Flouride sedates the masses , Fluoride reduces IQ , Fluoride is a toxic poison . You sure its all about money ?
Posted by: Georg Elser | December 01, 2015 at 07:56 AM
All one has to do is "follow the money" to understand how terrified the entire public health industry is .. and .. why they are so desperate to deny the damage caused by decades of over-use of "unavoidably unsafe" vaccines.
Such as .. compare two industries that failed to protect the health and safety of trusting people using their products.
It seems that each month .. the auto industry has ANOTHER manufacturer issuing a "recall" for millions of autos already sold .. because .. those autos have been identified as having dangerously "unsafe" design or parts that are known to fail. More important to those auto companies than the deaths and injuries caused by their unsafe autos .. is the MILLIONS OF DOLLARS LOST TO THEIR BOTTOM LINE PROFITS.
Compare that auto industry to what routinely occurs in the pharmaceutical industry .. such as ..
The pharmaceutical company .. Grunenthol .. responsible for a morning sickness drug .. Thalidomide .. that left thousands of infants with birth defects -- including flipper-like limbs -- finally issuing an apology, more than five decades .. 50 YEARS .. after the drug was recalled in 1961. Grunenthal, the company that made thalidomide, attributed its 50-year lack of apology "as a sign of silent shock,".
How's that for an insulting "corporate" apology for all those damaged children who were born with deformed bodies?
In any event .. the pharmaceutical industry has protected itself from the punishment the auto industry suffers .. by practicing a "delay, deny and hope they die" strategy .. and .. unlike the auto industry .. they have created their very own Vaccine Court .. no appeals to civil State and Federal courts .. to make certain they will never suffer the same financial losses and what amounts to crimes against humanity .. as the CEO's of auto companies are forced to endure.
They can always claim .. a hundred years from now .. their "delay, deny and hope they die" strategy was caused by the "silent shock" they are suffering today.
Posted by: Bob Moffitt | December 01, 2015 at 07:47 AM
Olivers Army apparently went thru Ireland murdering all before them (but the BBC ran a documentary this week saying it was all a vicious rumour and the inhabitants imagined the slaughter.)
but I can tell you this , whatever damage did in Ireland back then is microscopic compared to that being perpetrated under the guise of healthcare & medicine today .
Yes the vaccines of course - the murder and maiming of babies but Ireland is also subject to the most draconian public water fluoridation policy in the world (all highly reminiscent of the Scottish Highland clearances I'd say.)
Posted by: Georg Elser | December 01, 2015 at 07:05 AM
2005, however, was a decade ago and since that time The Daily Show, (with Stewart at the helm) has been very critical of people who question the safety and efficacy of the American vaccine program:
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/g1lev1/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-an-outbreak-of-liberal-idiocy
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/04/jon-stewart-measles_n_6610966.html
It seems Pharma is very good at reigning in journalists and satirists alike. It is mind-boggling how we as a culture of people are able to acknowledge the nefarious practices of the pharmaceutical industry except when it comes to vaccines. The indemnified division of the pharmaceutical industry is the one that is going to be most ethical?! I just don't get it.
Posted by: Annie | November 30, 2015 at 10:50 PM
"How odd that the new phrase seems to be "vaccines work" not "vaccines are safe"."
It's a retreat Anita. Things look so grim for us right now but the truth is we are winning and they are retreating back to lesser and lesser claims about the wonders of their concoctions. In a few years time they will be writing a whole bunch of articles claiming that the polio vaccine really and truly did work and the fact that total rates of paralysis actually *increased* since the vaccine isn't because we just changed the name - it was all just coincidence. And it was even more of a coincidence because the same exact story happened with complications of diseases from all the so-called vaccine success stories.
In each and every case a brand new disease(s) with the exact same range of symptoms by astonishing coincidence rose up to take its place at the exact same time as the vaccine was introduced.
So measles vaccine didn't actually lead to a reduction in encephalitis or deafness or blindness. But that is just a coincidence.
Hib vaccine had no impact on meningitis/pneumonia/sepsis but that is just a coincidence.
Hep B vaccine had no impact on liver cancer rates (well nothing good anyway). But that is just a coincidence.
And so on and so forth.
Posted by: rtp | November 30, 2015 at 10:38 PM
The question then becomes how they were all renamed.
Once a vaccine is introduced doctors are prejudiced against diagnosing that condition based on their belief/hope that the vaccine will work. Indeed, this is why the gold standard for testing is supposed to be a *double* blind placebo trial - the doctor is not supposed to know you received the treatment because it will bias their diagnoses.
Unfortunately, the data that is used to prove that vaccines work is not blinded. So why are they prejudiced? Well quite simply because they believe that the vaccine works! The whole thing is so incredibly simple and obvious really, but very often the more simple and obvious it is the harder it is to get our heads around how so many people could miss it – but there are thousands of historical precedents for such things.
Now, while this pro-treatment bias makes perfect sense some of you might want to see more concrete evidence of it and you are in luck because, you see, while doctors don’t generally need much encouragement in their pro-treatment bias, health bureaucracies will often explicitly encourage it anyway.
"To minimize the problem of false positive laboratory results, it is important to restrict case investigation and laboratory tests to patients most likely to have measles (i.e., those who meet the clinical case definition, especially if they have risk factors for measles, such as being unvaccinated,[...]"
www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/surv-manual/chpt07-measles.html
And here is the UK's National Health Service: "Following assessment, if a diagnosis of measles is considered likely, it is essential to notify the local Health Protection Unit (HPU)" and subsequently: "Measles is very unlikely in people who have been fully immunized", followed by “Consider a different cause if the patient is likely to have immunity” http://cks.nice.org.uk/measles#!diagnosissub
And this is for diphtheria: "Because diphtheria has occurred only rarely in the United States in recent years, many clinicians may not include diphtheria in their differential diagnoses. Clinicians are reminded to consider the diagnosis of respiratory diphtheria in patients with membranous pharyngitis and who are not up-to-date with vaccination against diphtheria."
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/surv-manual/chpt01-dip.html
And this is for pertussis http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/im/vpd-mev/pertussis/professionals-professionnels-eng.php. According to the Canadian Public Health Agency only those who are not vaccinated (or for whom immunity has ‘waned’) are “at risk”.
Other health agencies (such as those in Australia) will be slightly less explicit and they might describe those who are not vaccinated with terms like “susceptible” but the implication is the same for doctors.
In addition to the above, (as you can see from the above links and this one http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/surv-manual/chpt12-polio.html and http://vactruth.com/2015/07/05/cdc-made-polio-disappear/) once a vaccine is introduced, generally speaking the diagnostic criteria is strengthened such that all cases need to be confirmed with a laboratory test (whereas before practically all cases are diagnosed on symptoms alone). Along with the pro-treatment bias of the doctors this pretty much guarantees that the number of diagnosed cases will fall dramatically - irrespective of whether the vaccine did any good.
Posted by: rtp | November 30, 2015 at 09:29 PM
Actually they never work. We have made a massive strategic mistake over the past few decades yielding on the idea that vaccines work. They don't and never did as the following proves.
The purpose of the polio vaccine was to bring about a reduction in total rates of non-trauma paralysis and crippling. It failed.
The purpose of the rubella vaccine was to bring about a reduction in total rates of congenital defects. It failed.
The purpose of the measles vaccine was to bring about a reduction in total rates of encephalitis and deafness. It failed.
The purpose of the Hep B vaccine was to bring about a reduction in total rates of liver cancer/disease. It failed.
The purpose of the Hib and Prevnar vaccines was to bring about a reduction in total rates of meningitis/pneumonia/sepsis. They failed.
The purpose of the diphtheria/pertussis vaccines was to bring about a reduction in acute respiratory infections. They failed.
The purpose of the mumps vaccine was to reduce sterility. It failed.
References
Rubella and congenital defects: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5701a2.htm. http://www.researchgate.net/publication/8935557_The_Metropolitan_Atlanta_Congenital_Defects_Program_35_Years_of_Birth_Defects_Surveillance_at_the_Centers_for_Disease_Control_and_Prevention
Polio and paralysis/crippling:
extranet.who.int/polis/public/CaseCount.aspx and http://www.who.int/bulletin/archives/78(3)321.pdf (see data for total AFP in India and other developing countries in 1996 and again in 2014) as well as http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v18n6/v18n6p20.pdf and http://www.census.gov/people/disability/ publications/sipp2010.html (Table A-4) (for disability rates). And http://www.christopherreeve.org/site/c.mtKZKgMWKwG/b.5184189/k.5587/Paralysis_Facts__Figures.htm (Around one in 50 Americans have some paralysis and around 40 per cent of those cases are due to disease).
Diphtheria/pertussis and acute respiratory disease: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0804877 and http://www.pharmacytoday.co.nz/news/2015/may-2015/05/respiratory-hospitalisations-keep-climbing-despite-healthcare-improvements.aspx
Hep B vaccine and liver cancer/disease:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19224838 and http://news.sky.com/story/1418422/dramatic-rise-in-liver-disease-deaths
Hib vaccine and meningitis/pneumonia/sepsis. http://www9.health.gov.au/cda/source/rpt_2.cfm... (look at meningococcal disease (invasive) and pneumococcal disease (invasive)) and because of the dismal failure of this vaccine it was inevitably followed by further attempts to vaccinate people against meningitis supposedly caused by other strains (eg Prevnar) showing that abject lunacy (doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result) is the standard procedure for vaccination policy experts.
Measles vaccine and encephalitis/deafness. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870605/ and http://www.hear-it.org/35-million-Americans-suffering-from-hearing-loss
I will give these two non-government sites - www.childhealthsafety.com/graphs (all of the data comes from government mortality data) and http://vaccinationdilemma.com/chapters/Chapter2.pdf because they demonstrate that the notion that vaccines save lives is a complete lie and the WHO cannot be trusted at all on this issue.
So what has happened to all these so-called vaccine preventable diseases if their complications are still just as, if not more, common but we no longer hear about them?
They have all been renamed – differentially diagnosed.
Measles has been renamed roseola, fifth disease, etc;
Polio has been renamed Guillain Barre, transverse myelitis, coxsackie, MS, cerebral palsy, viral meningitis (we actually use more respirators today than we ever did iron lungs by the way it is just that iron lungs were too expensive and dangerous to keep using);
Diphtheria/pertussis were renamed respiratory syncytial virus, croup, strep, tonsillitis etc;
Hepatitis just runs its way through the alpabet;
Meningitis/pneumonia/sepsis blamed on Hib was renamed meningitis/pneumonia/sepsis blamed on some other bacteria;
Smallpox was renamed monkey pox/severe chicken pox.
Posted by: rtp | November 30, 2015 at 09:15 PM
Oliver's wife is a health professional. Sad.
Posted by: Linda1 | November 30, 2015 at 09:03 PM
How odd that the new phrase seems to be "vaccines work" not "vaccines are safe". First they don't always work. Second they aren't always safe.
Aspirin works for some. Aspirin can kill others.
I don't get this bizarro world.
I say "there are rapists in our university ." Someone says "Our university is great! End of discussion"
"There are toxins in our water." "Our water quenches thirst. End of discussion"
"There is E. coli in this celery" " Celery is good for you. Are you anti-veggie?"
"Vaccines cause serious harm to some." "Vaccines are good".
Okay so why why why why is there this biZarro issue with seeing issues in vaccines in perspective. It is truly mind boggling.
Posted by: Anita Domnelly | November 30, 2015 at 07:31 PM