By Anne Dachel

Here’s a story warning us that funding for our vaccine programs is being threatened by the Republicans.

Julia Belluz’s name is a familiar one regarding this issue. I looked through her reporting over the last couple of years and I was struck by how unwilling she is to challenge anything an official says about vaccine safety. Her articles are rife with statements meant to shut down the debate:

“Large-scale studies involving thousands of participants in several countries have failed to establish a link between the MMR vaccine and the mental developmental disorder.”

“…many other studies have since discredited the idea.”

“In another of the most thorough studies to date, nearly half a million kids who got the vaccine were compared with some 100,000 who didn't, and there were no differences in the autism rates between the two groups.”

Belluz is one of the most prolific pro-vaccine journalists out there. (See more stories below.)

None of her articles honestly investigate the arguments on both sides of the debate. In her mind, there is no debate. She blindly relies on official denials as the final word, just like everyone else in the mainstream media.

It’s hard to understand the complete obeisance paid to health officials holding a study as proof of no link. No one ever bothers to look into the research we’re all supposed to trust. What if it was done by the vaccine makers? What if it’s merely an easily flawed population study? What if the researcher is on pharma’s payroll? What if there are a dozen studies that challenge the findings?

The reporters who willingly accept whatever a CDC official has to say about vaccine safety would never do the same thing with anyone else in government. There is expected to be skepticism when elected officials tell us things, but strangely, that isn’t the case when this issue is vaccines. Somehow we’re to believe that federal employees at the CDC only tell the truth.

In many of her articles on vaccines, Belluz went after Andrew Wakefield and his MMR study. I wonder how she would report the story of William Thompson and his claim of CDC cover up of a vaccine/autism link.

Notice the taxpayer money going to the CDC that is talked about in this article. This place is pharma's dream. I seriously wonder if vaccines cost the industry anything. I’d love to know much money is channeled into vaccine promotion through federal and state funding.

March 7, 2017, Vox.com: The Republican health insurance plan slashes funding for vaccines and public health

Julia Belluz

The American Health Care Act makes a number of changes to the Affordable Care Act that’ll likely disadvantage poorer and sicker Americans, and result in fewer people covered. But the plan also includes a subtler and very significant move for American health: the elimination of the largest fund for disease prevention in the federal budget, along with 12 percent of the budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, by 2019.