John Stone Presents Written Evidence to UK Parliament
By John Stone, UK Editor Age of Autism
This morning AoA posts its evidence, prepared by John Stone, to the House of Commons Select Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee inquiry into “fake news” which has been published by the committee. The evidence was published by the committee two weeks ago contemporaneously with farcical reports in the Daily Mirror that Vladimir Putin was using the web to undermine the United Kingdom vaccine program. It was also submitted before it came to our attention that Andrew Witty, until earlier this year CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, had been appointed to head a new state body to fast track the approval of pharmaceutical products, one of a row of appointments effectively demolishing all remaining boundaries between the British state and the pharmaceutical industry (and GSK in particular).
data.parliament.uk
Age of Autism [1] is a United States based web journal founded in 2007 dealing with issues such as autism and vaccine injury, but also with wider issues to do with health and potential environmental harm – and ultimately of civil rights. Since 2008 I have published hundreds of carefully researched, fact based articles on the site [2], only two of which I have ever taken down - and even in those cases not because of legal challenges. I write as a well-informed citizen and parent, not as a professional. The sources of my information come in the main from government websites, peer reviewed publications, industry websites and mainstream media - only often viewed from a different critical angle or simply just highlighted in a different context.
The view of Age of Autism is that having great bureaucracies working on behalf of governments and corporate interests deciding what is true – or even machines operating algorithms to decide it - is a prospect little different from the world of George Orwell’s 1984. It is troubling in an era when the mainstream media cannot be relied upon to provide reliable information that attention and suspicion is being diverted to other sources on the internet. The internet is presently a chaotic place, but that is infinitely better than the alternative which would be information controlled on behalf of governments and global corporations, which could never be held to account.
The present author remembers visiting a bookshop in East Berlin across Unter den Linden from the gigantic Soviet Embassy in the early 1980s: there were perhaps no more than ten different titles for sale. There were quite a lot of copies of each, although I do not know that anyone wanted to buy them. The East German population was then controlled by the notorious Stasi. Of course, we can have a pseudo pluralistic situation in which hundreds of different websites report from the same agencies but this kind of controlled reality is equally bogus and shallow. Unfortunately, no historical lesson seems to be learnt for very long.
It is, for example, not at all obvious that discussion of the effects of medical interventions should be controlled through government departments or industry public relations agencies such as Science Media Centre and Sense About Science. In 2005 a House of Commons Health Committee report on the influence of the pharmaceutical industry heavily criticised the Department of Health and the MHRA (the medicines licensing authority) for failing to keep any distance from industry [3], and twelve years later the situation has dramatically deteriorated, not least because the kind of over-sight provided by the 2005 Health Committee has never since been replicated. Perhaps this present committee would do better to inquire into the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on the media, which would at least be lot easier to define than “fake news”.
At issue in this instance is not only freedom of information, but things like informed medical consent, or even consent at all. The possibility of becoming a pharmaceutical dictatorship, is not far off – in some respects already with us. And along with forced medication comes the removal from the public domain of open debate, suppression of information about harms, and a captive market for an indefinitely expanding group of products which citizens then have to pay for through their taxes.
In this regard it is disquieting to look at the global campaign by vaccine lobbyists which reached these shores this summer advocating compulsory vaccination, having scored recent successes in Australia, Italy, France and parts of the United States. The British Medical Association jettisoned its traditional opposition to compulsory vaccination [4] – dismissed only a few years ago by a former chairman, Hamish Meldrum, as “Stalinist” [5] - and called for the matter to be discussed. Just a few days before an article appeared in the on-line Spectator by the CEO of GAVI, a global agency promoting vaccination, calling for “anti-vaxxers” to be excluded from “social media”[6]. It must be emphasised that anyone remotely critical or informed about the vaccine lobby and its products, is placed under the general pejorative label “anti-vaxxer”: it is the vaccine/pharmaceutical lobby that polarises the debate – anyone who is not in favour of their entire open-ended agenda is subject to opprobrium and ad hominem attack. Complex health issues are being reduced in the mainstream arena to “Four legs good, two legs bad” type arguments.
Hot on the heels of this a Guardian editorial appeared calling for vaccination to be made compulsory because “antivaxxers” (who are all apparently very privileged people like Gwyneth Paltrow) were gaining influence – the comedian John Oliver was held up as an authority on “antivaxxers” and what bad people they are. Further, this was illustrated by a picture of demonstrators in Italy, who were in fact demonstrating in large numbers not against vaccination but against compulsory vaccination: without Italy’s new laws there would be no demonstrations at all, nor were most of the people in them anti-vaccinationist in any literal sense [7]. It could be said that this was both manipulative mis-reporting and an inappropriate way to deal with such a serious issue.
The reality, however, is that even with the alleged baleful influence of the eternally scapegoated Andrew Wakefield (who only suggested in this regard that parents may wish to split up the vaccines temporally) [8] there have only been four deaths from measles since 1992 in the United Kingdom according to government statistics, out of perhaps 13 million deaths from all causes. Ironically, the Italian health minister Beatrice Lorenzin, is recorded on youtube as stating that 270 children had died in London in a recent outbreak of measles, at the same time lamenting without irony the false information available on the web [9].
Meanwhile, GSK’s CEO in Italy boasted to a pharmaceutical website [10]:
Among the aspects, I also met with Minister Lorenzin and other members of the government who reiterated the sensitivity of the government towards those who invest, create jobs and opportunities for young people. In short, we started on the right foot.
Such sensitivity in the Roman palaces is not to be dismissed. As for us, Andrew Witty has asked for a few things: clear rules and stability in return for strong investment in advanced research and production equipment. We were of one intent.
What is at stake here? One thing is the crude and often abusive means by which any public debate has been controlled or in fact more or less de-legitimised, which does not suggest the moral high ground. It was notable that in the one mainstream public forum which remained open for tolerant comment during the summer of 2017, BMJ Rapid Responses, the proponents of compulsory vaccination absented themselves from replying to informed criticism despite many challenges to do so, pointing to a complete inability by them to argue their position on a level playing field [11]. The issues are not so straightforward as not wanting children to die from infectious diseases (who wants that?) but more a question of mushrooming rates of neurological disability – such as autism and attention deficit disorder – as well as chronic disease, which are certainly related to environmental influences, and may be in part be related to an expanding vaccine schedule, the effects of which are not being transparently monitored.
To give a concrete example, though the Department of Health has neglected to collect autism {ASD} data for children since 2004 when the figure was effectively frozen at 1 in 100 [12], the actual figures for schools have continued to rise year on year [13]. A recent news report from Northern Ireland gives the rate there as 1 in 40 [14] and a BBC report earlier this year from London suggested the figure in the capital for those waiting for a diagnosis, who will be mostly young children, has reached 1 in 10 [15,16]. Moreover, local authorities only recognise disability if they absolutely have to, because it costs huge amounts of money.
When such stories are reported they tend to focus on the lack of provision, not on why it is happening. This is damning public data and the Department of Health do not even want to talk about it – implicitly they connect it with vaccination. Ten years ago, when the Observer tried to highlight the issue, it was not only forced to withdraw the article under pressure from Science Media Centre and Guardian journalist Ben Goldacre, the editor lost his job [17]. No one in the British mainstream media is any longer willing to stick their necks out, which may be one reason why powerful interests are turning their attention to social media, where things may still be spoken.
We are apart from anything else confronted with a care crisis of catastrophic proportions and discussing the causes has been placed outside the mainstream agenda: it really is a slippery slope if we are not even then allowed to talk about them publicly at all. At times of national peril the reasons for going to war are debated. If governments, industry or self-appointed agencies need to clamp down on information it suggests that they cannot withstand even minimal scrutiny, and that is their own fault. Meanwhile, common-sense argues that if bodies are placed beyond public scrutiny this will abused. Indeed, the very purpose is abuse.
[1] http://www.ageofautism.com/
[2] http://www.ageofautism.com/john-stone-uk/
[3] House of Commons Health Committee, The Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry, 2005 https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmhealth/42/42.pdf
[4] Katie Foster, France to make vaccination mandatory from 2018 as it is 'unacceptable children are still dying of measles, The Independent, 5 July 2017, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/france-vaccination-mandatory-2018-next-year-children-health-measles-dying-anti-vaxxers-edouard-a7824246.html
[5] BBC News, No jabs, no school say Labour MP, 11 May 2008 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7392510.stm
[6] Seth Berkley, Anti-vaxxers have embraced social media; we paying for fake news with real lives Spectator Health 28 June 2017, https://health.spectator.co.uk/anti-vaxxers-have-embraced-social-media-were-paying-for-fake-news-with-real-lives/
[7] Editorial: The Guardian view on vaccination: a matter of public health, The Guardian 7 July 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/07/the-guardian-view-on-vaccinations-a-matter-of-public-health
[8] Vera Sharav, L’affaire Wakefield: Shades of Dreyfus & BMJ’s Descent into Tabloid Science, Alliance for Human Health Protection (AHRP), October 2017 http://ahrp.org/laffaire-wakefield-shades-of-dreyfus-bmjs-descent-into-tabloid-science/
[9] John Stone, Re: Compulsory vaccination and growing measles threat - Prof Melegaro's response, BMJ Rapid Responses 21 October 2017, http://www.bmj.com/content/358/bmj.j3429/rr-7
[10] "Aspetti, io ho poi incontrato il ministro Lorenzin ed altri membri del governo che hanno manifestato la sensibilità del governo verso le aziende che investono, che creano posti di lavoro ed opportunità per i giovani. Insomma, abbiamo iniziato con il piede giusto. Una tale sensibilità non è da trascurare nei palazzi romani. Per quanto ci riguarda, Andrew Witty (AD della Glaxo) ha fatto poche richieste: regole chiare e stabilità in cambio di un forte investimento nella ricerca avanzata e nella produzione. Avevamo intenzione identiche.", http://www.fedaiisf.it/l-accordo-di-glaxo-con-novartis-verona-e-centrale-nello-sviluppo-gsk/
[11] BMJ possibly felt an obligation to host correspondence since its parent body, the BMA, was calling for the discussion. Not every letter submitted was posted: gaps can be detected by the way the letters are numbered that are posted on threads. The editors will always check references if the claims made are controversial, and they also tend not to post letters documenting conflicts of interest (in contrast to past policy). Relevant correspondence included:-
Rapid Responses for Doshi, US government website for collecting adverse events after vaccination is inaccessible to most users, http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2449/rapid-responses
Rapid Responses for Moberly, UK doctors re-examine case for mandatory vaccination, http://www.bmj.com/content/358/bmj.j3414/rapid-responses
Rapid Responses for Arie, Compulsory vaccination and growing measles threat, http://www.bmj.com/content/358/bmj.j3429/rapid-responses
Rapid Responses for Cave, Debating the future of mandatory vaccination, http://www.bmj.com/content/358/bmj.j4100/rapid-responses
[12] Green H et al, Mental health of children and young people in Great Britain, 2004, Table 4.1 p.35.
[13] The figure for schools are published by various government sources: National Statistics, the Department of Education, the Scottish Executive etc. The January 2017 figure for England can be calculated at 1 in 67 and the September 2016 figure for Scotland 1 in 51, however the long term position is much worse since (a) these are 15 year rolling cohorts so the rates are much higher among younger children and (b) data for younger children is still incomplete since there are many who will still not be diagnosed.
The rate for English schools is derived by dividing the total number of pupils in school (8,669,085) by the number with ASD diagnosis (128,948). The first number comes from the DoE publication, Schools, pupils and their characteristics: January 2017, p. 3 and the other figure extracted from National Statistics Special educational needs in England: January 2017, https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/623124/SFR28_2017_Main_Text.pdf & National Tables SFR 37/2017 table 8, and Additional tables SFR37/2017 table G https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/special-educational-needs-in-england-january-2017
The number of pupils in Scottish was 684,415 and the number of pupils with an ASD diagnosis was 13,423: data provided by the Scottish Executive.
[14] Sarah Scott, New campaign aims to raise awareness about autism in the classroom, Belfast Live 5 November 2017, http://www.belfastlive.co.uk/news/belfast-news/new-campaign-aims-raise-awareness-13846708
[15] Jane Dreaper, Autism diagnoses 'could be reduced under NHS plan, BBC News 27 May 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-40058482
[16] John Stone, Re: US government website for collecting adverse events after vaccination is inaccessible to most users, BMJ Rapid Responses, 29 May 2017, http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2449/rr-5
[17] John Stone, Swept Aside: An Unpublished Submission to the Leveson Inquiry About Science Journalism, http://www.ageofautism.com/2012/12/leveson-inquiry-submission.html
November 2017
Just heard a report on the BBC news that certain generic drugs are becoming unavailable due to manufacturing problems. These include drugs for epilepsy, diabetes and other serious conditions. But the report went on, that officials are most worried about those with mental illnesses because they will become anxious about the loss of their medicines. So, never mind if cars are on the road driven by people in a diabetic coma, or having an epileptic seizure!
Posted by: Grace Green | December 13, 2017 at 08:40 AM
continued (sorry too long - see 2013/14 report
'To underline the failings of the MHRA - I would also refer you to another House of Commons Report - from 2013 and 2014. This is a report from the Public Accounts Committee - Access to Clinical Trial Information and Stockpiling of Tamiflu drug. In a nutshell the NHS wasted £424 million on the drug.
You can read the comprehensive report in detail yourself - but again it is clear from the evidence provided that the regulatory system of drug approval via the MHRA is still very poor despite the recommendations of the 2005 Parliamentary Report, including that it is not independent enough from the pharmaceutical industry which funds it! (The fox is in charge of chicken coup).
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmpubacc/295/295.pdf
Dr Fiona Godlee, Editor in Chief of the British Medical Journal, is quoted in the Report as follows:
'6. Dr Fiona Godlee agreed that the MHRA and the EMA were entitled to all the information but added: “They are entitled to it. They haven’t asked for it”. Dr Godlee described the regulators as “busy, under-resourced and stretched” and told us: “They tend to take the manufacturers’ word for it. It is only when slightly obsessive and very scientifically determined people, like the Cochrane Collaboration and others, actually go in and look under the bonnet, and begin to see that there are not only 15 trials of Tamiflu but 123 trials of Tamiflu, of which 74 are entirely Roche-funded, Roche-controlled - Roche has the data - that you begin to see the madness of this situation: that we are getting a very partial, incomplete, misleading picture of the effectiveness of many drugs.”13 '
Both the 2005 and 2014 House of Commons provide damning evidence that the MHRA regulatory system for monitoring safety and effectiveness of drugs is inadequate. '
Posted by: A Fisher | December 13, 2017 at 07:47 AM
extract from a letter about Gardasil I wrote to a MSP (no reply, when I phoned I was then told I had wrong MP and they couldn't find the letter):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gw74xc5fzdbi6my/GARDASIL%20HPV%20VACCINE%20-%20MP%20copy.pdf?dl=0
'In 2005 a House of Commons Health Committee reported - The Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmhealth/42/42.pdf
This committee made many SERIOUS recommendations regarding MHRA which you can read from page 103 onwards. Essentially the Health Committee had far reaching concerns about the competency of the MHRA - please see Appendix A.
‘The Agency’s attitude to its public health responsibilities suggested some complacency and a lack of requisite competency, reducing our confidence in its ability to undertake the reforms needed to earn and deserve public trust.
Nor did we conclude that the MHRA provides the discipline and leadership that this powerful industry needs.’
Regarding the Yellow Card Scheme specifically - page 105 - the Committee wrote:
370. The recent review of the Yellow Card Scheme has led to a welcome increase in public access to information gleaned from the system and to the introduction of pilot schemes of patient reporting of suspected adverse reactions. However, we are concerned that these measures will not address the main failings of the Yellow Card Scheme. The rate of adverse drug effects reported by healthcare professionals is inadequate, and when they are reported they are not always investigated or pursued with sufficient robustness.
We recommend that:
the system of patient reporting to the Yellow Card Scheme be put in place country- wide as soon as possible;
steps be taken to improve rates of healthcare professional reporting of adverse drug reactions;
greater efforts be made to investigate signals of possible problems; and
that maximum transparency be combined with concerted efforts to explain the uncertainties of risk.’
…..11 years on, the Yellow Card system is still not being administered correctly and we KNOW there are children suffering appalling injuries from the Gardasil vaccine who are NOT being reported via the Yellow Card scheme - the supposed safety mechanisms for this drug are NOT in place in Scotland or the rest of the UK. Conclusions about the safety of Gardasil cannot be reached as the system is inadequate and poorly administered.
To underline the failings of the MHRA - I would also refer you to another House of Commons Report - from 2013 and 2014. This is a report from the Public Accounts Committee - Access to Clinical Trial Information and Stockpiling of Tamiflu drug. In a nutshell the NHS wasted £424 million on the drug.
You can read the comprehensive report in detail yourself - but again it is clear from the evidence provided that the regulatory system of drug approval via the MHRA is still very poor despite the recommendations of the 2005 Parliamentary Report, including that it is not independent enough from the pharmaceutical industry which funds it! (The fox is in charge of chicken coup).
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmpubacc/295/295.pdf
Dr Fiona Godlee, Editor in Chief of the British Medical Journal, is quoted in the Report as follows:
'6. Dr Fiona Godlee agreed that the MHRA and the EMA were entitled to all the information but added: “They are entitled to it. They haven’t asked for it”. Dr Godlee described the regulators as “busy, under-resourced and stretched” and told us: “They tend to take the manufacturers’ word for it. It is only when slightly obsessive and very scientifically determined people, like the Cochrane Collaboration and others, actually go in and look under the bonnet, and begin to see that there are not only 15 trials of Tamiflu but 123 trials of Tamiflu, of which 74 are entirely Roche-funded, Roche-controlled - Roche has the data - that you begin to see the madness of this situation: that we are getting a very partial, incomplete, misleading picture of the effectiveness of many drugs.”13 '
Both the 2005 and 2014 House of Commons provide damning evidence that the MHRA regulatory system for monitoring safety and effectiveness of drugs is inadequate.'
Posted by: A Fisher | December 13, 2017 at 07:43 AM
Thanks John,and Age of Autism ."Best Kitchen problem solving ,Kitchen Conference in Town"
Lobbying backhanders with "Jobs for the boys, favours getting chucked around, right, left, and centre?
A Walter Mitty, delusional dimensions doppleganger presentations of "What we said isn't actually what we meant" ie clear rules/stability with strong,transparent steady health and safety regulation is a huge impediment /handicap and barrier towards strong investment in research and production equipment distribution . Are Politacal "Cap Badges with more faces than the town clock as well clocked on yet haemorraging public respect is not available for deregulation of basic risk assessment standards giving Industry not only "Aleg up but more of a leg over "with no accountability /responsibility apparent ?
I have only been properly and seriously lobbied once re- Buildings regulations/Planning ,which was a "Risk assessment Accident waiting to happen." With "What would it take to get you to change your mind about this" "A cracker of a one liner eh! They were politely but directly informed "Nothing ,away and get stuffed with it!"
Good Examples of problem solving to see at ASAP-NHS A SAFE and ACCOUNTABLE Peoples NHS Scotland -Under Media Heading Presentation by
Rab Wilson ,Psychiatric Staff Nurse /Author
Dr Jane Hamilton ,Consultant Peri-Natal Psychiatrist .
Roger Livermore -Former HM Inspector /Regulator -Public Safety Risk give an excellent evaluation of systematic current failures .
"The Gulags" Standards of Statuatory Guideline Development Groups with depleted Ethical and Moral Goalposts sounds like .The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksander Solzehenitshn .
How can we help Politcal leadership "SIT UP, and Straighten their Cap Badges " De-regulation of standards is not getting accepted.
Posted by: Morag | December 13, 2017 at 06:56 AM
We have all attempted to help drain the swamp and not just waited for Trump to do it.John has certainly tried to drain the Thames over the years and the quicksand of Westminster devouring our concerns.
Were winning the Pharma-implosion is coming soon.
Pharma for Prison
MMR RIP
Posted by: Angus Files | December 12, 2017 at 02:45 PM
go Trump:
Prince Charles and Princess Anne were certainly vaccinated against Polio.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-91975/How-Queen-set-example-Blairs-vaccine.html
Posted by: Rachel | December 12, 2017 at 12:15 PM
Thanks everyone
David
Yes, Witty received his knighthood shortly after GSK had to pay a 3b dollar fine for fraudulent trading of various kinds. The corporate farce: the malfeasance is just a minor financial risk for shareholders: no one loses their bonus, no one loses their job, and in the UK some are rewarded with knighthoods.
Posted by: John Stone | December 12, 2017 at 11:40 AM
John, Thanks for enlightening me about the scoundrels so knighted -- of course here in the U.S. we also have the worst scoundrels given great honors, such as Anthony Fauci, et al. Forget Knighthood, too many very bad people!
Maybe the Autism Community could make you the first recipient of the Andrew Wakefield Medal?
Cheers, keep up your fantastic work!
Posted by: david m burd | December 12, 2017 at 09:39 AM
A cover-up in relation to vaccination …… NEVER …… I simply wont believe it !
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/951600/ex-consultant-to-doh-bares-vaccine-cover-up
A former consultant to the Department of Health (DOH) told the Senate on Monday that a “widespread cover-up” was going on in the agency involving the acquisition of the Dengvaxia vaccine for an immunization program that had been halted due to safety concerns.
Dr. Francis Cruz, a former consultant to former Health Secretary Paulyn Ubial, told the Senate blue ribbon committee that he had informed the current health secretary, Francisco Duque III, about the cover-up and that many people around him used to work for former Health Secretary Janette Garin.
Garin implemented the P3.5-billion immunization program toward the end of the Aquino administration in 2016.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vaccines are (UN)safe & (D)efective (no accident with the United Nations reference either)
Posted by: Hans Litten | December 12, 2017 at 06:31 AM
Thank you John, brilliant as always. We are so grateful to have such a warrior representing parents of vaccine injured children. Most of us are too exhausted to fight as hard and as eloquently as you have done for years.
You are like David taking on Goliath.
Posted by: Jane | December 11, 2017 at 11:05 PM
Thank you John.
So I assume the entire Royal family is unvaccinated ?
The Queen does NOT do vaccine PSA's ?
Posted by: go Trump | December 11, 2017 at 10:58 PM
Great post, John. We must continue to put the facts in front of people as government officials uniformly listen more to highly paid Pharma lobbyists on the issue of vaccine safety. Here's my take and what we parents ought to lobby for:
Before California outlawed non-medical exemptions a leading national magazine reported that in several Beverly Hills and Santa Monica schools up to 70 percent of parents were filing a “personal belief exemption” form (PBE) which allowed children to forgo vaccinations. Now what do you suppose these rich folks knew that the rest of us did not? Probably that they were aware of research directly tying the modern vaccine schedule to the onset of autism and that the Center for Disease Control had falsified data and covered it up. From their friends and relatives they knew that caring for an autistic child often results in lifelong heartache and stress among parents, bankruptcy, family dysfunction and divorce (80%+). Yet autism is almost non-existent in groups that don't get vaccinated such as the Amish. The rich are connecting these dots, but they don't brag about it since they make money from investments in pharmaceutical companies that manufacture vaccines.
Politicians know the population has been brainwashed to believe without reservation that vaccines are good for you, the more the better. To counter this and protect children from too many unnecessary vaccines too early in life, we should ask Congress and the presidential candidates whether they would be willing to:
• Order the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) to conduct a definitive study comparing the health of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated groups of different ages. The federal government has yet to conduct such a study, never mind that autism has been the Nation’s fastest growing disability over the last 20 years. CDC recently released the statistic that 1 in 36 U.S. children, or 2.8%, are on the autism spectrum.
• Eliminate the federal vaccine court and return plaintiffs to a normal process of being able to sue vaccine makers for injury. This is how it used to be prior to 1986 legislation, and the loss of checks and balances has been highly damaging.
• Seek reversal of state laws that prohibit children from attending public school if they do not get all of their shots (e.g. California, Maryland). Backers of these laws cite evidence derived almost entirely from researchers employed by companies who manufacture vaccines.
Posted by: Barry Stern | December 11, 2017 at 05:50 PM
You mean like Sir Andrew Witty?
Ah yes -good old UK knighthoods. Also remember that GSK 'shining research star'. Sir (Professor) Mark Pepys, the UCL medical director who admitted getting rid of Dr Wakefield and rubbishing his research, and also refusing to develop Wakefield's 'Transfer Factor' therapy, designed to help immune compromised children, who could not be vaccinated with live MMR viruses. ( NOT a vaccine). The patent still remains with the Royal Free Hospital.
Professor Pepys started up the UCL-spin out Pentraxin Therapeutics company to develop Alzheimer/dementia cures. £millions of public money has been spent on useless research. Still no cure.
Two of the 3 recorded UK child measles deaths involved immune compromised children who could not be MMR vaccinated. Could Transfer Factor have prevented these deaths? We will never know, but there are 4 officially recorded UK child deaths from MMR vaccine. Since it's virtually impossible in the UK to blame vaccines for anything, there will be many more unrecorded.
Oh and don't forget the late Lord Jimmy Savile, permitted by the BBC for decades to prey on vulnerable young girls, and still alive Lord John Reid, Labour Health Secretary, who put pressure on the GMC to prosecute Dr Wakefield and his clinician colleagues, Professors Walker-Smith and Murch. Another circa £8million wasted and the reputations of two brilliant paediatric gastroenterologists and a brilliant researcher trashed. All to protect a vaccine for the so called 'public good' - except as Dr Wakefield predicted 20 years ago, the autism rate has rocketed to levels which are financially and logistically unsustainable.
Does ANYONE in our respective Governments give a damn??
Posted by: Jenny Allan | December 11, 2017 at 04:33 PM
David Burd,
You mean like Sir Andrew Witty?
John
Posted by: John Stone | December 11, 2017 at 02:48 PM
"A knighthood, and the female equivalent, a damehood, is an award given by The Queen to an individual for a major, long-term, contribution in any activity, usually at a national or international level. It is one of the highest possible honours that can be received by an individual."
To John Stone, If you don't qualify for Knighthood, for your countless years of sacrifice and endeavors to stop the vaccine carnage in England, then nobody does.
I like to think the Queen, whose heritage and current family eschew toxic vaccines, and for several generations rely on holistic/homeopathic health care (including Prince Charles in great health), persist to very healthy old age (the Queen Mother died at age 103?), is aware your great work.
Thank you, I know I represent scores of millions of Americans.
Posted by: david m burd | December 11, 2017 at 01:58 PM
"Witty, until earlier this year CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, had been appointed to head a new state body to fast track the approval of pharmaceutical products, one of a row of appointments effectively demolishing all remaining boundaries between the British state and the pharmaceutical industry (and GSK in particular)."
Who`s watching the watchman nobody.
Faultlessly as always John superb.
Pharma For Prison
MMR RIP
Posted by: Angus Files | December 11, 2017 at 01:34 PM
Reality seems to be stuck between basket and bubble dwellers.
The quintessential question remains
Will the bubble break before the basket tips?
Posted by: annie | December 11, 2017 at 01:28 PM
Thank you everyone for your kind and supportive comments.
David: I was actually more focussed on the lobby strategy - blanket bombing a range of opinion and turning it into a form of abuse. While being utterly extreme they excoriate everybody remotely critical. The don’t want any sober examination at all of what they do, or their products. Everything must proceed unquestioned, and an unimpeded, so even if there is a middle ground (there used to be much more of one than there is now) they don’t want to give it any room. If it has got to the point where a great many people don’t trust them or any of their products it is much because of the way they have chosen to play it, by being totalitarian and reckless. But I am deliberately focusing on the culture -their culture. You could say, why do they want to obliterate debate, what have they got to hide?
Posted by: John Stone | December 11, 2017 at 11:53 AM
Very well said, as always.
I do think that many in our movement have made a major strategic error, though, when responding defensively to the charge that we are "anti-vaccine".
The whole pro-vaccine versus anti-vaccine framework is really an exercise in misdirection. We must redirect our critics toward the true source of the problem: the government vaccine program.
I do recognize that this type of reframing of the issue may be challenging for some, who have bought into the pervasive notion that it is good and appropriate for governments to exert control over practically all aspects of our lives. And perhaps this mindset is even stronger in areas such as the UK, where medicine has been completely socialized. But we must tell the truth here and call a spade a spade. It is not a technology that is on trial here. It is a reckless, runaway, dishonest, and corrupt government program that is to blame.
Posted by: David Weiner | December 11, 2017 at 11:18 AM
Nice work John, keep bashing our dear Fascist government. Good quote here, and the more they poison us the more it will eventually backfire on them. When folk wake up to the fact Big Pharma runs the (Stalinist lite) 'government', and vaccination was only ever designed to poison for profit (smallpox vax being only ever germ warfare), the whole diabolical system will crash, and many drug company execetives and MDs will be had up for murder & child abuse, as Shaw said in 1911, 110 years in:
"For years past the strain of countenancing such a proceeding, so gross, reckless, dirty, and dangerous as vaccination from the calf, has been growing unbearable to bacteriological experts. . . . Nothing but the natural ignorance of the public, countenanced by the inoculated erroneousness of the ordinary general medical practitioners, makes such a barbarism as vaccination possible. . . Recent developments have shown that an inoculation made in the usual general practitioner's light-hearted way, without previous highly skilled examination of the state of the patient's blood, is just as likely to be a simple manslaughter as a cure or preventive. But vaccination is nothing short of attempted murder. A skilled bacteriologist would just as soon think of cutting his child's arm and rubbing the contents of the dustpan into the wound, as vaccinating it in the same."--George Bernard Shaw (Letter to the Secretary of the National Anti-Vaccination League, March, 1906, repeated verbatim in a letter to the Irish Anti-Vaccination League, May, 1911, quoted in the Jennerian No. 29, p. 268. Sourced: Should we be vaccinated ? by Bernhard Stern) http://whale.to/a/george_bernard_shaw_banners.html
They will do anything to stop that day of reckoning, & it's fortunate for them we don't have the death penalty any more in this country.
The only thing that keeps vaccination afloat is peoples fear of looking, as the evidence against it is so obvious and overwhelming. Eg. Just MMR vax http://whale.to/c/mmr_banners.html
Seeing the Naked Emperor is the only thing that stops them.
''A Stalinist approach like this would be likely to backfire on an unprecedented scale and increase opposition to vaccinations.'' -- Dr Hamish Meldrum, British Medical Association chairman
Posted by: john scudamore | December 11, 2017 at 09:29 AM
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-42308341
At this point , I don't believe a word of this article (happy to change my mind later if convinced).
Huntington’s breakthrough may stop disease:
Prof John Hardy, who was awarded the Breakthrough Prize for his work on Alzheimer's, told the BBC: "I really think this is, potentially, the biggest breakthrough in neurodegenerative disease in the past 50 years.
"That sounds like hyperbole - in a year I might be embarrassed by saying that - but that's how I feel at the moment."
The UCL scientist, who was not involved in the research, says the same approach might be possible in other neurodegenerative diseases that feature the build-up of toxic proteins in the brain.
The protein synuclein is implicated in Parkinson's while amyloid and tau seem to have a role in dementias.
Posted by: Hans Litten | December 11, 2017 at 09:05 AM
Eric Blair , for that was his correct name, has correctly predicted it all.
He wrote anonymously as George Orwell to protect his parents and their feelings.
How did this genius know back then ?
Because he attended Oxbridge and knew of their plans because they were talking of it then ?
"Show me a hero, & I will write you a tragedy"
FS Fitzgerald
That quote has great relevance to everything in this vaccination extermination saga.
Posted by: Hans Litten | December 11, 2017 at 07:55 AM
Terrific stuff John.
You gave me permission to share this and I will copy and forward to my MP.
In Scotland health is devolved , but a recent 'named person for every child' initiative stated child vaccinations were a 'must. This proposed policy is very unpopular and has already been thrown out by the UK Supreme Court,(stating this policy was indicative of a 'totalitarian regime), and a Scottish Parliamentary cross party committee, but the SNP are doggedly still attempting to force this on to the statute book. Scary. I shall also post to my MSP.
Posted by: Jenny Allan | December 11, 2017 at 07:27 AM
'The view of Age of Autism is that having great bureaucracies working on behalf of governments and corporate interests deciding what is true – or even machines operating algorithms to decide it - is a prospect little different from the world of George Orwell’s 1984"
One cannot fail but to see that Orwell's "1984" has warned of the dangers when our common language is corrupt .. or .. as Orwell put it ... when "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."
Ergo .. when serious scholars .. seeking nothing more than having scientifically proven .. safe and efficient vaccines .. are routinely and deliberately mischaracterized as being "anti-vaccine" .. when in fact .. they are PRO VACCINE.
Unfortunately ... when language is used to END ALL DISCUSSION .. which is what the term "anti-vaccine" is meant to do .. true scientific reasoning is all but impossible.
Think about it this way .. all discussion and debate over the growing reluctance to vaccinate .. can easily be ended by simply conducting that long-overdue .. independent .. scientific study of vaccinated v. unvaccinated populations .. to ascertain and prove .. once and for all .. if BOTH populations have suffered the same .. inexplicable increase in chronic autoimmune disorders .. that were far less common in ALL PREVIOUS GENERATIONS.
Who is violently OPPOSED to this common sense study ... supposedly those who self-identify themselves as PRO VACCINE.
I can't speak for Orwell ... but to me ... today's corrupt language is no different than Orwell's ..'War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength." PRO-VACCINE IS ANTI-VACCINE.
Posted by: bob moffit | December 11, 2017 at 06:52 AM