Meryl Nass MD comments on the New York Times editorial
Dr. Richard Moskowitz MD On "Anti-Vaxxers"

John Stone Comments On NYT Article Written to Make Vaccine Choice Advocates A Dangerous Enemy

image from miro.medium.comNote: Our John Stone works tirelessly in the UK to dissect the vaccine safety narrative. Congratulations and thank you to him for this letter published on the NY Times site.  Check out the clever headline, "How to inoculated against anti-vaxxer yadda yadda." This presents those of us in the vaccination choice community as dangerous, like a disease. WHO recently named "us" a top ten public health thread. Move over Dengue and HIV, "vaccine hesitancy" just beat you in line.  Jokes aside, can you imagine that vaccine choice is deemed more of a public health threat than HIV?

The Times switched off comment at around 3 pm Eastern Time before comments got out of hand.

How to Innoculate Against Anti-Vaxxers

The no-vaccine crowd has persuaded a lot of people. But public health can prevail.

By The Editorial Board

"The World Health Organization has ranked vaccine hesitancy — the growing resistance to widely available lifesaving vaccines — as one of the top 10 health threats in the world for 2019. That news will not come as a surprise in New York City, where the worst measles outbreak in decades is now underway. Nor in California or Minnesota, where similar outbreaks unfolded in 2014 and 2017, respectively. Nor in Texas, where some 60,000 children remain wholly unvaccinated thanks in part to an aggressive anti-vaccine lobby..."

John Stone's letter:

"This article is an ideological folly, and it is also deceptive - it is deceptive because vaccine critics are already and have always been completely outgunned in the mainstream media. If the NYT are paranoid enough to claim otherwise there is surely something else going on. 

"Secondly, what is currently at issue is both freedom of choice and freedom of speech, and this is a dangerous combination. It is coming that we may not either criticize these liability free products or the lobby that produces them. Nor may we refuse the products. And this is entirely unreasonable - they are being placed on a pedestal, yet there are hundreds of things that can go wrong both singly and in combination (with the certainty that all or anything will be denied in advance as in this editorial). Furthermore, the industry has hundreds of more products in the pipeline, which in turn can and will be mandated for our children. The industry needs this debate kicked into oblivion because it cannot stand scrutiny.

"There is nothing in the history of either medicine or the pharmaceutical industry which suggests that this is a safe or wise way to proceed, not is it as if all doctors or medical scientists are in agreement about it.



"To want ward off serious disease is an honorable thing but that does not mean that everything done in its name is safe or beyond criticism, and if we get into a state where we think this we have a problem."

Jonathan Rose wrote:

The statement that critics of vaccination are only rebutted by "just a handful of academics" is radically divorced from reality. We are constantly deluged by uncritical endorsements of vaccines by the CDC, the medical establishment, the Gates Foundation, the pharmaceutical companies, and nearly all of the mass media (including of course the New York Times). If they are losing the public opinion battle to some amateur-run websites, then this is one of the most stunning propaganda failures of all time. Moreover, the Times (and the rest of the mass media) conspicuously fail to mention the recent affidavit by Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, in which he states that Health and Human Services misrepresented his expert testimony in the 2007 Omnibus Autism Proceedings. A DOJ attorney claimed that he had ruled out any link between autism and vaccines, when in fact Dr. Zimmerman clearly stated that in some cases vaccination could lead to autism. This was reported on Sharyl Attkisson's Full Measure broadcast last week, and you can find the affidavit on her website. So why is the Times avoiding any mention of this? Shouldn't we reconsider old conclusions when new evidence comes to light?

A letter from Vera Sharav of Alliance for Human Research Protection was not published:

“Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body..."  (Justice Benjamin Cardozo: Schoendorff v. Society of New York Hospital, NYS Court of Appeals, 1914)

"The human right to informed consent for medical procedures is the bedrock of moral medicine and U.S. law. That ethical principle was enshrined in the Nuremberg Code  at the conclusion of the Nazi Doctors' trial.

"It particularly troubling that the Board of Directors of The New York Times is actively promoting draconian government measures to deny parents the right to exercise their parental right to make an informed judgment on behalf of their children -- as is their moral and legal responsibility.

"The Supreme Court has ruled that vaccines are "unavoidably unsafe" products. Congress enacted the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act in 1986  protecting manufacturers from liability for harm. Under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, vaccine injured children (and recently adults as well) have been awarded approximately $4 billion as of December 2018. [https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/data/index.html

These are not "easily refutable" facts. Parents' concerns about vaccine safety are based on empirical evidence; they have the right and obligation to protect their children from documented, potential risks of harm. The endorsement of dictatorial government measures befits a fascist regime, not a democracy.

 

Comments

Jeannette Bishop

Here's the CHD link I meant to include in my last comment:
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/mercks-recombivax-vaccine-shortage-causes-reduced-deaths-in-babies-a-natural-experiment

Jeannette Bishop

An aside, something seems to be going on with Merck's AAHS, hepB particularly, and the curious cyber attack more than a year back and Twitter (I think) is not allowing retweets: https://twitter.com/eileeniorio/status/1087774161412517889

Greg

Excellent letter John! Thanks so much! Obviously, there is a lot of anger at WHO designating us a global threat, and dread about their next moves. Further reflection though should bring amusement at just how ineffective their strategizing has become. Seriously -- whatever happened to California mandating vaccines, and the rest the country were to follow? Over four years later, no state has, and with CA's medical exemptions soaring, the legislation is likely not engendering respect. There was also talk that mandates were about to sweep Europe, with France and Italy pursuing them. Fast forward, with things left in so much limbo in Italy, it appears to be taking the wind out of the sails of a continental mandates push. Recently there was also their blitz that Russian bots were spreading antivaxx message on the internet, and leading to our fear that Big-Brother was on the cusp of shutting us down That also seems to have died out with a whimper. Now with WHO's designation, are we to fear that The Man is about to finally take us down for good?

I said it many times, and I will say it again, provaxxers' greatest kryptonite, and our ace, is the reality that vaccine injuries don't discriminate. Despite all their 'posturings', they too are living in fear. This leaves things where we have two battles. There is a public, PR one, where it really is a case of David vs Goliath. With the private one, however, the one that really counts, things really are not so lopsided. Secretly, there are a lot of provaxxers wringing their hands, considering that they may not want to push their BS too far -- lest they also screw themselves. With this said, I will recoil myself and munch away at a few more popcorn, and as I await their next propaganda blitz.

Morag

Thanks John ,your consistent persistence and determination is an inspiration !
If the World Health Organisation thinks that Vaccine Health and Safety risk assessment standards are one of the top ten health threats in the world? Is the "Risk" higher or lower a risk than getting demolished by Nessie The Loch Ness Monster ?
"Oh Jings" Scotch and Wry 26 You tube . No bus drivers called Angus were harmed during this sighting of "Nessie" as just by chance, Euphemia [Effie] the waterside mermaid-ish looking one,who just happened to be sunbaithing on the back of a dolphin, managed to provide the necessary "Crisis Intervention "just in the nic of time!
Seriously though ,what training and marketing material is being used to train the crew at The World Health Organisation ? Dr Joseph Goebbels, incramental modular training methods ?updated with trendy NLP NeuroLinguistic buzz words to indoctrinate, Modern Medicalised Monstrosities!

Jeannette Bishop

John Stone, thank you! I realized the link to your specific letter does work for me (I don't think I tried that earlier) and from there at least I am able to view comments.

Benedetta

Well done Tireless warrior!

John Stone

Jeannette

I just checked and I seem to be able to view them. Maybe if you live in London...

Jeannette Bishop

Thank you for this response and to others. Is it a positive sign that the comments can't be viewed now (on my machine anyway)?

go Trump

Do we know the Autism Rate of the 60,000 unvaccinated children in Texas that Dr. Hotez is so damn concerned about ???

And as we wind down another NFL season, I would suppose there is someone who knows an NFL player and could find out if FLU shots are mandated for the NFL teams. As they seem to be rather valuable, one would think they would of course, be "protected every season" with a FLU shot.

Tens of millions of dollars could be made with the "Official FLU shot of the NFL" each year.

Angus Files

I tried but it wouldnt let me post.Well done John excellent along wwith your many other articles and comments over the years pure genius ...

Pharma For Prison

MMR RIP

Mark Wax

Like many here, my comments were held back. The one below was posted late in the day of Jan 20. I guess checking with the bosses was needed:

Mark
Rocky River, OhioJan. 20
Shame on the NYT for not publishing the entirety of the science surrounding the safety and efficacy of vaccines. I can only hope that the readers, at the very least, due their own due diligence and not cede their rights and responsibilities to Big Pharma, as to the well-being of themselves and their loved ones. You will not be "saved." You may be sacrificed.

It the height of irresponsibility that the NYT provides a mere fraction of the data and information on the subject.

I fear that the NYT has been lulled into the notion that the pursuit of some grandiose notion of the "greater good" relieves us of the duty to "first do no harm."

Long ago it was the NYT itself which presented science based information alerting the public to the real dangers:
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/10/magazine/the-not-so-crackpot-autism-theory.html

Did Big Pharma get to the Editorial Board? Why do the TV networks refuse to allow RFK, Jr. to appear? To present real science and facts of vaccine injury and the etiologies that require the education for the public?

Treating the population as lemmings is hardly a noble goal.

If only the NYT would allow me the forum to publish hard data and deliver testimony from the many studies already published, I think that the readers would be genuinely cynical about the vaccines "debate." It is not a debate as much as it should be a search for safe products, without regard for profits.

13 RecommendShareFlag

R Prasad

Are the NYTimes and other media houses really so concerned about our children's health? Then why are they not advocating for the services and highlighting the lack of healthcare for Autism children? Children with Autism are the ones that are most discriminated against in the whole disability community. These mainstream media houses care only about the profits and market monopolization of their sponsors (vaccine makers, big pharma and hospitals) and use children as scapegoats.

https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2019/01/22/for-many-autism-health-unaddressed/25921/

Terramuggus

Why did Dr. Zimmerman wait until now to tell his story? 11 years? Presumably he knew at the time his expert opinion had been deliberately altered and misrepresented. It's not like he never had the opportunity to publicly and immediately rebut. Maybe I missed something..

Gary Ogden

Thank you John, Jonathan Rose, Vera Sharav, and all the rest who commented on this astonishing editorial; cruelty knows no bounds when profits are at stake. An epic failure of propaganda, indeed.

David Weiner

Dr. Brownstein has also weighed in on this editorial:

https://www.drbrownstein.com/nyt-op-ed-on-vaccines-a-pseudoscience-mess/

John Stone

Warrior Mom

Yes, I am quite sure that there were comments that were just too hurtful! Also, I am sure the had packed the comments as best they could but probably feared it would run against them if they let them run. Then, of course, if you went to the comments they only displayed their favourite comments, and you had to press “all” to see what people had actually said.

WarriorMom

I, too, made several comments to the NYT article on Sunday, however, my first, original comment was never added, only (1) reply to a someone else's comment, which was submitted after my original comment was accepted. Strange! And then, later that day, when I went to see if anyone made comments to my first post...all comments for the article were stopped. Humm...why did the NYT not accept my first comment? Why did they only post one of my replies to someone else's comment? What happened to the other replies I submitted to other comments? I guess they didn't like reading the TRUTH!

Alan V. Schmukler

In responding to the NY Times it is important to realize that we should be addressing our comments to the individuals responsible for that editorial. What I mean by that, is that someone at the NYT took money from some Pharma bag man to publish this propaganda. The people running the Times are educated and literate and quite capable of understanding that vaccination critics are on solid scientific ground. In addition, they know about the high level whistle blowers against vaccination. That editorial wasn't a failure of judgment, but of ethics. Someone high up at the Times is compromised. We need to identify that person and expose them. Arguing against "The New York Times" is fighting with an abstraction. We need the person's name.

Mark Wax

Thank you to all who wrote to the NYT. I made numerous comments ( they did publish my essay on "Vaccines are unavoidably safe"). Unfortunately, due to the character limits, it takes 2 or 3 postings to say anything meaningful. Separately I wrote to the Editor. I asked for NYT to allow the entire set of data and facts to be presented to readers. I am not holding my breath for the NYT reply.

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