Lost Article by Dan Olmsted: What's the Matter With NPR?
This prescient article was brought to our attention this week: Dan identified already how vaccine critics were being crudely branded as public enemies. It was written 10 years ago by Dan for the now out of print Spectrum Magazine. We thought it deserved a home here.by Dan Olmsted, March 9, 2009
And why are they making me want to vomit?
Recently I received an email with the rather provocative subject line: "I may vomit - NPR segment." The body of the email was simply an NPR segment on vaccines and autism by Jon Hamilton. After listening to it, I felt kind of sick to my stomach, too.
"Defending Vaccines: Actress Dispels Link To Autism" is the headline on the NPR website story summarizing the segment. The actress in question is Amanda Peet, who has become the anti-Jenny McCarthy of the celebrity duel over whether vaccines are safe.
"A movie star and a prominent scientist have teamed up to reassure the public that childhood vaccines are safe and do not cause autism," the article begins. The prominent scientist is Paul Offit, who tutored Peet on the fact that an autism-vaccine link has been disproven by "more than a dozen large scientific studies," as Hamilton puts it. In the segment, Offit bemoans the fact that the media still calls the issue "controversial."
We've heard all this before, of course, but what turns my stomach is the source: my beloved National Public Radio. This piece is part of a pattern pointed out by many parents and others involved in the environmental-biomedical approach to autism. Some even say NPR is the single most hostile news organization to the whole question of vaccines and autism.
The hostility is obvious from the intro to the segment on Morning Edition: "Today in Your Health, scientific studies show that childhood vaccines are remarkably safe (the last two words emphasized for effect) but a lot of parents do not agree." One reason, the announcer goes on to say, is all the celebrities pounding on the poor pitiful vaccines.
Actually, that's not a reason. Jenny McCarthy would have no platform if it were not for the parents who decided for themselves, based on their eyewitness experience, that vaccines caused their children to regress into autism. Bernadine Healy, the former head of the National Institutes of Health, made waves this year by saying the vaccine-autism question had not been answered and officials were avoiding doing the studies that would provide the answer. NPR's entire premise is skewed, and everything that follows is similarly twisted.
All my adult life, NPR been a beacon on the radio dial, and I am sure I am not alone. I remember driving beside the frozen cornfields of Illinois in the 1970s at 7 a.m. on my way to work at my hometown newspaper, listening to WILL in Champaign-Urbana and feeling literate, informed, part of a far-flung community of like-minded Americans, and much more cosmopolitan than my actual life experience justified.
Implicitly, NPR was the progressive alternative to the religious stations and top 40 outlets that clogged the heartland dial. The soft, unhurried, cultured tones of the announcers - Susan Stamberg being the example par excellence - made it seem as though reason and right thinking might actually carry the day. I did a mind-meld with NPR.
Besides the terse "I may vomit" email, I got a longer one from another parent. Her name is Meredith Hodge, and she's worth listening to, so to speak. Think of this as an NPR segment with the sounds of a busy household in the background:
"We live in Marietta, Ga., (a northern suburb of Atlanta) and my daughter, Delaney, is 4 1/2 and was diagnosed with ASD about a year ago. We also have a NT son, Charlie, who is 7. I'm a real estate attorney and my husband is a high school math and special education teacher.
"I've listened to NPR in the mornings or the drive home from work for the past 10 years as my "treat" because there were no animated characters and it was a good source of information that you don't typically hear on the evening news. Since I've been working from home, my opportunity to listen has decreased to about 15 minutes, 2 to 3 days a week, after I drop my daughter off at school.
"In that tiny little window in the past couple of months, I have heard no less than 4 stories about the benefits of vaccines and the dangerous people who avoid them. If they presented a differing opinion or speculated about a link to autism, it was quickly dismissed as radical and irresponsible. At least one or two stories were on Gardasil (one of which had an interesting twist about how shocking it is that nurses wouldn't get their daughters vaccinated ... tsk, tsk).
"The one that really made me irate was the profile on Every Child By Two. They actually used the term "herd," as in, "we must protect the..." I detest the word "herd."
"I've always thought of NPR as an unbiased, hard-hitting model of journalistic integrity. It was a window on the world of which I wanted to learn more. Now, if I turn to NPR in the mornings, I always first think, "what crock will I hear about today."
"I never thought that their reporting would be so one-sided but their position, as it is indeed a position, on vaccinations has made me discount every other story I've heard from them. In my opinion, the entire network has been tainted. I'll now only be listening to Car Talk and Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me."
How did we get to this point, where loyal listeners like Meredith and me are treated like lunatics by our alter ego? I'm the same guy, with the same values, as that young man listening to NPR 25 years ago. But now I find my former oasis on the dial as hostile and unwelcoming as ... well, as The New York Times, my other anchor of sanity in the news business that has also become a parrot on the shoulder of Big Pharma, the AAP and the CDC.
How we got here, I think, is through a process I will call CUB - the Creation of Unconscious Bias. NPR, like the Times, has always been progressive, and that's always suited me to a tee. But like every ideology or worldview, there are unspoken assumptions and potential excesses implicit in its principles. Progressives, for example, want to "fix" things; you might say conservatives by contrast generally want to conserve what's already working. Fixing things is a good idea overall, in my view; I went into journalism because it is one of democracy's fundamental mechanisms for self-correction, especially when government itself has fallen down on the job (like right now).
But fixing things can go too far, just as clinging to the status quo can lead to stagnation. A number of years ago a publication in Washington wrote a cover story about how NPR had an obsession with, of all things, raising taxes. I was very protective of my favorite radio outlet and started reading the article with a skeptical mindset. But the author was right. He cited segment after segment in which the announcer or reporter drew the conclusion that the problem at hand would require more money - more taxpayer money. It got to be funny as the writer went instance by instance. More taxes appeared to be the solution to everything. And of, course, more taxes means more government. It's like that guy on Saturday Night Live ranting about the financial meltdown: "Fix it!"
Now, NPR was not part of any cabal to raise our taxes or swell the size of government, nor did it have an explicit position on the issue. No, this was an unconscious bias that sprang from its progressive and journalistic roots. Who knows, they may well have been right, but they needed to bring that bias out in the sunlight (which is called advocacy journalism, the kind I openly engage in) or get rid of it.
This process, I suspect, explains NPR's current groveling before the forces of proven-safe, absolutely necessary, government-mandated universal vaccination. Good government and modern medicine and smart scientists are "fixing" things - in this case, diseases and epidemics and sick children. Yay! Untutored parents, non-mainstream journalists and former Playmates (not our kind of people, don't you know?) are ganging up on beacons of public health and smart scientists like Paul Offit. Boo!
More recently, another source of unconscious bias has become part of the NPR equation: drug money. NPR's 2005 annual report acknowledges $3 million from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (think Johnson & Johnson), and between $100k and $250k from the Lilly Endowment. NPR also runs those annoying blurbs about who's sponsoring programs ("and by...and by...and by..."), and those include Merck.
Studies of cigarette advertising have shown time and again that magazines that accepted such ads were far less likely to write articles about the dangers of cigarettes than those that did not. Duh!
Recently as I listened to NPR list the donors for one of its regular news programs, I practically ran into a ditch. The sponsor was Bayer Crop Science. As some of you may know, my reporting on the natural history of autism has led me to conclude that newly commercialized ethyl mercury compounds in the 1930s triggered the first cases of autism. The two compounds in which ethyl mercury was first used were vaccines and fungicides. Case 2 in Leo Kanner's landmark 1943 paper was the son of a plant pathologist working with the new ethyl mercury fungicide Ceresan when his son was born. Case 3 was the son of a forestry professor with the same plausible exposure.
And who made Ceresan? It was a joint venture between the crop science division of Bayer, a German company, and DuPont in the United States. (The companies never answered my queries about this and sent me to a trade association that didn't respond, either.)
So if you want to look at it this way (and I do) NPR is brought to you by the folks responsible for the first autism cases (Bayer), the people who triggered the epidemic when their ethyl mercury preservative was used in more and more vaccines (Lilly), and the company that's perpetuating the problem with the dreadful MMR shot at age 1 (Merck).
So I think I understand how unconscious bias has infected what was once my favorite source of news and information. All things considered, it's sickening.
Dan Olmsted is editor of AgeofAutism.com. He is the co-author of a forthcoming book on the natural history of autism with Mark Blaxill.
Dan,--NPR (National Pharma Radio) has once again lived up to their name. Ailsa Chang and Allison Aubrey discuss getting a flu shot as if they are at a Tupperware Party talking about storing all kinds of leftovers. They are absolutely giddy. Judge for your self.
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/10/911592378/questions-on-getting-flu-shot-this-year-answered
Allison was so convincing that Ailsa is buying the complete Tupperware Set.
Questions On Getting Flu Shot This Year Answered
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
If you haven't done it yet, doctors and pediatricians are united in this plea - get a flu shot. A mix of COVID-19 and seasonal influenza could make for a particularly messy winter. And for now, of course, there is only a vaccine for flu. NPR's Allison Aubrey joins us to discuss.
Hey, Allison.
ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE: Hey there, Ailsa.
CHANG: Hey. So when is the best time to get a flu shot?
AUBREY: Well, now, really.
CHANG: (Laughter).
AUBREY: Now through the end of October is a good time. You'll be inoculated before flu season sets in. And if you do it now, there won't be lines or hassles. Now, some people have heard that it's better to wait until later in the season so the immunity lasts a bit longer through spring. And experts tell me that there is some evidence that immunity can wane a bit, especially in older people, but it's marginal, Ailsa. And it's not true for every individual, so there's really no need to put it off. Go do it.
CHANG: OK.
AUBREY: I spoke to Michael Ison. He's an infectious disease physician at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
MICHAEL ISON: This year in particular it's going to be especially important for everyone to get their flu shot. If you get sick with what you think may be the flu, you can't differentiate that based on symptoms from COVID-19. And so that'll mean those people are going to be seeing their doctor, asking for tests in a system that's going to be burdened with the additional burden of COVID-19 this fall and winter.
AUBREY: You definitely don't want the flu. The vaccine can really help prevent it, especially as the coronavirus continues to circulate widely. You definitely don't want to get both.
CHANG: No way. So it is possible then to get both flu and COVID this winter.
AUBREY: You know, there were cases of patients in the early months of the COVID pandemic that had both flu and coronavirus. And in general, Ison says people that have two viral infections at the same time tend to get sicker.
CHANG: Sure.
AUBREY: There were some instances of this documented in the U.S., in China, in Europe. And Ison says that, you know, these people appear to have more serious illness. He says the numbers are relatively low, particularly here in the U.S. because most of the coronavirus cases were documented after the flu season had started to wane. But yes, it is possible.
CHANG: Great. OK. Well, for all the science geeks out there, can you just tell us what is the makeup of the flu shot this year? Like, what strains are targeted?
AUBREY: Sure. That's right. The flu shot tends to change every year. It's based on the surveillance that scientists at the World Health Organization and elsewhere do to see which viruses are circulating. And based on this surveillance, they can make some predictions on what strains might be coming in the upcoming flu season, and they can match these expected strains. So I spoke to L.J. Tan. He's a scientist with the Immunization Action Coalition about this.
LJ TAN: So this upcoming season, the flu vaccine for this current flu season, the vaccines have actually changed a lot of the strains. There are three new strains in the quadrivalent vaccine. Both the type-A strains have been changed, and one of the type-B strains have been changed.
AUBREY: And he too emphasizes the importance of just getting a flu shot this year not only to protect yourself, Ailsa, but to protect everybody in your community.
CHANG: Absolutely. I will totally do this. So do we have any sense of how bad the flu season is going to be?
AUBREY: You know, it's hard to predict what will happen here in the U.S., but we can look to the Southern Hemisphere where the winter is ending. Some countries including Chile, Brazil, Australia appear to have had a very, very light flu season. Some of the data is preliminary, but L.J. Tan points to Australia, where there was this huge, huge drop-off in flu, more than 90%. Now, it could just be because people aren't travelling, and they're practicing social distancing. It could also be because there were a lot of people who got vaccinated. So, you know, two messages here - get the flu shot, and continue to remain vigilant with social distancing and masking.
CHANG: That as NPR's Allison Aubrey.
Thanks so much, Allison.
AUBREY: Thank you, Ailsa.
Posted by: michael | September 12, 2020 at 04:32 PM
Aimee, You asked, Has Big Pharma bought everyone?" Yes! Big Medicine with Big Pharma has brought us the Medical Industrial Complex which works with the Political Industrial Complex which relies on the media to maintain the status quo.
Excerpts below from this article: https://www.hbs.edu/competitiveness/Documents/why-competition-in-the-politics-industry-is-failing-america.pdf
It’s important to recognize that much of what constitutes today’s political system has no basis in the Constitution. As our system evolved, the parties—and a larger Political Industrial Complex that surrounds them—established and optimized a set of rules and practices that enhanced their power by erecting barriers to entry -- ways to keep out new competitors -- thereby diminishing our democracy. Examples of this includes controlling access to the general election ballot, partisan gerrymandering, and the Hastert Rule, which puts partisan concerns above legislating for the public interest. In a healthy competitive environment, industry actors compete to deliver desired outcomes for their customers—in this case the citizenry—and are held accountable for the results. In any other industry, ignoring such a large group of customers would make a competitor vulnerable to new competition. Political rivals who fail to serve the public would be replaced by new competitors who do. But the politics industry is insulated from the usual market pressures to serve customers better, and because the barriers to entry have been made so very high, new competition cannot emerge. Free from regulation and oversight, the political industrial complex continues to expand and grow while the nation fails to make progress on solving its problems and serving the needs of its people. Yet despite this, the duopoly is never held accountable for its dismal results. In politics, accountability would mean voting party leaders and many legislators out of office if progress is not made. However, since there are only two major parties who compete by dividing up and serving partisan voters and special interests, voting out individual legislators means replacing them with others from the same party or the other party because the duopoly constitutes the only viable options within the current political structure. Nothing really changes. The only thing either party has to do to win the next election is to convince the public that they are only slightly less worthy of derision than the one other choice that the voter has when they go to the ballot. It is therefore in the duopoly's interest to incite citizens to vote based on anger and fear. This amplifies partisanship and further disadvantages third-party candidates, independents, and moderates. In such a system, polarization is a feature, not a bug. The failure of politics has persisted because the normal checks and balances of healthy competition have been neutralized. It’d be one thing if this large industry were delivering value to its customers — which is supposed to be us, the citizenry. But the political industry is much better at generating revenue for itself and creating jobs for itself while treating its customers with something close to disdain. Kind of like the cable TV industry on steroids. Customer satisfaction with the political industry is at historic lows. Fewer than a quarter of Americans currently say they trust the federal government. In terms of popularity, it ranks below every other private industry. That includes the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, the airline industry — and, yes, cable TV. The political industry’s most important customers are also its wealthiest: industries like healthcare, real estate, and financial services; also, labor unions and lobbyists. Average voters and current non-voters, the majority of citizens, have little or no influence on policy or outcomes. Recent research supports these conclusions about where customer power actually lies. In 2014, researchers at Princeton and Northwestern University examined congressional action on 1,779 policy issues. Their finding: “When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” Our political system will not be self-correcting. It doesn't matter who we elect, indeed it doesn't even matter the quality of the candidates, because it is a systems problem, involving multiple factors that are self-reinforcing. The core idea here is that Washington isn’t broken; Washington is doing exactly what it’s designed to do. Many well-meaning reform ideas—such as term limits, electing better candidates, promoting bipartisanship, instituting a national primary day, improving civics education, establishing bipartisan issue-advocacy groups, and others—won’t matter much absent changes in the underlying industry structure: States should move to a single primary ballot for all candidates, no matter what their affiliation, and open up primaries to all voters, not just registered party voters. Ranked-choice voting will ensure that no candidate is elected with less than majority support, resulting in the election of candidates with the broadest appeal to the most voters. Drawing legislative district boundaries must be non-partisan to eliminate artificial advantages for the party in control. Current requirements for participation in presidential debates are unreasonable (for anyone except the Democratic and Republican nominees) and anticompetitive. Legislative and governance rules must align the process with the public interest and reduce the ability of parties to control Congressional deliberations and outcomes simply for partisan gain. A focus on money alone will not transform our political system. The real answer is to reduce the attractive return on investment that donors currently enjoy. The top two parties should always be operating under a potential threat from competitors that better serve the public interest. Solutions-oriented, independent campaigns would bring critical new competition to politics, and can be powerful change agents. Today, it is difficult to run outside the duopoly, and even more difficult to win outside the duopoly. Concerned voters should seek out and actively support such independent candidates.
Posted by: michael | August 08, 2019 at 12:00 PM
I understand the anger at the liberal media's failure to address the vaccine-autism issue. But why aren't conservatives angry about the failure of the conservative media - and conservative politicians' failure to address the vaccine autism issue?
Congress has failed us. As I see it, both parties have failed us, but the liberal/progressive/Democrats seem to elicit the majority of the anger on this blog. Where is the anger against Trump - who made promises and then gave us Tom Price, Alex Azar, Scott Gottlieb, Brenda Fitzgerald, and Robert Redfield to head the agencies which set the agenda? Trump recently said we should all get vaccinated against measles. Really?
Government has failed us (and we should be angry about that) but where is the anger against Pharma,which has bought Congress, and which has instituted an essential "revolving door" between government agencies and industry?
Lots of anger (appropriately) against California, but where is the anger against other state governors and legislatures which have done nothing about the vaccine-autism epidemic? Has big Pharma bought EVERYONE?
Hey - be angry at Democrats if you like. Or, be angry at Republicans. Be angry at Trump. Be angry at the media. But I don't think we'll get anywhere toward a solution until we target the puppetmaster behind the government and politics and media. Pharma deserves our anger, since they seem to control everything.
Posted by: Aimee Doyle | August 07, 2019 at 09:13 PM
Gary--"What really drives me up the wall are the cutesy, snowflakey voices they deliver their propaganda in." Sort of like Tokyo Rose https://www.history.com/news/how-tokyo-rose-became-wwiis-most-notorious-propagandist
Posted by: michael | August 06, 2019 at 06:56 PM
Saw this comment on another site critical of NPR:
"NPR gives public broadcasting a bad name. To be honest, it should acknowledge it’s a state broadcaster on a leash."
Dan you are sorely missed!
Posted by: michael | August 06, 2019 at 06:48 PM
Pogo, Thank you so much for all the info on David Noakes, GcMaf etc. I read/watched it all. Extremely disturbing, although nothing surprises me any more.
If the general public knew that there is a cure for some cancers - and a possible cure for some children with autism - but that this was being kept from them by these bullying tactics, there would be an outcry.
Can governments sink any lower?
Posted by: susan welch | August 06, 2019 at 05:42 PM
Carolyn,
You're right. Mercury continued to be in baby vaccines until 2002, even though the congressional hearing on the hep-B vaccine in 1999 had concluded that the mercury in it was dangerous and Merck promised to take it out. But didn't add that it would continue to sell already-existing stock until its expiration (often in 2002). It had been banned in some Scandinavian countries around 1990, and in most pet vaccines even earlier.
We have been betrayed all around, by everyone.
Posted by: Cia | August 06, 2019 at 03:52 PM
I felt similarly betrayed by consumer reports. In 2001 they had a cover story about thimerasol in vaccines. This story seems to have been scrubbed. But I remember bringing it to our newborns early dr visits, and the nurses laughing and saying “of course there is no mercury in these shots”. But they did not do a recall of shots with mercury and somehow this concern evaporated quickly in the early 2000’s. The Bush family ties to Eli Lilly? The 9-11 rider?
CR could have single handedly stopped the over vaccination epidemic but some where they sold out. They lost all their amazing objectivity. I don’t know what happened.
Posted by: Carolyn Freespeech is Ill | August 06, 2019 at 12:24 PM
Bob and Aimee,
I agree that conservative coverage is very bad, and liberal coverage is probably hopeless. And I read several months ago that Tucker has a child who reacted to vaccines with autism, and he is absolutely superb in his interviews and reports! I loved him last week in his coverage on the Mueller report.
Posted by: cia parker | August 06, 2019 at 12:13 PM
@ Aimee
'But just curious - how does the conservative media cover autism and vaccines? What has Fox news said lately? What about other conservative TV, radio, online or print outlets?"
Sad to say … as an avid viewer of "conservative media" .. they are just as derelict in their lack of coverage as is main-stream .. "liberal media". Foxnews is pitiful on the subject of vaccines .. indeed .. pitiful on the subject of most pharmaceutical products .. their resident "expert" Dr Marc Siegal is an absolute flack for vaccines ..
Tucker Carlson is the only hope we have of "reporting" info on vaccines .. he recently briefly mentioned vaccines as being among various subjects that are "not discussed" on any programs.
Posted by: Bob Moffit | August 06, 2019 at 10:05 AM
Agreed. NPR has abandoned its responsibility to public health.
But just curious - how does the conservative media cover autism and vaccines? What has Fox news said lately? What about other conservative TV, radio, online or print outlets?
Posted by: Aimee Doyle | August 06, 2019 at 07:22 AM
Thanks John Pogo, a very brave man and all his Drs . We used the GcMAF around 6 years ago subcutaneously. This got rid of the severe acne covering face and back which looked just like a pizza .This is completely clear now not a blemish. This was using 10ml of GcMAF at a cost of around £300 per 10ml.We did this twice just a drip at the base of the neck each day. Obviously the nagalase was out of kilter.We would have liked to have continued but such is life.God bless them all. Another warrior is Amanda Mary who operates from Mexico and offers various GcMAF protocols.
http://gcmaf.timsmithmd.com/book/chapter/52/
Nagalase: Friend and Foe?
What is Nagalase?
Nagalase is a protein made by all cancer cells and viruses (HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, influenza, herpes, Epstein-Barr virus, and others). Its formal, official chemical name is alpha-N-acetylgalactosaminidase, but this is such a tongue-twisting mouthful of a moniker that we usually just call it “Nagalase.” (Sometimes, when I want to impress friends with my brilliance, I’ll say the entire word real fast: “alpha-N-acetylgalactosaminidase.” I have found that it’s important to practice beforehand if one doesn’t want to embarrass oneself.)
Pharma For Prison
MMR RIP
Posted by: Angus Files | August 06, 2019 at 04:44 AM
michael: Bilge. Drivel. Errors of omission and partial truths destroyed their credibility at least ten years ago. Give. Me. A. Break. What really drives me up the wall are the cutesy, snowflakey voices they deliver their propaganda in. Sad to say, they likely have no idea what they are engaging in, nor do many of their listeners.
Posted by: Gary Ogden | August 05, 2019 at 11:26 PM
If Dan were here today, he would choke or laugh. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=688366420
NPR GUIDELINES O COMPLETENESS of story
We do our best to report thoroughly and tell stories comprehensively. We won't always have enough time or space in one story to say everything we would like or quote everyone we would wish to include. But errors of omission and partial truths can inflict great damage on our credibility, and stories delivered without the context to fully understand them are incomplete. Our journalism includes diverse voices that reflect our society and divergent views that contribute to informed debate. When we find that we can't deliver all the answers to important questions, we explain what we don't yet know and work to fill any gaps in our reporting.
Telling the full story
There's always more news than we can report on any platform. So we aim to produce well-rounded news coverage that reflects the most important information the public needs to know, and gives our audience a varied sense of what's happening in our society and around the world.
Guideline: Our coverage should reflect the true complexity of the world we live in......
Posted by: michael | August 05, 2019 at 07:13 PM
This was the Hviid study from a few months ago and the article at Physicians for Informed Consent. They have a lot of good resources available at their site. This study was near the top of the Yandex search results, but not at the other two search engines I mentioned.
Hviid A, Hansen JV, Frisch M, Melbye M. Measles, mumps, rubella vaccination and autism: a nationwide cohort study. Ann Intern Med. 2019 Apr 16;170(8):513-20.
https://physiciansforinformedconsent.org/a-review-of-hviid-et-al-s-2019-mmr-autism-study/
Posted by: cia parker | August 05, 2019 at 06:58 PM
Hi, just an alert that the New York Times has an article today called We Are Not At All Prepared for a Pandemic, a profile of a Novartis vaccine researcher. May be of interest to some here.
Posted by: Leah | August 05, 2019 at 03:03 PM
Angus and all
This is indeed very worrying. The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is leading a vendetta against Lyn Thyer and David Noakes just like the FDA is doing against Dr Burzynski.
David comes out with too many facts and figures about the successes he has had with autism in this video for me to remember. It is well worth watching to get the full background story. He also mentions that it is now some 17 people that have mysteriously died after having had their premises raided by the authorities protecting big pharma.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbboZKkXHvQ
A petition has been set up for them:
https://www.change.org/p/robert-buckland-qc-end-the-illegal-imprisonment-and-persecution-of-lyn-thyer-and-david-noakes-now
He mentions that the MHRA has two directors from GSK (surprise?) and a website to petition to have the MHRA disbanded.
https://mhracorrupt.st/
Any one googling will first only find the
fraudulent misrepresentation that have been invented to discrete the work, unless they did deeper. This lays bare the Malleus Maleficarum used against them.
https://mhracorrupt.st/gcmaf/
This website is worth a thorough read, as it lists many other crimes against health such as vaccines.
Posted by: Pogo | August 05, 2019 at 01:50 PM
Jon Hamilton is a young(ish) "journalist" who has NO training or educational background in medicine, neuroscience, or biochemistry.
He believes what the "experts" tell him. And then he writes about it.
His degree is in journalism. You won't be able to change his mind, because he believes what the "experts" tell him . . .
Posted by: Nonnymouse | August 05, 2019 at 01:31 PM
I would like everyone to be aware of the following, and test it for yourselves. A couple of weeks ago, I said there had been no large-scale vax/unvax study. A shill said Yes, there has been, and put up a link to a recent updated study in Denmark, Hviid/Madsen, MMR and autism. I immediately sought articles criticizing this study, but even on Duck Duck Go, it was page after page of positive reviews, case closed, vaccines do not cause autism. Just for fun :-( I ran the same thing through Google, same results. Case closed. THEN I ran it through Yandex and immediately got TONS of critical articles.
Just to say that the infiltration and cooptation of American (and, doubtless, European) search engines (comment platforms, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) has proceeded much further than probably most of us realize, and take all appropriate measures. Do not trust any Western search engine. And probably they'll eventually swallow up Yandex (Russian) as well, but for right now, it's excellent. Go check out its services, including mail. Microsoft is busy plugging up every possible outlet, it's already blocked a lot, but an upcoming deadline for massive increased censorship is August 31, and then another one September 15.
I just tried to file a report at Trump's site to report Internet censorship, and found that it has been closed. Oh, well. They want a revolution, fine. Bring it on. I'm too tired for exclamation points.
Posted by: Cia | August 05, 2019 at 11:30 AM
Thank you John.
NPR (National Pharma Radio) has only gotten more disgusting. National Propaganda Radio fits as well.
I'm sure Dan was disgusted as I was when "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" furthered the witchhunt, villification of Dr. Andrew Wakefield. Every host, every reporter on NPR is disgusting. NPR has dug themselves a grave and history will write the epitaph for their demise. The sooner they are gone the better.
Shankar Vedantam uses his NPR Hidden Brain to attack parents who have read the science and alter their vaccinations accordingly. Most recently was this ---https://www.npr.org/2019/07/18/743195213/facts-arent-enough-the-psychology-of-false-beliefs which ironically he discusses confirmation bias. Shankar Vedantam demonstrates this repeatedly in his segments.
The Spokane station is only one in the entire NPR network which had the integrity that all of NPR pathologically lack. https://www.spokanepublicradio.org/post/inland-journal-april-18-2019-vaccine-safety-pt-1-del-bigtree.
Posted by: michael | August 05, 2019 at 11:12 AM
In the "progressives who make me want to ralph" category, how about Peter Beinart on vaccines? His articles are not so much written as assembled from all the familiar talking points...with a few hoity-toity references thrown in to show he has more book learnin' than y'all.
Posted by: Carol | August 05, 2019 at 10:23 AM
Angus,
I agree this is very disturbing.
Posted by: John Stone | August 05, 2019 at 09:55 AM
How often does "Follow the money" lead to the answer? We can feel sorry for the people who have sold their soul to the big pharma devil. Many may eventually realize that they have been complicit in causing great harm by vaccines.
Posted by: Dr. William H. Gaunt | August 05, 2019 at 09:36 AM
This lack of impartiality shown by the NPR must have seemed even more shocking back in 2009 as it was before
the (very quietly done) passing of the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012. This made it legal for the government to use propaganda on its own people for the first time.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/planting-stories-in-the-press-lifting-of-us-propaganda-ban-gives-new-meaning-to-old-song/237493/
“Under normal circumstances, failing to disclose conflicts of interests of key sources and failing to question government narratives would be considered acts of journalistic malice. However, in the age of legal propaganda, these derelictions matter much less. Propaganda is not intended to be factual or impartial — it is intended to serve a specific purpose, namely influencing public opinion in a way that serves US government interests.”
This never-ending stream of of miss-information is so everyday now, that we take it for normal.
Posted by: Pogo | August 05, 2019 at 08:44 AM
Thanks, Dan! Love the music, and the comedy shows are good, but when they start talking, I put in a CD. Puke-worthy it is.
Posted by: Gary Ogden | August 05, 2019 at 08:19 AM
Dan's definition of a "progressive"....
"Progressives, for example, want to "fix" things; you might say conservatives by contrast generally want to conserve what's already working"
"Fixing things" sounds so harmless and reasonable .. what could go wrong? Unfortunately .. defining exactly "what" needs "fixing" .. and … "how" best to "fix" it .. is the problem .. as there is and will always be .. more and more things to "fix" .. and .. who better qualified to do it than GOVERNMENT. Not specifically our "elected government representatives'" .. but … the hundreds of thousands unelected .. therefore unaccountable to the people .. faceless career bureaucrats .. who populate the hundreds of government regulatory agencies .. regulatory agencies whose sole purpose is to "fix things".
At my advanced age I have witnessed far too many attempts to 'fix things" that went far beyond original problem .. for instance … beginning with the best of intentions … a government recommended and approved vaccine to "fix polio" has morphed into government "bureaucrats" recommending and approving 16 vaccines .. requiring 73 doses of vaccines .. to children prior to 18 years of age.
And so .. today … after decades of government "fixing" our children's health with more and more vaccines .. 54% of children today have some neurological/biological/physical development problem that was not a problem until the government began "fixing" their health.
Posted by: Bob Moffit | August 05, 2019 at 06:46 AM
Does AoA have a full archive facility of all the articles ever published here ?
Is there a repository keeping all the very most valuable scientific evidence which of course provides irrefutable proof that vaccines are the greatest crime of all centuries ?
I have been printing out and keeping hard copies of all the very best evidence of course.
Which can be rescanned back onto the internet whenever the decide to return our information freedom. I have kept all the stories, all the names of the guilty.
Everything is recorded for future generations to know what was done.
Posted by: Hans Litten | August 05, 2019 at 06:26 AM
A great article from Dan and always worth reading as they seem timeless.
I noticed this week that the burn the boos and destroy the messengers by whatever means is still taking place after Dr Bradstreet there is no let up since Dr Bradstreet died none..
Lyn Thyer is being unlawfully extradited to France on trumped-up charges
I desperately need your help. Can you help in any way?
Lyn is completely innocent of all charges, made-up against her.
Lyn is a biomedical scientist. She personally nursed 300 people back to health, getting the response rates of GcMAF up to 89% with disease, and is co-author of 11 scientific research papers.
The background is that
GcMAF, a safe human protein, treats all tumour cancers and 50 other diseases with no side effects.
Lyn and I are being persecuted by the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA) (see www.mhracorrupt.st) because GcMAF is a threat to the profits of bi pharma corporations who sell the poison of chemotherapy.
Although the MHRA know Lyn cannot be lawfully prosecuted because she was not involved with GcMAF's extraction or distribution, they contacted their even more corrupt French opposite numbers, OCLAESP, and asked them to prosecute both Lyn and myself.
Their judge Gadaud invented 9 false charges from his own imagination for me, copied them to Lyn's name, even copying my case number, and asked for a 12-year sentence in France, which has the worst prisons in Europe.
But Lyn and I had nothing to do with GcMAF in France. That was done by a Dutch company called Duurzaam.
Judge Gadaud unlawfully linked that company with an entirely disconnected company, CytoInnovations, which allowed him to use false accusations of conspiracy, using thirteen policemen, four with machine guns, to arrest David Halsall, Duurzaam's only (part time) man in France. He served 5 months in prison with no charges.
Westminster Magistrates extradition court exists to ensure European Arrest Warrants are blocked if they are an abuse of process. There is no more obvious abuse of process than Gadaud and OCLAESP, who, not surprisingly, have no evidence for their 9 charges; and the jurisdiction is solidly in the UK, with 27 staff here and one part-time in France.
But three corrupt judges, Judge Rebecca Crane, Judge Sir Michael Supperstone, and Judge Michael Snow, all deviously ruled that Lyn should be abandoned to the obvious abuses of the French justice system.
Lyn has now been put in Bronzefield Prison, Ashford Surrey to be transferred to a prison in France, in eight days’ time.
How can you help?
Please would you make a short video, of no more than one minute, on your phone or computer, saying how you were before treatment with GcMAF and the difference afterwards, and how you feel about Lyn’s and my arrest and upload it to https://www.commonlawcourt.com/submit-your-video/
Pharma For Prison
MMR RIP
Posted by: Angus Files | August 05, 2019 at 06:24 AM