The Refusers

Put statins in the water – BBC and Lancet

The Refusers — Thu, 17 May 2012 19:20:45 +0000

MB Comment: Why not statins in the water like flouride? Makes perfect sense in a world gone mad. Statins should be mandatory like vaccines. Governments could save money on welfare and burial expenses.

“Giving statins to everyone over the age of 50 would probably save the NHS money in the long run” BBC News

Statins Cause Killer Workouts – Literally!

300+ Health Problems Linked To Statin Drugs

Statin Drugs Linked To Arthritis, Heart Trouble And More

More Insane Uses For Statin Drugs

New Study Shows Using Statins Actually Harms Heart Function

Effectiveness of Statins Called Into Question

The Dangers of Statin Drugs

Disastrous Side Effects of Statins

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NHS ‘should consider giving statins to healthy people’

By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News

Thousands of heart attacks and strokes could be prevented if the cholesterol-lowering drugs, statins, were more widely prescribed, research suggests.

The study of 175,000 patients, in the Lancet, said even very low-risk patients benefited from the medication.

The Oxford researchers says the NHS should consider giving statins to healthy people. The NHS drugs watchdog, NICE, is reviewing the evidence.

However, statins have been linked to side-effects such as kidney failure.

‘Unparalleled’ detail

They are among the most widely prescribed drugs in the UK and have long been known to help people at high risk of heart attack and stroke.

However, there has been considerable debate over medicating healthy people – both whether it works at all and if it would be socially acceptable.

Researchers at the University of Oxford say they have investigated the issue in “unparalleled” detail.

Their review of 27 trials concluded that statins significantly reduced the risk of heart attack and stroke for everyone.

Current rules from NICE – the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence – recommend statins for people who have a 20% or greater chance of developing cardiovascular disease within 10 years.

Doctors look at a patient’s age, blood pressure, cholesterol levels and lifestyle to work out the risk.

One of the researchers, Prof Colin Baigent, told the BBC: “We’ve been taught over the years that high cholesterol is the thing that matters; you mustn’t have high cholesterol.

“But what we’ve actually learned is that, whatever your level of cholesterol, reducing it further is beneficial.

“Whatever your level of risk, the benefits greatly exceed any known hazard.”

He calculates that lowering the threshold for prescribing statins to a 10% risk of cardiovascular disease within a decade would lead to five million more people taking the drugs.

This in turn would save 2,000 lives and prevent 10,000 heart attacks or strokes every year, he said.

Prof Baigent said: “Half of [these] deaths come out of the blue in people who were previously healthy.

“If we are going to prevent that half of cardiac or stroke deaths, then we’ve got to consider treating healthy people.

“It can’t be done any other way.”

Caution urged

He, alongside fellow researchers, is now calling on NICE to review the evidence for giving statins to more people.

NICE, which sets drugs policy for England and Wales, said it was updating its guidelines.

“Giving statins to everyone over the age of 50 would probably save the NHS money in the long run”

Prof Shah Ebrahim London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

The organisation said: “New evidence on statin treatment thresholds that has become available since publication of the original NICE guideline, including the study reported in the Lancet, will be considered as part of our review.”

Their conclusions will be published towards the end of 2013.

One of the questions will be over side-effects. Statins have been linked to liver problems, kidney failure, muscle weakness and an increased risk of diabetes.

Prof Shah Ebrahim, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, conducted a large review of the evidence last year.

His results urged caution, and Prof Shah said doctors should stop prescribing to healthy patients.

He now says: “This research provides further evidence that statins are an effective and safe way of reducing the risk of heart attacks and strokes even among people at quite low risk of these conditions.”

He suggests that universal prescribing to the over-50s might be appropriate, as 83% of 50-year old men have a 10% risk of cardiovascular disease in the next 10 years.

“The benefits of giving statins to everyone over the age of 50 would probably save the NHS money in the long run, owing to the savings in health care costs from the heart attacks and strokes prevented.”

However, he questioned whether it would be good for people or society to resort to mass medication for lifestyle issues.

Read the article

Read the Lancet study

The Surveillance State: Knowing Every Bit About You – New American

The Refusers — Thu, 17 May 2012 13:36:13 +0000

MB Comment: Are mandatory vaccines just one tentacle of the totalitarian octopus? This is a great, factual article exposing how their surveillance and domination tentacles are wrapping around us.

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The Surveillance State: Knowing Every Bit About You

New American May 10, 2012 Written by Charles Scaliger

No one ever accused Jeremy Bentham of thinking small. The early 18th-century British philosopher, social reformer, and co-founder of the celebrated philosophical school of Utilitarianism, Bentham was known for his unconventional ideas. Like many self-styled progressive thinkers of his age, Bentham expended a considerable amount of energy dreaming up new ways to use the power of the state to protect private citizens from their own alleged follies.

The concept of the Panopticon was probably Bentham’s best-known brainchild. An extravagant idea for its time, it has proven an enduring metaphor in our time and — far more importantly — prefigured our modern obsession with high-tech surveillance. Derived from Greek roots that mean “all-seeing,” Bentham’s Panopticon was a building designed to house many people in close quarters whose rooms were so configured that a central authority, using a system of tubes and mirrors, could keep every inmate under constant surveillance. The Panopticon concept could be applied to prisons, factories, or any place where large numbers of people would live or work in close quarters. “Morals reformed — health preserved — industry invigorated — instruction diffused — public burthens [burdens] lightened — economy seated, as it were, upon a rock — the Gordian knot of the poor-law not cut, but untied — all by a simple idea in architecture,” Bentham enthused, proclaiming that his Panopticon represented “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.” The energetic Bentham tried to persuade the British government to let him design a Panopticon prison, but was ultimately unsuccessful. Although he managed to persuade Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger of the Panopticon’s potential, Pitt’s successor shut down the project.

But Bentham’s premise — of a system of comprehensive state surveillance to guarantee a pliant and docile citizenry — is still with us, magnified by the potency of 21st-century technology and zealously promoted the world over, but especially in Western nations, like Great Britain and the United States, that once viewed such state activities as abhorrent and dangerous to liberty. A decade after the defining crisis of our era, the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the United States of America is on the verge of becoming a Panopticon society, with powers of state surveillance far beyond the most fevered imaginings of Bentham and fellow pre-modern utopians.

Panopticon Society

In the sagebrush desert of Bluffdale, Utah, in the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains, a vast new federal surveillance and intelligence processing center is being erected. The so-called Utah Data Center, operated by the National Security Agency, will occupy more than a million square feet when it becomes operational sometime next year. Within its ultra-secure perimeter, surveillance on a scale never before achieved will be carried out, of a vast array of digital communications — cellphone conversations, e-mails, Google searches, and the like — both on foreign and domestic soil. Thanks to significant (and highly classified) advances in decryption technology, coupled with unprecedented supercomputing power, the new facility will be the nerve center for near-total surveillance capabilities over hundreds of millions of Americans. If the Utah Data Center fulfills it ominous potential, the cherished American right to privacy will have no more substance.

But the Bluffdale facility is merely the culmination of an aggressive new effort to bring all of Americans’ private activities under at least potential surveillance by the feds, an effort undertaken soon after the 9/11 attacks. The first attempt to create what New York Times columnist William Safire called “computer dossiers on 300 million Americans” was launched in 2002. Under the leadership of John Poindexter, former National Security Advisor under Ronald Reagan, the Information Awareness Office (IAO) was created within the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Its goal, well-publicized at the time, was “total information awareness,” the warrantless compilation of vast databases on the private financial activities and communications of every single American — their credit card activity, e-mails, social networks, phone calls, airline ticket purchases, car rentals, and so forth. This data would then be analyzed to look for suspicious patterns of behavior, evidence of potential terrorist activity.

From the outset, DARPA and the IAO generated a lot of bad publicity, driven in no small measure by the former’s genuinely spooky choice of logo: the all-seeing eye atop a pyramid (also depicted on the back of the dollar bill) gazing godlike at the entire world, accompanied by the motto “Cientia est Potentia” (“Knowledge is Power”). By 2003, the public and congressional hue and cry over what was transparently an extra-constitutional program had become so great that Congress officially defunded the IAO.

But like the stereotyped villain in a slasher film that cannot be killed, much of the work carried out by the IAO was merely transferred to other branches of America’s vast security establishment. While Congress tried to stipulate that none of the new tools being developed could be used against American citizens or on American soil, the drive to develop more powerful supercomputers with the ability to compile more and more comprehensive data profiles of anybody, anywhere, continued throughout the last decade. And it is by no means clear whether the federal government did, in fact, refrain from spying on its own citizens during that period; if the testimony of certain disgruntled former NSA employees is to believed, quite the opposite is true. According to William Binney, a former senior cryptographer and mathematician at the NSA, the storied and notoriously closemouthed security agency has systematically flouted and circumvented all congressional limits on intelligence gathering ever since 9/11, ignoring in some cases restrictions on spying on Americans that date from the post-Watergate era. Speaking of the launching of “warrantless wiretapping” soon after 9/11, Binney, who resigned in disgust after four decades of code breaking, did not mince words. “They violated the Constitution setting it up,” he told Wired magazine’s James Bamford. “But they didn’t care. They were going to do it anyway, and they were going to crucify anyone who stood in the way. When they started violating the Constitution, I couldn’t stay.”

Toys for Tracking Us

According to Binney, the program, codenamed Stellar Wind, intercepted without warrant not only domestic phone calls but domestic e-mails as well. At the very beginning, the NSA was intercepting 320 million domestic phone calls per day — and the number quickly expanded. Bamford relates:

According to Binney — who has maintained close contact with agency employees until a few years ago — the taps in the secret rooms dotting the country are actually powered by highly sophisticated software programs that conduct “deep packet inspection,” examining Internet traffic as it passes through the 10-gigabit-per-second cables at the speed of light.

The software, created by a company called Narus that is now part of Boeing, is controlled remotely from NSA headquarters at Fort Meade in Maryland and searches US sources for target addresses, locations, countries, and phone numbers, as well as watch-listed names, keywords, and phrases in email. Any communication that arouses suspicion, especially those to or from the million or so people on agency watch lists, are automatically copied or recorded and then transmitted to the NSA.

The scope of surveillance expands from there, Binney says. Once a name is entered into the Narus database, all phone calls and other communications to and from that person are automatically routed to the NSA’s recorders. “Anybody you want, route to a recorder,” Binney says. “If your number’s in there? Routed and gets recorded.” He adds, “The Narus device allows you to take it all.” And when the Bluffdale facility is completed, whatever is collected will be routed there for storage and analysis.

According to Binney, one of the deepest secrets of the Stellar Wind program — again, never confirmed until now — was that the NSA gained warrantless access to AT&T’s vast trove of domestic and international billing records, detailed information about who called whom in the US and around the world. As of 2007, AT&T had more than 2.8 trillion records housed in a database at its Florham Park, New Jersey, complex.

Verizon was also part of the program, Binney says, and that greatly expanded the volume of calls subject to the agency’s domestic eavesdropping. “That multiplies the call rate by at least a factor of five,” he says. “So you’re over a billion and a half calls a day.” (Spokespeople for Verizon and AT&T said their companies would not comment on matters of national security.)

The NSA also has the ability to eavesdrop on telephone conversations in real time, whenever it deems appropriate. In the months and years following 9/11, any excuse would do, especially for family members abroad calling home to the United States. Adrienne J. Kinne, who worked as a voice interceptor for the NSA both before and after the 9/11 attacks, told Wired, “Basically all rules were thrown out the window, and they would use any excuse to justify a waiver to spy on Americans.” Journalists working overseas were routinely eavesdropped upon whenever they called their families stateside. “A lot of time you could tell they were calling their families,” Kinne admitted, “incredibly intimate, personal conversations.” Kinne likened the practice to finding someone’s personal diary and going through it.

But the NSA’s suffocating blanket of surveillance has one major hole — the ability of modern encryption protocols like the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) to resist decryption, even by the most powerful supercomputers available. The solution? Build still more powerful supercomputers, machines capable of carrying out one quadrillion (1015) operations per second, a capability known in industry jargon as a “petaflop.” Accordingly, what has been characterized as nothing less than a modern-day Manhattan Project, the High Productivity Computing Systems program, was begun in 2004 to develop computers with just such a capacity. That the research and development for the project was and is being carried out at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee — the same place where uranium was enriched for the first atomic bombs — is perhaps an unintended irony. But this time around, America’s best and brightest are devising a superweapon not for deployment against a distant foreign military power, but against our own citizens, to finally ensure that any degree of privacy whatsoever can be breached by Washington’s all-seeing eye.

By all accounts, the High Productivity Computing Systems program has been a stunning success. An unclassified program at Oak Ridge produced the so-called “Jaguar,” an upgraded Cray XT5 supercomputer that clocked in as the world’s fastest in 2009 — at a rate of 1.75 petaflops. A top-secret program, also at Oak Ridge, has reputedly created machines faster still, whose exact capabilities remain a closely guarded secret.

And the NSA is already setting its sights on new orders of computing power magnitude — the exaflop (one quintillion, or 1018 operations a second) being its goal for 2018, and other, more exotic levels beyond that (the zettaflop/1021 operations per second and the yottaflop/1024). When such mind-boggling computing power becomes available, as it eventually must (consider that the world’s official fastest computer as of this writing is a Japanese supercomputer operating at more than 10 petaflops), current encryption protocols like the AES will become obsolete. If the NSA manages to develop such a capability in secret, as it clearly aims to do, private-sector encryption will be none the wiser, leaving essentially all encrypted communications as bare to government code-breakers as the Germans’ best codes in World War II eventually were to the Allies.

For it is nothing less than a terminal war on Americans’ privacy that is being waged, in deep secrecy and by a comparatively small and fanatically dedicated group of government security fetishists. And the supercomputers that are to dismantle the final barricades protecting communications privacy will be no less a power trump card in the hands of the state than nuclear weapons have proven to be for the world’s elite military powers.

Overlooking From Overhead

The government’s new powers of surveillance will not be limited to supercomputers tracking our every act of private electronic computation. The advent of unmanned drones, a legacy of the war in Afghanistan, will soon transform law enforcement at every level. For the cost of one police helicopter that can only be in one place at a time, a given jurisdiction could deploy dozens of remotely piloted drones to overfly restive neighborhoods and keep tabs on backyards and open windows as well as public areas.

This is not idle speculation. In February, Congress passed the FAA Reauthorization Act, which is transparently calculated to streamline the introduction of unmanned drones, for federal, state, and local law enforcement and surveillance, into U.S. domestic airspace. U.S. Customs and Border Protection already operate nine Predator-type drones, chiefly for border surveillance, under four long-term FAA certificates. But the new legislation in effect orders the FAA to develop an expedited protocol, by year’s end, for authorizing the use of unmanned drones by law enforcement at every level, as well as any other government agency (read: Homeland Security, one agency that has made no secret of its desire to operate a fleet of drones in domestic airspace) that wants to use them.

The legislation has appalled privacy advocates. By one estimate, once the FAA floodgates are opened, American skies may be populated with as many as 30,000 drones by the end of this decade, all busily keeping tabs on any activity not carried out in basements or behind closed doors and covered windows.

Then there is the ongoing drive to desensitize Americans to having to stand naked before the state, as is now required for those who wish to board an airplane within the United States. Backscatter imaging machines, which digitally strip-search passengers as they pass through security, have proliferated rapidly and will soon be found in every commercial airport in the land, if the TSA has any say in the matter. These machines produce finely detailed images of naked bodies, images with high enough resolution to display colostomy bags, breast prostheses, and every intimate detail of the human body. Those who object may opt out of being digitally strip-searched — and must instead submit to intrusive pat-downs in which TSA agents will touch the most intimate parts of the body.

Not Nice Nakedness

These machines are now being introduced in train stations and courthouses as well, as naked becomes the new normal. A recent Supreme Court decision upholding the “right” of police to strip-search anyone arrested for any reason (the plaintiff, Albert Florence, was strip-searched twice after being arrested for an unpaid traffic fine) gives legal countenance to the dangerous notion that state-sanctioned strip-searches of anyone, anywhere, anytime are perfectly acceptable in the post 9/11 world.

But as Naomi Wolf of the Guardian has recently pointed out, allowing the state to strip us (literally) of one of the last vestiges of privacy — our clothing — is both symbolically and practically one of the most potent symptoms of a police state:

Believe me: you don’t want the state having the power to strip your clothes off. History shows that the use of forced nudity by a state that is descending into fascism is powerfully effective in controlling and subduing populations.

The political use of forced nudity by anti-democratic regimes is long established. Forcing people to undress is the first step in breaking down their sense of individuality and dignity and reinforcing their powerlessness. Enslaved women were sold naked on the blocks in the American south, and adolescent male slaves served young white ladies at table in the south, while they themselves were naked: their invisible humiliation was a trope for their emasculation. Jewish prisoners herded into concentration camps were stripped of clothing and photographed naked, as iconic images of that Holocaust reiterated.

One of the most terrifying moments for me when I visited Guantanamo prison in 2009 was seeing the way the architecture of the building positioned glass-fronted shower cubicles facing intentionally right into the central atrium — where young female guards stood watch over the forced nakedness of Muslim prisoners, who had no way to conceal themselves. Laws and rulings such as [the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding strip searches of anyone arrested] are clearly designed to bring the conditions of Guantanamo, and abusive detention, home.

The spanking-new total surveillance state requires legal camouflage, given that so much of its newfound powers of surveillance (in effect, the “search” part of “search and seizure” with which the authors of the Bill of Rights were so concerned) is carried out without the warrants and probable cause required by the Fourth Amendment. Adherence to the letter of this amendment — which stipulates that the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated” — would appear to preclude warrantless surveillance by drones and supercomputer algorithms, as well as digital and literal strip-searches without probable cause by airport authorities and law enforcement generally.

Where Is the Constitution?

But the Fourth Amendment has proven no impediment to the homeland security fetishists, from the President on down, thanks to a Congress congenitally unwilling to challenge the relentless advance of Big Security. It was Congress, after all, that produced the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (NDAA), which President Obama coyly signed on the last day of 2011, when the nation was preoccupied with holiday celebrations. This act gave legal cover to the actions of the U.S. government since 9/11 in detaining indefinitely and without trial persons alleged to have committed hostile acts against the United States. The NDAA not only explicitly authorizes such detentions (in section 1021) but also (section 1022) requires that detainees under this provision be held in military custody, either within the United States or on foreign soil.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court, in what must surely be regarded as one of its most pernicious rulings since Roe v. Wade, has inexplicably upheld the right of law-enforcement authorities, whether local, state, or national, to strip-search anyone arrested for any reason, in Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of County of Burlington. The specious grounds for this ruling are the possibility that someone arrested could have a weapon or contraband concealed somewhere on or inside his body, thereby posing a threat to authorities and other inmates. “Correctional officials have a significant interest in conducting a thorough search as a standard part of the intake process,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy on behalf of the majority that included all of the Supreme Court’s supposed “right-wing” and “conservative” justices.

For once, the “liberal” minority got it right. “I cannot find justification for the strip-search policy at issue here — a policy that would subject those arrested for minor offenses to serious invasions of their personal privacy,” wrote Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She might well have added that people — even criminals — generally do not walk around with weapons and narcotics concealed inside their bodies, in anticipation of possible arrest and imprisonment. It is patently absurd to justify strip searches of traffic violators as though they were hardened criminals trying to smuggle contraband to others “on the inside.” Yet that is precisely the kind of non-logic that undergirds the Supreme Court’s latest usurpation.

The total loss of privacy coupled with aggressively expanding powers of the state to encroach on our personal freedoms with impunity — these are the two prongs of the police-state pincers that are closing swiftly on American liberties. The long-feared “garrison state” is coming into being on American soil before our very eyes, with the approval, tacit or overt, of millions of Americans who believe that the only way to guarantee national security is to deprive us of personal security (the Fourth Amendment, after all, protects the “right of the people to be secure” against government encroachment on a personal level). In a coming day, unless the tide of Big Government is stemmed, we will all find ourselves living in a hi-tech Panopticon stretching from sea to shining sea.

Somewhere, Bentham’s shade is smiling.

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Mumbai ‘Most post-immunisation deaths coincidental’ – Hindustan Times

The Refusers — Wed, 16 May 2012 04:40:33 +0000

Mumbai – ‘Most post-immunisation deaths coincidental’

Hindustan Times Mumbai, May 15, 2012

The death of three-month-old Megha Devkari last week within hours of vaccination is the third case of post-immunisation death in the city this year. After a clean slate in 2011, when not a single case of immunisation-related death was recorded in the city, the civic body has reported three deaths till May this year. In February, two toddlers also died allegedly after being administered with DPT (diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus), oral polio vaccine (OPV) and Hepatitis B vaccines.

In 2010, the civic body had reported two post-immunisation deaths in Mumbai.

However, state records have revealed that the number of children allegedly dying after immunisation has dipped to 14 last year, from 26 in 2010. This year, nine deaths have been reported in Maharashtra till date.

According to the Adverse Effect Following Immunisation (AEFI) committee that studied post-immunisation deaths in detail to arrive at an accurate conclusion, only four of the 26 deaths in 2010 were a result of vaccine reaction. Of the 14 post-immunisation deaths in 2011, though seven have been discussed in the AEFI committee meetings, only one death has been attributed to a vaccine reaction.

“Majority of post-immunisation deaths fall under the coincidental category,” said Dr VM Kulkarni, in-charge of immunisation in the Directorate of Health Services. “If children suffering from congenital anomalies and other conditions die post immunisation, it cannot be blamed on the vaccination.”

Kulkarni added: “Sometimes, they are already suffering from pre-existing illness and the vaccination only becomes a medium of death, but it is not the cause.” Doctors said a few deaths should not be a deterrent for parents given that as many as two crore vaccine doses are administered annually to more than 20 lakh children.

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The Great Measles Misunderstanding – Gaia Health

The Refusers — Wed, 16 May 2012 04:17:10 +0000

Gaia Health May 15, 2012 By Darrel Crain, DC

Medical texts described measles as a benign self-limiting childhood disease, nothing to worry about. But then the measles vaccine came out — thus creating the Great Measles Misunderstanding.
by Darrel Crain, DC

Before the advent of the measles vaccine, a dozen or so cases of measles would have been considered, well, too measly to make the headlines. That is because we all got the measles when we were kids. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) considers anyone born before 1957 to be immune to the measles.

“Before a vaccine was available, infection with measles virus was nearly universal during childhood with more than 90 percent of persons immune by age 15 years,” according to the CDC’s Pink Book.

We baby boomers were apparently the last generation whose doctors, and therefore parents, accepted the measles as just one more annoying rite of passage of childhood that also happened to prime the immune system and provide lifelong immunity.

Medical texts prior to the advent of the vaccine described measles as a benign, self-limiting childhood infectious disease that posed little risk to the average well-nourished child. All of that changed about 40 years ago when health authorities decreed the need to eradicate the measles, and so began The Great Measles Massacre.

The recent measles outbreak in Southern California provides an opportunity to review how effective the overall strategy of measles eradication has been so far.

First of all, measles-related deaths had already declined over 90 percent from the early 1900s by the time the measles vaccine came on the scene. The combination of steadily improving standards of living, better nutrition, antiseptic medical care and effective sanitation achieved this remarkable advance in public health in the “pre-vaccine” era.

One of the first measles vaccines tried out on a large scale was the inactivated or “killed” measles vaccine (KMV). The CDC’s Pink Book reports that “an estimated 600,000 to 900,000 persons” in the U.S. were injected with KMV from 1963 to 1967, before it was finally withdrawn.

The incredibly vague record of how many people received the shot is a bit unsettling, but what’s truly disturbing is how such a harmful and ineffective vaccine got approved and recommended in the first place. “KMV sensitized the recipient to measles virus antigens without providing protection,” the Pink Book tells us.

After exposure to natural measles, vast numbers of people vaccinated with KMV contracted atypical measles, an autoimmune disorder consisting of very high fevers, unusual rashes, pneumonia and pleural edema.

The really big campaign against measles began with the live virus vaccine, which arrived in 1971 as a component of the three-virus MMR shot (measles, mumps, rubella). The public was assured that this vaccine was different, it was safe and would provide lifetime immunity. Alas, these predictions proved a bit premature.

“An outbreak of measles occurred in a high school with a documented vaccination level of 98 per cent,” reported the American Journal of Public Health, April 1987.

“We conclude that outbreaks of measles can occur in secondary schools, even when more than 99 percent of the students have been vaccinated and more than 95 percent are immune,” according to the New England Journal of Medicine, March 1987.

By the mid-1990s, substantial vaccine failures prompted our health leaders to declare a booster MMR shot necessary for all. Once again, it was promised this would confer lifetime immunity. Since no actual lifetime data was available at the time, this prediction was presumably made using FDA-approved crystal ball technology.

Today, the number of reported measles cases is down considerably, and we are assured this means we have successfully massacred the measles. Unfortunately, such a one-dimensional analysis fails to tell the whole story. Not all is well with the MMR.

Before widespread vaccination against measles, young babies were not at risk of measles because they acquired immunity through the mother’s blood. Adults were not at risk because most of us gained lifelong immunity as a child. Both these groups are now susceptible to the measles and both have greater risk of severe disease and complications. This is described as an “unintended outcome” of measles vaccination.

And there is another unforeseen problem. “The vaccination-induced measles virus antibodies decline in the absence of natural booster infections. It is important to follow how long the protection achieved by the present vaccine program will last after elimination of indigenous measles,” reported the journal Vaccine, December 1998.

This raises the question: What will happen as we eventually succeed in replacing natural measles with vaccine measles? David Levy, of Montefiore Medical Center in New York created a computer model to answer that question: “Despite short-term success in eliminating the disease, long-range projections demonstrate that the proportion of susceptibles in the year 2050 may be greater than in the pre-vaccine era.” In other words, according to Levy’s prediction, we are in for higher rates of infection than we started with, spread throughout age groups at greater risk.

Currently, whenever there is an “outbreak” of measles (defined by the CDC as at least two infections from the same source), health officials leap into action. First and foremost, parents are told to drop everything and make sure their child gets a booster shot. Whether or not giving the booster actually helps is uncertain since few studies have ever examined the outcome of this practice.

One such investigation however, was carried out during a measles outbreak in a highly vaccinated secondary school population and reported in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, November 1996. The authors of the study concluded, “Administration of a second dose of vaccine during the outbreak was not protective.”

Is there anything that has been scientifically proven to protect the health of children infected with measles? The simple act of supplementing with vitamin A has repeatedly been shown effective in clinical trials all around the globe to reduce the severity of infection and slash measles death rates.

This suggests that our health leaders should be promoting vitamin A as a first line of defense to protect children in this country, since measles deaths in the United States have always been clustered in impoverished, malnourished populations.

Measles outbreaks predictably spawn newspaper editorials portraying parents who choose to not vaccinate their children as unwitting dupes of anti-vaccine zealots, with the inevitable call to end parents’ right to waive vaccination. The fact that vaccine-induced health disorders have been widely reported in the medical literature suggests that the writers of the editorials, not the parents, are the ones who have not done their homework.

British vaccine expert witness Jayne Donegan, M.D. is a parent who has spent years researching vaccines. She concludes, “I vaccinated both my children with the MMR jab, but this was before I started my research into the problems associated with it. Knowing what I know now, I would not vaccinate my children and run the risk of them getting diabetes, asthma, eczema, becoming more susceptible to meningitis and ending up chronically disabled.”

Which brings up what is likely the most dramatic advance emerging in health care today, the potential to restore the health of vaccine-damaged children using biomedical principles of nutrition and detoxification. You might think that the CDC would be blazing the trail to promote this approach that is helping so many children. Instead we hear the relentless drone of denial that such a path even exists.

By the way, if you’ve been waiting for the FDA to step in and re-investigate the enormous safety issues that have cropped up regarding the MMR and other vaccines, you’ll have to take a number and get in line. All three FDA employees in charge of food and drug safety are reportedly busy chasing down a small company found to be printing unproven health claims on their labels for food products made from cherries.

“The FDA will not tolerate unsubstantiated health claims that may mislead consumers,” said Margaret Glavin, associate commissioner for regulatory affairs. “The FDA will pursue necessary legal action to make sure companies and their executives manufacture and distribute safe, truthfully labeled products to consumers,” according to an FDA press release.

This impressive new declaration by the FDA that it will begin demanding truthful labeling is a breath of fresh air. It may help us move toward actual informed consent in medicine. And since we’re on the subject of measles, I propose the following new label for the MMR vaccine vial:

This product contains substances known by the United States Government to cause harm to human beings, including cancer, autoimmune diseases, nuero-developmental diseases and allergies. Genetically susceptible individuals injected with this vaccine are known to suffer enterocolitis, nerve system dysfunction and autism. Antibodies in the bloodstream provoked by the vaccine do not necessarily confer protection from natural measles. Paradoxically, in order for this vaccine to work at all, you must come in contact with natural measles virus from time to time. The maker of this product cannot be prosecuted for any disability or death caused by the vaccine to you or your babies, and good luck trying to sue the government instead.

At last count there were about seventeen jillion government and vaccine industry-funded journal articles claiming to disprove any possible link between vaccination and autism. With each new report, the medical community has harrumphed loudly that this one, finally, is the definitive study that will lay to rest forever any foolish questions of vaccine safety.

Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder of the National Vaccine Information Center, notes that no amount of reporting on cherry-picked data mined from old medical records does any good to erase our current epidemic of profoundly sick children.

Using pencils and calculators to dismiss causal associations between vaccines and chronic diseases is easier than having to look at real live patients or study what happens to their blood, urine, eyes, brain, colons, etc. after vaccination.

Has the time come to rename the whole measles eradication enterprise as The Great Measles Misunderstanding? The history of vaccination against measles is replete with tragic health-damaging errors, unanticipated negative outcomes, and a misplaced faith that mass vaccination is the unquestioned master plan.

The federal government has now conceded what thousands of parents have known for years, that vaccination can trigger a regression into autism in genetically susceptible children. This is a vital first step. Perhaps our health leaders will now begin asking the hard questions they have been avoiding for so long, beginning with how and why we wage war on childhood infectious disease.

Next time you read an editorial castigating parents for choosing to avoid vaccination, keep in mind that one day soon the same writer may instead be writing words of gratitude. Those who volunteer to skip the vaccine are benefiting us all by keeping the pool of circulating natural measles alive and well.

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Why is GMO Hepatitis B Vaccine Given to Newborn Babies? – Farm Wars

The Refusers — Wed, 16 May 2012 03:59:37 +0000

By Barbara H. Peterson Farm Wars May 11, 2012

In the United States, the Hepatitis B (Hep B) vaccine is scheduled to be given to babies at birth. Since babies do not normally go out and indulge themselves in high risk behavior such as tattooing, body piercing, IV drug use, sharing needles with others, having sex with multiple partners, or engaging in any high risk activity other than being born in a hospital, and “the duration of protection after hepatitis B vaccination of infants is unknown,” why give them the shot?

Here is the CDC vaccination schedule, with the Hep B vaccine to be given at birth and several boosters thereafter:

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/recs/schedules/downloads/child/0-6yrs-schedule-pr.pdf

Here are the major risk factors for contracting Hep B:

HEPATITIS B

Hemodialysis

Patients of custodial institutions for developmentally disabled

Exposure to blood/blood clot products

Needle-stick injury

Sexual activity with multiple (heterosexual or homosexual) partners

IV drug use

Infants of HBV-positive mothers

Tattooing

Body piercing

http://www.natap.org/1999/june/hep619299.html

Newborn babies ARE NOT high risk individuals! And to receive the recommended 4 doses all within a 24 week period? That’s a whole lot of aluminum and formaldehyde for a baby from birth to 6 months old.

The vaccine is recommended for people of all ages, especially those at an increased risk of getting the infection. Those at an increased risk include health care personnel, laboratory workers who handle blood and patient specimens, police, fire and emergency medical personnel who give first aid treatment, hemophiliacs, dialysis patients, people who live with or spend much time with people with persistent hepatitis B infections, people with multiple sex partners, men who have sex with men, sex workers, injection drug abusers, and people traveling to high-risk areas.

http://www.medicinenet.com/hepatitis_b_vaccine-injection/article.htm

The question that begs answering is if well-intentioned health care workers are vaccinating babies because those babies are birthed in an environment that is rife with diseases that they can contract FROM those health care workers, who in turn are supposedly protecting themselves and others by doing a first strike vaccination campaign on newborns?

I’ve got a novel idea! DO NOT body pierce your baby, tattoo him/her, let him/her have sex with multiple partners, travel to high risk areas, or be exposed to dangerous drugs and needles through a bogus vaccine program!

Does it make any sense at all to subject newborn babies to substances that contain the following ingredients? Does it make any sense at all to subject ANYONE to this?

Vaccine ingredients PDF download:

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/B/excipient-table-2.pdf

Effectiveness

In lower risk populations, such as the United States, where transmission of HBV primarily occurs in older individuals, newborn immunization is also used to prevent the small number of cases transmitted in early childhood. Also when the hepatitis B vaccination is initiated at birth, there is an increased likelihood that the child will complete the series.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/483473

Note that it says “low risk” and “small number” of cases transmitted in early childhood. And this is supposed to be worth the following recognized risks. You know, the ones they tell you about:

SIDE EFFECTS: Pain/soreness/redness/swelling at the injection site, fever, headache, tiredness, sore throat, nausea, diarrhea, loss of appetite, and dizziness may occur. If any of these effects persist or worsen, tell your doctor or pharmacist promptly.

Fainting right after the injection may occur. Your healthcare provider will usually watch you for 15 minutes after the injection to monitor you for this reaction.

http://www.rxlist.com/recombivax-drug/consumer-side-effects-precautions.htm

And the best advice of all:

Remember that your doctor has prescribed this medication because he or she has judged that the benefit to you is greater than the risk of side effects. Many people using this medication do not have serious side effects.

http://www.rxlist.com/recombivax-drug/consumer-side-effects-precautions.htm

Really? The doctors have judged that your newborn’s risk of getting Heb B, which is negligible, is greater than the risk of any number of debilitating side effects that he/she might contract due to the vaccine. And just how does your doctor know if your baby is “allergic” to any of the toxic ingredients in that vaccine? Does the word NEWBORN mean anything? I guess they just stick them and find out later. If your baby has a reaction to the aluminum and formaldehyde cocktail that your “health care provider” just jabbed him/her with, then that must be an abnormal allergic reaction, not a normal reaction to poison. After all, black is white, white is black, and a poison cocktail is good for you if you call it a vaccine.

PRECAUTIONS: Before getting hepatitis B vaccine, tell your doctor or pharmacist if you are allergic to it; or to yeast; or other vaccines; or if you have any other allergies. Some vials and prefilled syringes may use latex rubber stoppers or plungers. Tell your doctor if you are allergic to latex. This product may contain inactive ingredients, which can cause allergic reactions or other problems. Talk to your pharmacist for more details.

http://www.rxlist.com/recombivax-drug/consumer-side-effects-precautions.htm

And don’t forget that this vaccine is genetically engineered:

1981 A Triumph of Biotechnology

The world’s first genetically engineered vaccine against a human disease–Hepatitis B–is considered one of biotechnology’s greatest triumphs. The achievement stands on the shoulders of pioneering work by UW genetics professor Benjamin Hall and then-postdoctoral researcher Gustav Ammerer to develop genetic engineering techniques using yeast cultures to produce proteins of interest.

http://www.washington.edu/research/pathbreakers/1981a.html

Dangers of the genetic modification process as used to create vaccines include the possibility of activating latent viruses:

Investigating Viruses in Cells Used to Make Vaccines; and Evaluating the Potential Threat Posed by Transmission of Viruses to Humans

Virus-based vaccines are made in living cells (cell substrates). Some manufacturers are investigating the use of new cell lines to make vaccines. The continual growth of cell lines ensures that there is a consistent supply of the same cells that can yield high quantities of the vaccine.

In some cases the cell lines that are used might be tumorigenic, that is, they form tumors when injected into rodents. Some of these tumor-forming cell lines may contain cancer-causing viruses that are not actively reproducing. Such viruses are hard to detect using standard methods. These latent, or “quiet,” viruses pose a potential threat, since they might become active under vaccine manufacturing conditions. Therefore, to ensure the safety of vaccines, our laboratory is investigating ways to activate latent viruses in cell lines and to detect the activated viruses, as well as other unknown viruses, using new technologies. We will then adapt our findings to detect viruses in the same types of cell substrates that are used to produce vaccines. We are also trying to identify specific biological processes that reflect virus activity.

http://www.fda.gov/biologicsbloodvaccines/scienceresearch/biologicsresearchareas/ucm127327.htm

So, with all of the negative aspects of this vaccine, why give it to newborns?

Hepatitis B is endemic throughout the world and is a serious medical problem in population groups at increased risk. Because vaccination limited to high-risk individuals has failed to substantially lower the overall incidence of hepatitis B infection, both the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and the Committee on Infectious Diseases of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) have also endorsed universal infant immunization as part of a comprehensive strategy for the control of hepatitis B infection.

http://www.merck.com/product/usa/pi_circulars/r/recombivax_hb/recombivax_pi.pdf

Not because your baby needs it, or that it is actually effective, but because VACCINATION LIMITED TO HIGH RISK INDIVIDUALS HAS FAILED TO SUBSTANTIALLY LOWER THE OVERALL INCIDENCE OF HEPATITIS B INFECTION. Therefore, UNIVERSAL INFANT IMMUNIZATION is endorsed now.

Hey, if it doesn’t work, we’ll just use more of it on more people. THAT should make it work. And oh yeah, we’ll start at birth, and make sure that everyone everywhere is vaccinated. What is wrong with this logic? And just what will these people say when this universal infant immunization program is proven to NOT lower the overall incidence of Hep B infection after our children have been compromised with a dangerous genetically engineered vaccine that starts our lives out under the thumb of Big Pharma and the allopathic medical establishment, and ensures that we remain sickly and dependent on expensive drugs to treat all of the illnesses that we contract due to compromised immune systems that were attacked at our very birth?

Not to worry, I’m sure the statistics will be created to let us know that nothing is wrong, it is all in your head, just line up for the jab and keep your mouth shut if you know what is good for you. In a pig’s eye! I know what a lethal weapon looks like, whether or not it comes wrapped in a pretty package with a smiling doctor’s face on it, and I’m having no part of it.

Think before you allow vaccination of your newborn baby. Not everything the good ol’ doc says is correct, or even ethical. In fact, he/she might not have even read the ingredient insert before the jab. It is up to us to take care of ourselves and not simply go along with the program while others get rich off of our ignorance.

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When Pro-Vaccine Messaging Backfires – Scientific American

The Refusers — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:41:39 +0000

MB Comment: This article reads like jocks talking about the best way to seduce teenagers (don’t come on too strong, make them want you, blah, blah blah).

Vaccine pushers have no shame, they will stoop to anything to stick their needle in you.

When Pro-Vaccine Messaging Backfires

Scientific American May 13, 2012

A recent study shows that strong pro-vaccine messaging might have an unintended impact. Christie Nicholson reports

Americans get a stream of messages telling them to avoid vaccines, from Jenny McCarthy on Oprah to billboard animations shown in Times Square. The responsible solution—fight back with forceful pro-vaccine messaging, right?

Actually, fighting fire with fire may backfire, according to a study in the journal Health Psychology.

Researchers asked over 100 participants to imagine parenting an eight-month old as they read about a pretend illness. In the scenario, their doctor advised that the child be vaccinated against the disease—after which subjects were shown typical anti-vaccine warnings that described how vaccines compromise the infant’s immune system.

Researchers then showed the participants two reassuring statements that vaccines pose little risk. Half the participants read: “There is only sporadic evidence that repeated vaccinations overwhelm the immune system.” The other half read: “There is no evidence that repeated vaccinations overwhelm the immune system.”

Those who were told there was no evidence for risk reported greater concern about vaccination and less intention to vaccinate their child than those who read the moderate messaging. The effect intensified when the messaging came from a perceived untrustworthy source, like a pharma company. So a softer sell may make a harder impression.

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Read the psycho-babble study this article is based on

Pertussis vaccine failure should be a wake-up call – SmartVax

The Refusers — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:17:35 +0000

‘The CDC reports that in the United States, cases of whooping cough have increased approximately 10-fold in the last twenty years [2], DESPITE AN INCREASE IN VACCINATION COVERAGE FROM 61% to 96% …The first of these explanations centers on the use of aluminum adjuvants in many vaccines, including DTaP. Aluminum has been shown to preferentially generate a Th2-type response … The use of adjuvants that stimulate a Th2 response in a vaccine for a disease that requires a Th1 response leads to a less effective vaccine that has a higher safety risk. Of course, back in the late 1980s the need for Th1 response for clearance of pertussis or the tendency of aluminum adjuvants to produce a Th2 response (while suppressing the Th1) was unknown and not yet on the scientific radar. But now these facts are known and are part of the mainstream published scientific literature. To continue this practice as if nothing is wrong is troubling. It is this kind of blindness to scientific fact that is causing concerned citizens to increasingly question the current vaccine paradigm.’

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Pertussis vaccine failure should be a wake-up call

SmartVax Brought to you by SafeMinds.

Whooping cough outbreaks have occurred with increasing frequency in the last year and are beginning to become major news items, as highlighted by major outbreaks on-going in California. In virtually every article, the disease is described as “vaccine preventable” and blame is often cast upon Jenny McCarthy and autism-crazed parents that frequently refuse vaccination. But the facts of the matter are not that simple.

Despite the recent press on the vaccine-autism debate, infant vaccination rates remain at or near all-time highs with 96.2% of infants getting at least three doses of DTaP in 2008 versus just 61% getting at least three doses of DTP in 1991 [1]. Furthermore, in recent outbreaks, a majority of affected have in fact been completely vaccinated (see NJ outbreak in which ALL affected children had been completely vaccinated). So given that the most at-risk population (children under 3 months) is not eligible for vaccination and their protection depends on the protection of older children, the real question to emerge from the recent pertussis outbreaks should be “Why is the pertussis vaccine no longer as effective or as long lasting as it once was?” People and public health agencies should be DEMANDING the answer to this question. They instead seem content with the possible addition of another booster of the DTaP to be given at seven years of age, thus increasing the number of doses of DTaP now given to American children to 6 and unnecessarily boosting tetanus and diphtheria in the bargain.

On a comical level, it is hard to imagine any other industry responding to the failure of their product by encouraging people to just buy more of the failing product. Do you want a second Toyota, just in case the first shoots off like a cannon? Yet this laughable marketing scheme seems to be just what Big Pharma has pulled off when it comes to DTaP. Their reward for a failing product is 20% higher sales of that very same product.

Historical Perspective

To fully understand the problems behind the failure of DTaP, we need a brief review of the history of pertussis vaccination. Use of the singular pertussis vaccine began in the US in the 1930s. By the 1940s, doctors and public health authorities switched to using DTP, a triple-vaccine designed to provide immunity against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis. Overtime, however, a substantial number of adverse events resulting in permanent injury were found to be associated with the DTP vaccine (specifically the pertussis component), leading to the development of DTaP, which became available for use in 1991. The difference between the two vaccines is in the pertussis component. The previous (DTP) used “whole-cell pertussis” while the newer vaccine utilized “acellular pertussis” (hence the small a before the P in DTaP) which consists of selected purified pertussis antigens. Because of the lowered number of antigens presented, it is thought to have an increased safety profile and has demonstrated a substantial reduction in adverse events.

One could see why the whole-cell pertussis vaccine might be more effective in preventing pertussis disease than the acellular version. Quite simply, the whole-cell pertussis component more closely resembles actual infection with pertussis. Therefore, one could assume that the immune response generated by this challenge would be more effective in preventing natural infection. However, we need not rely on common sense alone, as the published scientific data confirms a key difference between the two vaccines.

Immunological Responses

The CDC reports that in the United States, cases of whooping cough have increased approximately 10-fold in the last twenty years [2], DESPITE AN INCREASE IN VACCINATION COVERAGE FROM 61% to 96%. Numerous papers suggest that the reason why is due to the inadequate type of immune response generated by the acellular pertussis vaccine versus the previous whole-cell pertussis. Protection against pertussis relies on both humoral immunity and on cellular Th1-type immune responses [3-9]. Seemingly of critical importance are recent studies showing that while the whole-cell pertussis generated a strong antigen-specific Th1 response, aP vaccines induced mixed Th1/Th2 responses in humans [9-12]. It is also important to note that at the time the aP vaccine component was introduced, the technology and know-how did not exist to compare these types of immune responses. However, now that this capability exists and given the apparent failure of the vaccine to illicit long lasting immunity, it seems crucial that public health authorities and vaccine manufacturers address this problem.

Aluminum Adjuvants

While the change in antigen presentation may be sufficient to cause the change in vaccine efficacy, there may be other possible explanations worth exploring as well. The first of these explanations centers on the use of aluminum adjuvants in many vaccines, including DTaP. Aluminum has been shown to preferentially generate a Th2-type response [13,14]. In recent years, the use of aluminum adjuvants that induce a strong Th2 response by a mechanism not yet fully understood has increasingly come under criticism by vaccine safety advocates, including Dr. Robert Sears, author of “The Vaccine Book”. Given the rapid rise of childhood chronic illness, such as allergies and asthma, that are mediated by Th2 responses, this criticism seems warranted and worthy of investigation. The use of adjuvants that stimulate a Th2 response in a vaccine for a disease that requires a Th1 response leads to a less effective vaccine that has a higher safety risk. Of course, back in the late 1980s the need for Th1 response for clearance of pertussis or the tendency of aluminum adjuvants to produce a Th2 response (while suppressing the Th1) was unknown and not yet on the scientific radar. But now these facts are known and are part of the mainstream published scientific literature. To continue this practice as if nothing is wrong is troubling. It is this kind of blindness to scientific fact that is causing concerned citizens to increasingly question the current vaccine paradigm.

Environmental Issues

Furthermore, a recent paper published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives suggests that the failure of the pertussis vaccine may be the result of our increasingly toxic environment [15]. The study found that postnatal PCB exposure levels had an immunotoxic effect that limited the response to the DTaP vaccine. PCB exposure levels at 18 months of age were most predictive of lowered lasting immune response, including responses below what is considered clinically protective. This is suggestive of a crucial time period during early childhood for the proper development of the immune system. Children with higher PCB levels at age 18 months had a 1.64 odds ratio of not being able to generate clinically protective antibody levels at age seven. It may be that the immune systems of young children are so skewed either from toxic exposure or changes in the development of the immune system generated by the current vaccination schedule that no amount of booster shots with DTaP are going to adequately protect all children. If this is indeed the case, the future of fighting diseases may depend not solely on mass vaccination but rather on finding ways to maintain the proper function and balance of the immune system in this increasingly toxic world.

Regardless of the cause or causes, the increasing failure of the pertussis vaccine requires serious investigation. The unwillingness to honestly inquire about the nature of the failure (presumably because it might cast doubt on the use of aluminum adjuvants, our overall approach to the vaccine program and the safety of grandfathered in products in an ever-changing world) is just another of a long list of examples of the public health authorities refusing to support the vaccine program with adequate research. It is this kind of failure, not Jenny McCarthy, that has parents questioning the logic of the CDC, and many ultimately deciding that the unseen benefits do not outweigh the potential risks.

References:

[1] Guris D, Strebel P, Bardenheier B, Brennan M, Tachdjian R, Finch E, Wharton M, Livengood J. Changing Epidemeology of Pertussis in the United States: Increasing Reported Incidence Among Adolescents and Adults, 1990-1996. Clin Infect Diseases. 1998. 28: 1230-7.

[2] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Pertussis- United States; 2001-2003. Found at www.cdc.gov.

[3] Mills KHG, Barnard A, Watkins J, Redhead K. Cell-mediated immunity to Bordetella pertussis: role of Th1 cells in bacterial clearance in a murine respiratory infection model. Infect Immun 1993; 61(2): 399-410.

[4] Barbic J, Leef MF, Burns DL, Shahin RD. Role of gamma interferon in natural clearance of Bordetella pertussis infection. Infect Immun 1997; 65(12):4904-8.

[5] Redhead K, Watkin J, Barnard A, Mills KHG. Effective immunization against Bordetella pertussis respiratory infection in mice is dependent on induction of cell-mediated immunity. Infect Immun 1993; 61(8):3190-8.

[6] Leef M, Elkins KL, Barbic J, Shahin RD. Protective immunity to Bordetella pertussis requires both B cells and CD4+ T cells for key functions other than specific antibody production. J Exp Med 2000; 191(11):1841-52.

[7] Ryan M, Murphy G, Gothefors L, Nilsson L, Storsaeter J, Mills KH. Bordetella pertussis respiratory infection in children associated with preferential activation of type 1 T helper cells. J Infect Dis 1997;175(5): 1246-50.

[8] Mills KHG. Immunity to Bordetella pertussis. Microbes Infect 2001;3(8): 655-77.

[9] Dirix V, Verscheure V, Goetghebuer T, Hainaut M, Debrie A, Locht C, Mascar F. Cytokine and antibody profiles in 1-year-old children vaccinated with either acellular or whole-cell pertussis vaccine during infancy. Vaccine 2009; 27: 6042-47.

[10] Mascart F, Hainaut M, Peltier A, Verscheure V, Levy J, Locht C. Modulation of the infant immune response by the first pertussis vaccine administrations. Vaccine 2007; 25: 391-8.

[11] Ryan M, Murphy G, Ryan E, Nilsson L, Shackley F, Gothefors L et al. Distinct T-cell subtypes induced with whole cell pertussis and acellular pertussis vaccines in children. Immunology 1998; 93: 1-10.

[12] Ausiello CM, Urbani F, la Sala A, Lande R, Cassone A. Vaccine and antigen dependent type 1 and type 2 cytokine induction after primary vaccination of infancts with whole-cell or acellular pertussis vaccines in children. Infect Immun 1997; 65: 2168-74.

[13] Grun JL, Maurer P. Different T helper cell subsets elicited in mice utilizing two different adjuvant vehicles: the role of endogenous interleukin 1 in proliferative responses. Cell Immunol 1989 121: 134-145.

[14] Marrack P, McKee A, Munks M. Towards an understanding of the adjuvant action of aluminum. Nature Immunology. 2009 9: 287-293.

[15] Heilmann C, Jorgensen E, Nielsen F, Heinzow B, Weihe P, Grandjean P. Serum Concentration of antibodies against vaccine toxoids in children exposed perinatally to immunotoxicants. Environmental Health Perspectives. 2010.

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Pediatrician: Pertussis combo vaccine causes brain damage – DNA India

The Refusers — Sun, 13 May 2012 14:49:42 +0000

MB Comment: A baby dies within hours after vaccination and a consulting pediatrician at Bombay Hospital states the ‘vaccine has side effects like high fever, fits/convulsion and even brain damage.’

While that is certainly not much comfort to the parents and family of the baby that was killed by the vaccine, the admission by the pediatrician of vaccine damage stands in sharp contrast to the denial and ignorance of US and European pediatricians and public health authorities. The scientific evidence for vaccine damage described by this pediatrician is found in the largest-selling medical textbook, the Merck Manual under the subject encephalitis: ‘A virus or vaccine triggers a reaction that makes the immune system attack brain tissue (an autoimmune reaction).’

The vaccine in this article is the whole cell pertussis vaccine, but that does not absolve the version used in the US. DTaP (the acellular US pertussis vaccine) lists Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and autism as adverse events on the package insert. Too bad nobody reads vaccine package inserts.

This baby’s death is likely to ultimately be labeled a coincidence because public health authorities and drug companies put huge pressure on medical examiners to whitewash every vaccine-caused fatality. I experienced this firsthand when the NY Medical Examiner (after talking to Merck) told me ‘Mr Belkin, vaccines do a lot of good things for people’ when my daughter died within hours of receiving the hepatitis B vaccine and they found a swollen brain (encephalitis).

Baby dies day after vaccination

Daily News and Analysis India – May 11, 2012

A three-month-old girl died a day after she was administered oral pulse polio drops along with Hepatitis B vaccine and DPT (Diphtheria, Pertussis and Tetanus) vaccine at a health centre in Dahisar.

On Thursday, Megha Devkari’s family filed a complaint against the health centre at the Dahisar police station, but immunisation in-charge Dr Kishore Hurgoli said she could have died due to other reasons.

“It could have been an adverse event following immunisation. Only after we get the post-mortem report can we be sure about the cause of death,” said Dr Hurgoli.

The police said that of the eight infants who were administered the vaccines on Wednesday, only Megha developed complications.

The father Ramesh told the police that Megha developed high fever after they returned from the health centre. “They gave her Crocin as she could not sleep. In the morning the parents realised something was wrong and rushed her to Bhagwati Hospital, but she was declared dead,” said a police officer.

Dr Mukesh Sanklecha, consulting paediatrician, Bombay Hospital, said: “The DTwP vaccine has side effects like high fever, fits/convulsion and even brain damage, but very few children develop these symptoms. Hence, many paediatricians running private practices administer DtaP, which is equally effective and has a fewside effects. But it is expensive.”

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Number of severe pneumococcal disease triples after vaccine introduction – RT Care

The Refusers — Sat, 12 May 2012 13:05:16 +0000

MB comment: The vaccine oligarchy has limited choices with which to spin vaccine failure stories. Their favored excuses are 1) Better diagnosis means more disease cases are discovered than before. 2) Vaccine-caused deaths and breakthrough disease cases in the vaccinated are coincidences. 3) It’s a great vaccine and data showing it isn’t is just wrong.

In this case, the the study authors opt for vaccine failure cover-up #1: Better diagnosis. But using that excuse evades recent scientific data showing that the pneumococcal vaccine has caused antigenic drift which has created more dangerous strains of the disease (like antibiotic resistant bacteria).

Perhaps they should use vaccine failure excuse #2 to dismiss that finding (it’s only a coincidence).

Swedish Study Finds Pneumococcal Vaccine Does Not Offer Full Protection

RT: For Decision Makers in Respiratory Care

May 11, 2012

A Swedish researcher has found that the vaccine given to children to immunize against serious pneumococcal disease does not offer full protection.

Currently there are two types of active vaccine—polysaccharide vaccines, which protect against more types of pneumococcal bacteria but cannot be given to children under the age of 2, and conjugated vaccines, which can be given to infants but protect against fewer types.

Erik Backhaus, an infection specialist at Skövde Hospital, who conducted the research for his doctoral thesis at the University of Gothenburg’s Sahlgrenska Academy, looked at all cases of serious pneumococcal disease in children and adults in the Västra Götaland region of Sweden between 1998 and 2001. He found that the latest conjugated vaccines theoretically offer protection against around 70% of infections.

“But around 95% of infections are caused by serotypes covered by the polysaccharide vaccine,” said Backhaus. “This vaccine cannot be administered to children under 2 years of age, which means that it cannot be used in those who need it most.”

In the worst case, the bacteria cause serious disease from which around 10% of patients die within a month of diagnosis. Backhaus found that the risk of dying depends partly on age and partly on underlying medical conditions, but also that the risk is higher for men than women. Interestingly there are also geographical variations: fewer serious pneumococcal infections are diagnosed in people over the age of 80 in the Gothenburg area than in other parts of the Västra Götaland region.

“This may be due to different routines for admitting patients from nursing homes to hospital and how often blood cultures are performed,” he explained.

Backus also found that over the past 45 years the number of cases of severe pneumococcal disease diagnosed in the Gothenburg area has tripled from 5 to 15 cases per 100,000 inhabitants per year. This is probably because many more blood cultures are performed these days, meaning that more cases are detected.

Source: University of Gothenburg, The Sahlgrenska Academy

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80% to 90% of WA state pertussis cases are in the vaccinated – Skagit County Health Department

The Refusers — Thu, 10 May 2012 17:37:41 +0000

MB comment: Washington state health officials are trapped in a cocoon of pseudo-scientific denial. Australia just cancelled their pertussis ‘cocooning’ pertussis vaccine program because drug company scientists told them it was clinically ineffective. Meanwhile WA state governor Gregoire and the state health department are doing the exact opposite – expanding a useless and potentially harmful cocooning pertussis vaccination program. But their own employees are finding that 80%-90% of pertussis cases are in the vaccinated.

Here’s their psychological dilemma (that Australians have already navigated): If they admit the vaccine is useless, health officials thereby negate their own legitimacy. That would also obliterate public trust in vaccine efficacy. So the ineffective vaccine program goes ahead full blast, with a waste of money and increased risk of vaccine adverse reactions. Pseudoscience and self-aggrandizement triumph over clinical evidence.

‘Sandi Paciotti, the Communicable Disease Manager for the Skagit County Health Department, said the numbers are real and, if anything, are low. Paciotti said the county has been very vigilant in screening cases … Paciotti said many people who have immunized are still getting the illness … she’s finding 80 to 90 percent of the cases she investigates involve people whose immunizations should be current.’

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Skagit County hardest hit in state by whooping cough – King News NWCN.com

May 8, 2012

MOUNT VERNON, Wash. – In Skagit County, the rate of whooping cough isn’t just a little higher than other counties around the state. It’s three times higher than the next hardest hit county based on per-capita numbers.

The last official count places the rate of whooping cough, also known as pertussis, at 196.1 incidents per 100,000 people. That’s way over the 71.7 reported out of Jefferson country. New numbers are due out from the state health department Tuesday aftrnoon .

Sandi Paciotti, the Communicable Disease Manager for the Skagit County Health Department, said the numbers are real and, if anything, are low. Paciotti said the county has been very vigilant in screening cases and they’re finding when doctors or schools report a case, often times five other people in the same household – adults as well as children – are sick.

It is by far the worst outbreak than anybody can remember. Dr. Frances Chalmers of Skagit Pediatrics has treated children for three decades. She says a lot of the cases she sees are in their early more treatable stages. A round of antibiotics usually knocks it out.

Paciotti said many people who have immunized are still getting the illness. She said typically 15 out of 100 people immunized are vulnerable to contracting pertussis, but she’s finding 80 to 90 percent of the cases she investigates involve people whose immunizations should be current.

Whooping cough often starts with a sore throat and cold symptoms and leads to a debilitating dry cough, where adults and children can lose sleep. Extreme coughing fits can bring them to the point of vomiting. Pertussis can be fatal in infants and young children.

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