A Reasonable Shot: Vaccine Safety Research Reform

VACCINE BOTTLE SYRINGESINCE THE FIRST INOCULATIONS in Western Medicine, it has been apparent that we can fool the immune system into behaving in such a way that it will react as if we have been infected with actual, live pathogens, conferring immunity to disease from exposure.  Vaccines are widely hailed as unassailable examples of success in medicine. Sure, there are side effects, and some adverse events, too, but the risks of such adverse events are rare, or so the thinking goes…

A GROWING BODY OF SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE, however, is accumulating that points to the question: Can we do better on Vaccine Safety? This literature includes studies of the effects of adjuvants and preservatives, such as mercury and aluminum, as well as studies that show that the vaccine itself may contribute to wide number and diversity of types of serious adverse events, diseases and conditions.  A great mass of communication in the public forum includes statements designed to educate the public that these risks exist, while a Great Silence exists from government agencies tasked with, for example, disease control and prevention. There are denials of specific causal links, say, between autism and vaccines. The CDC’s contribution to scientific studies on vaccine safety somehow always, seems to manage to find no harm with remarkable consistency. That is rather odd, given the mountain of other studies that show that vaccines SHOULD cause autism in some people.

The void in the official knowledge base, however, is being rapidly filled by a growing awareness in the American public that what we are being told does not gel with our collective personal experiences.  Most Americans do not yet know, however, that the public policy on vaccination programs is not based on the entire body of science about vaccine safety, but it is, rather, based on studies selected by the CDC that show no harm. The necessary result is a biased policy, biased toward vaccine use. This bias is 100% intentional, as, in the name of greater good, the thinking goes, the risk to the few is outweighed by the risk to the many. Any adverse events seen during studies are a priori assumed to be unrelated to the vaccine, and scientists involve express concern that the public may confuse rare, adverse events that happen after vaccination with real adverse events due to vaccination. I do not know what classification of activity those types of studies are, but when they reject out of hand any adverse event as being caused by a vaccine, they are not science.

We are told as a population of concerned citizens that we do not use the proper “utility” functions, and that the risk to any specific individual is vastly outweighed by the benefit to the many. In considering individual vaccines, this may, or may not be so. I have come to learn from direct communication with a scientist who works in the national vaccination program that Brazil has been using whole-cell pertussis on impoverished pregnant women in their fight against whooping cough – while the relatively wealth enjoy the protective benefit and relative safety of acellular pertussis. Not to seem over-the-top, but this should horrify anyone who knows what whole-cell pertussis can do during pregnancy. No one in any government agency has proposed that the surge in microcephaly – which is geographically concentrated in the slums of Brazil – may be due to the use of whole-cell pertussis. Rather, they say, the microcephaly will eventually be shown to be due to Zika virus infection, even though many cases of microcephaly have occurred with no sign of Zika virus infection, and Zika virus has spread to over 40 other countries with no sign of increased microcephaly. (I have been told by the CDC itself that the data on potential microcephaly in French Polynesia is not reliable). The timeline for Zika is wrong, too – microcephaly started to increase in July 2012 in Brazil, whereas Zika came in with the World Cup Tournaments in July 2014.

timeline

Timeline of Microcephaly and various other events some have posed ideas as potentially associated with microcephaly in Brazil. Note the uptick in microcephaly in 2012 – before Zika virus is thought to have been  introduced to Brazil in 2014. (C) 2006 JLW

Individual by individual disease, the cost functions/merits of vaccine use make sense – who wants their children to develop chicken pox, or mumps, and suffer fever, miss school, etc. No one want their child, or any other child, to develop viral meningitis, and the vaccines, we are told are effective at reducing the risk to the individual and therefore to the population. And the risks of adverse events, we are told, are rare.

Wholesale vaccination schedules against many diseases, however, is a different story. It is difficult to write the facts about this without appearing hyperbolic, but nevertheless it is a difficult truth that the entire vaccine schedule – which now includes over 70 injections over the course of child’s development – has never been tested for cumulative risk of neurological damage, or autoimmune disorders. Nearly all of the CDC’s position statements on the absence of the link between “vaccines” and autism are based on MMR studies – the other vaccines have not been, individually, or collectively tested. Yet the CDC website carries the unqualified statements “Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism” and “Ingredients in Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism”.  We are working to change that to a more reasonable position. What would the American people think of the CDC changed their statement to “Scientific Evidence Exists that Shows that Vaccines May Cause Autism in Some People”?  Would they , en masse, stop vaccinating?  This is where the bigger picture is needed.

In my book, “The Environmental and Genetic Causes of Autism”, I outline the entirety of the science that shows not only association of adjuvants and additives in vaccines and autism and ADHD, but also I review the functional studies that show precisely how these additives cause autism. The mountain of evidence is overwhelming – I read over 2,000* studies, and cited over 1,000. The 1,000 studies I chose were selected because they answered specific questions I had about genetic and environmental contributions to autism. The book, by design, tells the rest of the story. The overall impression that I had after reading all of those studies that “How could aluminum and mercury cumulative doses NOT cause autism in some people?”

The question is, of course, “Which people?” One answer is that babies of young, malnourished, underweight mothers are at increased risk. Another answer is that people who are born with genes predisposing them to immunoneurotoxicity due to exposure to any number of environmental neurotoxins – including those in vaccines – are at increased risk of autism. The demonstration and acknowledgment of vaccine-induced autism in a genetic minority is a blessing. On the one hand, knowledge that autism is rare in the vaccinated population, and that no gene contributes to more than 1% of cases of autism, and that autism genetic risk is low (I estimate <5%) allows us to breath easier.  Practically none of us are doomed to develop autism due to genetics alone. Very few of us will develop autism from vaccines. But the best news of all is that the information on which of us belong to the genetic minority that is at highest risk of autism from vaccines is, in principle, knowable. We can screen the population for variants that are shown, by science, to confer risk of autism due to vaccines. And the genetic screens are not prohibitively expensive.

This knowledge, I hope, is sufficient to cause a revolution in vaccine safety research and in the formulation of vaccines. The first step is to acknowledge the connection. But there are other things that we as consumers of vaccine products should demand of  vaccine manufacturers. If aluminum and mercury in vaccines act as neurotoxins in vaccines in a manner that can induce autism in some people, then they are also likely cause minor neurological damage in the rest of the population. Again, for any individual vaccine, the individual risk of damage is slight. But for a neurotoxin-laden schedule or acute exposure (such as 7 vaccines in one day), and the lifetime cumulative risk due to repeated vaccinations (many diseases plus boosters), we likely have a serious problem that should be addressed: are vaccines contributing to the increase rates of Alzheimer’s disease in our population? There is a growing body of evidence, reviewed in my book, that says yes, the precursors of Alzheimer’s are apparent involving the same molecular and cellular dysfunctions caused by vaccines in autism.

We cannot wait until current 0-16 year olds begin to develop Alzheimer’s disease at 30, or as Dr. Russell Blaylock warns, schizophrenia at 20, to find out. We should demand reform in vaccines overall.  Here is what I propose:

(1) TOTAL BAN ON MERCURY IN VACCINES.  Clearly the CDC is wrong in their recommendation of mercury-containing flu shots for pregnant women.  Increasingly, pediatricians are offering the Thimerosal-free flu vaccine for pregnant women.

(2) Administrative Overhaul of Responsibility. The NIH, not the CDC, should oversee vaccine safety research studies, and the research should be farmed out to the Universities and Research Hospitals throughout the country.  This would be extramural research – by the people, for the people. Every individual vaccine on the schedule, and the entire schedule, should be re-examined using random, prospective clinical trials that use Total Outcomes Awareness – lifelong follow-up, with annual health check-ups for all patients in the study.  Five (5) institutions should be funded to run independent clinical trials, 3 by lottery, and 2 by competitive grant mechanisms.  The results should be independently published with objective peer review.

(3) VLPs with Safe Epitopes Virus-like particles (VLPs) should be used for each and every vaccine – using epitopes that are demonstrated to be safe.  VLPs can be loaded with sufficient antigen- and in sufficient dose – so as to not require aluminum adjuvant.

“Safe Epitopes” are those that show no cross-reactivity with antigens in pathogens. That is, the antibodies for the pathogenic proteins should not be cross-reactive with any human protein. The computational studies needed to identify which human proteins may be at risk of autoimmune attack after infection by pathogens or by vaccination with live attenuated, weakened, or dead viruses are underway at the Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge.  This problem has also been studied for years by Dr. Yehuda Schoenfeld, of Tel-Aviv Univeristy/Sheba Medical Center and by Dr. Darja Kanduc, University of Bari, Italy. The cost of such vaccines will drop when mass production begins, and the gains in terms of fewer vaccine-injured individuals (autism, ADHD, autoimmune disorders), well, that is priceless.

(4) Comprehensive Genetic Screens for Vaccine Safety Along with screening for polymorphisms that confer higher specific environmental toxin susceptibility, as outlined in my book, genetic screens should include a search for mutations that cause greater protein similarity between human proteins in certain individuals and the proteins present in vaccines (of any kind). This screen will reduce adverse events profoundly, and inform people before they consent to a specific vaccine of any red-flag risk. These polymorphisms and the attendant mutations are usually benign – and have nothing to do with the risk of disease itself. They may, however, be responsible for any auto-immune related pathogenesis of the diseases for which we need vaccines. Scientists at IPAK are working on this problem in our Vaccine Induced Immunological Damage program (VIID). For more information, click here.

One of my goals is to try to make sure that every American knows that vaccines may cause autism in some people – and what we as a society can,and should do about it.  If you would like to help, please visit The Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge (see http://ipaknowledge.org) and do all you can do to help this pure public charity organization with donations, and recruit new members. Our calls for awareness of the full scientific knowledge on vaccine risk are being heard. We want to bring the public and industry together on the important issue of making vaccines safe – and effective- for everyone.

Postscript: I am aware that some people believe that no vaccine can ever be made safe. The science on VLP’s with safe epitopes and no adjuvants or preservatives has not been conducted, so we do not yet know their safety profile. This is call for overall reform – let’s get to work and find out!

*Downloading and skimmed >3,000; read >2,000, cite >1,000

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