AS ONE WHO IS INVITED with increasing frequency to educate legislators on the reality of relative risk of vaccines and infections, I have witnessed arguments for stripping away parents’ rights to refuse vaccination. They involve a mix of hyped fear and a misrepresentation of facts-on-the-ground, even by state officials. Here I outline the myths used to fool people into supporting the loss of rights, with the counter arguments.
(1) “We could eradicate measles if it were not for personal belief exemptions by reaching 95% coverage via herd immunity.”
Wrong on at least three counts.
(a) This statement is often accompanied by a claim that we “eradicated measles” in 2000 In reality, there were 86 cases of measles in the US in 2000.
(b) Also, most adults vaccinated againt measles are simply not immune due to waning immunity. Thus, vaccinating >95% of children will not provide 95% immunity. Vaccine immunity is not the same as natural immunity.
(c) Don’t blame philosophical exemptions. Personal belief exemptions, or PBEs, are the law in 17 states. Also known as philosophical exemptions, these are often accompanied by religious exemptions. The recent measles outbreak in Washington State (Clark County) did not involve a widespread outbreak among so-called “anti-vaxxers”; rather, it involved a Ukranian community which does not vaccinate because they are exercising their religious exemptions. The outbreak in the Bronx and in Rockland County, NY are similarly isolated to an ethnoreligious community (in this case, the Orthodox Jewish community), members of whom are merely exercising their right to abstain from participating in an act that they feel goes against their religious beliefs.
2. Exemption rates are up. This is not relevant thus far, because outbreaks are limited to communities who vaccinate due to the religious reasons. But even then, it’s not correct. While school-entry stats may show a small increase in some places in the use of PBE’s, the population-wide rate of vaccination is stable. And before anyone blames any increase in PBEs on misinformation about vaccines, read on.
3. “The Science is Settled – Vaccines are safe, and vaccines are effective.”
There are charts circulating that portend to show that measles deaths were reduced by vaccines. The problem is the chart is left-truncated. As this Harvard study shows, measles as a condition was nearly gone from the US before the measles virus was isolated. So much for the vaccine savings millions of lives.
Also, people pushing to strip rights away ignore the reality that two high doses of Vitamin A significantly ameliorate the symptoms of measles. Merck is also in court over allegedly committing fraud by spiking human samples with rabbit antibodies to make their MMR appear to have high efficacy. The MMR is the very vaccines we are told must be mandated without exemption (See HuffPost – Merck Has Some Explaining to Do…). How can anyone support a mandate of a product that is under scrutiny of being fraudulent?
On the safety issue, well, we have never seen anyone do a test to find the genes or biomarkers that will allow us to predict who in the population is likely to develop seizures, or die, or suffer from encephalitis, encephalopathy or other conditions known to occur following measles vaccination. We have never seen long-term vaccinated vs. unvaccinated randomized prospective clinical trials with total health outcome awareness – instead, post-market surveillances studies are supposed to be sufficient.
While MDs are required to report all vaccine adverse events to VAERS, less than 1% do – and many send parents home with vaccine injured children telling them it wasn’t the vaccine. They do not see that the act of vaccine injury denialism short-circuits the post-market human subject experimentation on vaccines, and they did not consent the patient to such a study anyway. I have a manuscript on the rates of vaccine injuries corrected for underreporting.
3. Stories About Fraud in Vaccine Safety Studies by the CDC Are “Misleading Information” and “Conspiracy Theories.”
This speaks to the current censorship going on in popular media forums like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc. It’s too late. We have The Simpsonwood transcripts. Dr. William Thompson. Dr. Frank Destefano. Dr. Coleen Boyle. Dr. Walter Orenstein. Dr. Julie Gerberding. her subsequent job at Merck. If you listen to the online CDC Fake Study apologists, there is nothing to Thompson’s revelations, just honest disagreement between scientists on interpretation. But that’s not true. After the VSD study was cooked for four years, CDC scientists and those in Denmark working for CDC finally found a way to make the association go away – that’s right, they re-analyzed the data over and over – the relationship between total vaccine exposure and autism was linear. Since they analzyed it over and over until they got the result they wanted, they are guilty of p-hacking – the same way a Cornell University Professor who studied nutrition was guilty of p-hacking, except that while that professor wanted significant results, the CDC wanted no significant association. Where’s NPR’s story on this?
As a scientist, I had a choice to make while writing the chapter on Vaccines in my second book “Cures vs. Profits”. I could either (a) not include the chapter on vaccines, (b) turn a blind eye to the revelations of Dr. Thompson to Dr. Hooker, or (c) I could remain an objective scientist. Obviously, I chose the latter.
So I want to share with you the passage that Dr Thompson said to Dr Hooker that got me. The data fudgery on the Destefano study alone was not enough. Perhaps they stumbled on a false positive. While I would never have handled it by changing the study groups, or dropping out children due to a lack of GA birth certificate (which has no scientific rationale), I could still see that maybe public health could be put at risk, the CDC thought it was in the best interest to mislead the public… but no, I could not accept it in the end because Dr. Thompson told Dr. Hooker that the practice of screening studies for positive results prior to submission for publication was routine:
So there it is. Systematic watering down of interpretation any time there is a positive result (association between vaccines and adverse events). This is the revelation that stuck with me. But even this could be just one errant scientist’s ego bruised… who knows the politics…
Were it not for the Simpsonwood transcripts, this might not have bothered me enough to go and read every study published by CDC or its contractees, and therein, with my objective scrutiny, I found science-like activities. Negative Results from Low Power studies being interpreted as robust by the authors, and by the IOM. A study that reported “No Association” between vaccines and autism without ever measuring a single case of autism – in spite of a sample size large enough to have found some cases of autism. Very odd exclusions of clinical groups with conditions that could also be caused by vaccines (seizure disorders). The list goes on and on. So I read 2,000 studies on autism to see if plausibility existed (it does), and that’s when I found enough evidence to call the vaccine injury denialism “fraud”. I’ve reviewed all of the studies sent from AAP to POTUS after scoring them using an objective evaluation scoring system. That can be found on the IPAK website along with other preprints. It’s not pretty.
The only vaccine misinformation I see is coming from the CDC, parroted by pediatricians, defended by a hoard of netizens who do not use rational discourse but instead use ridicule, shame, derision – thugs, really, who do the dirty work. They overstate confidence in association studies as if they could test causality, which they cannot, and deny, deny, deny any wrongdoing on the part of the CDC or its minions. This leads to incredible realities such a key CDC autism/vaccine researcher who is also one of OIG’s “Most-Wanted” fugitives, charged with embezzling over $US1 million that was supposed to be used for autism/vaccine studies publishing new studies in 2018/2019 – as if he is not on that most wanted list.
The other thugs are HHS expert witnesses that work in the NVICP to specifically deny any and all vaccine injury claims. No matter how much science supports a biologically plausible theory of mechanisms of injury, they won’t have it. They are professional vaccine injury denialists who cite mysterious “other causes” without any evidence. In spite of their best efforts the program has paid out over $4Billion in injuries or settlements. I’ve been compensated by petitioners’ lawyers for some of the cases I’ve been on (full disclosure) but in a recent case I pulled my invoices – but not my expert opinion – because the Special Master threatened to not pay for further expert statements unless he “liked them”. To me, that’s evidence of fraud because he’s trying to buy obedient witnesses on the petitioner’s side.
I would like to point out that there is a breakdown in the separation of powers because the NVICP is administered by HHS, who also happens to be the defendant in vaccine injury cases that come into the NVICP.
For those wanting to mandate MMR or all vaccines without exemption, please consider that 100% vaccine coverage = maximum possible vaccine injury rate. Please allow that due to genetics alone, under such an oppressive program, some families will lose children, some children will lose their lives, some kids will be injured, maimed, impaired – all because HHS has failed to fulfill – after 33 years – the 1986 mandate to (a) make vaccines safer, and (b) identify those at highest risk of vaccine injury.
Sounds like personalized medicine to me.
Remember, the 33 years of vaccine injury denialism has come at the cost of taboo-driven priorities in funding of research at the NIH. So while moms have figured out mild therapies that can help get metals out of their kids’ brains and bodies, the NIH has sat, mute, while an epidemic of autism has come to roost in our peoples. The UK is now creating separate schools for kids with autism. The educators say they are “delighted”.
In the US, “separate but equal” is unconstitutional.
James Lyons-Weiler, PhD
Allison Park, PA 15101
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Dr. Lyons-Weiler: Thank you. Powerful. Congress is fully and shamelessly bought, with the sole exceptions of Rep. Posey, and Senator Paul, by pharma, who have become incredibly rich and powerful thanks to the FDA, CDC, HHS, the DOJ, Congressional inaction, Clinton, Dubya, and Obama. And the courts don’t appear amenable to any solution. It will take masses of people in the streets. They know they’ve lost the narrative. Censorship always backfires. The goodness in the American people will prevail, and heads will roll (meant figuratively; a jail cell is the appropriate place for these criminals).
I just want to see trials of an appropriate length to determine potential adverse effects, like Liver Failure, death from infusion reactions of the treatments you write about like Vitamin A injections and chelating therapies.
There must be ample evidence of safety – otherwise it would be hypocritical of you to discuss them while insisting on more evidence for vaccines.
“There must be ample evidence of safety”
There is no ample interdependent unbiased evidence of safety for any vaccine. Please provide that with the conflict of interest of said studies clearly stated.
interdependent
That’s independent.
Peter: Not a single vaccine currently licensed has been subject to a randomized placebo-controlled clinical trial, to which all drugs must be subject to prior to licensing (vaccines are considered “biologicals,” not drugs). For drugs these trials concern first safety, then efficacy. Thus the safety of vaccines is unknown, except to those who have been injured by them. As for efficacy, outbreaks in recent years among fully-vaccinated populations of measles, mumps, and pertussis indicate primary vaccine failure. In addition, all vaccines are liability-free. Cite any evidence you can find for the safety of any vaccine, and we can have a conversation. By the way, vitamin A is an essential nutrient. The best sources are, in this order: Turkey giblets, beef liver, and chicken liver/giblets. Good sources: butter and egg yolk. In my childhood virtually everyone got measles, mumps (a truly trivial disease in childhood), rubella, and chicken pox (also trivial). We developed strong immune systems and received lifetime immunity as a result. We also ate all those vitamin A-rich foods from time to time, which is likely part of the reason measles mortality plummeted during the 20th century. The government frowns upon them today, but we old timers know better. Vaccine policy is driven solely by profit and social control. As for chelation, this is standard medical therapy for heavy metal poisoning; in such cases a physician could be subject to malpractice and loss of license if he failed to utilize it.
Peter, nobody is demanding you take any Vitamin A or any other treatment that James recommends. Indeed, we thorougly encourage you to do your own due diligence on any medical treatment regardless of whether it comes from a pharmaceutical company or from so-called alternative medicine.
By the way, vaccines are *specifically designed* to elicit a *permanent* physiological reaction. Virtually no other medical treatment is designed in this way – not even things as harsh as chemo. Given that vaccines are supposed to work permanently (or at least for a very long time), it is vastly more critical that they undergo the most rigorous safety testing (particularly long term) than any other product. Plus they are given to already healthy people.
But that’s ok Peter. You can get every infant vaccine on the schedule – adjusted by body weight – and I will take a weight adjusted dose of an infant dose of Vitamin A. We will see who fares better shall we?
By the way, that is how every other product is tested for safety (stress testing). Vaccines are the only product that never gets tested this way. Instead pharma companies just compare getting a vaccine to getting another vaccine or getting an injection of aluminum or being shot in the face or whatever they arbitrarily deem to be “ethical” (read: easily manipulable).
If any vaccine was tested in a valid manner (stress tested) then every single one would fail even at their current given doses and they would all be pulled off the shelves.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30797638
James, I have never once seen you talk about diagnostic substitution when it comes to so-called vaccine efficacy.
Surely you must be aware that the CDC actively encourages doctors not to test for/diagnose things like measles/diphtheria etc if the patient is vaccinated. This means that there is literally zero evidence that any vaccine in history has ever worked. They have just been renamed. We can verify this by looking at proxy data which is not subject to diagnostic substitution – eg paralysis rates since the polio vaccine or congenital defect rates since the rubella vaccine or invasive disease rates since the various meningitis vaccines or steriliy since the mumps vaccine.
In each case, where the data is available, it is clear the vaccine is completely worthless. We have no idea how many kids get a rash but so-called complications from measles like encephalitis and deafness have increased since the measles vaccine so clearly the measles vaccine is useless too.
Good point. However, I mentioned diagnostic substitution as a problem in “The Environmental and Genetic Causes of Autism” – the syndromizatin of autism – and again in One Conversation responding to a question, pointing people to Blaxill and Nevison’s work on the % of increase in ASD from diagnostic substitution. I’m also very concerned about the substitution of diagnoses of GBS with ALS (lectured on this Ohio re: the late Michael Bailey Sr’s death) and am working on a review of demyelination disorders in which which diagnostic substitution plays a role in keeping understanding of mechanisms of causality diffuse. Clearly Merck has some explaining to do over events like this: https://krcrtv.com/news/butte-county/sierra-avenue-school-exposed-to-measles-after-vaccinated-teacher-contracts-illness
Thanks for responding. I believe that there are two Achilles’ heels to the vaccine paradigm. Diagnostic substitution (ie calling measles as roseola, or smallpox as monkeypox or polio as GBS) and the fact that doctor offices are and have always been filled with the germs of sick people.
These two points are simple and irrefutable (if doctors truly believe that vaccines work and reduce disease risk then it logically follows that they will be prejudice against diagnosing that disease in the vaccinated) and these two points (even by themselves) demolish the very foundations of vaccinations.
The dangers of vaccines are horrific of course but as long as people actually believe that without them, we will all either die of smallpox or be crippled by polio people will accept almost any level of harm from them. That is why attacking vaccines requires also attacking the idea that they work *and* the idea that disease is highly contagious.
If you want to know why disease can *appear* to spread (even though it doesn’t) then the answer lies in the fact that disease is caused by things that we can share. In particular, emotional trauma and poisoning. You can’t transmit trauma or poisoning, but you can share it. That is why doctors don’t drop dead despite being surrounded by sick people their whole lives but why siblings can all come down with chickenpox. Doctors don’t share their patient’s traumas but siblings often do.