Archive for the ‘Activism’ Category

BARDA, The Vaccination Police, Believes in the Four Vaccine Myths. Do You?

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

Compulsory drugging is wrong, as far as I am concerned. Mandatory vaccination is compulsory drugging and is not only wrong, it is unnecessary and dangerous. Disinformation is easily found claiming that vaccination is both safe and effective. These falsehoods are so far from the truth that the Natural Solutions Foundation has filed a Citizens Petition with the Federal Trade Commission urging it to hold public hearings and ban all advertising and information to patients and doctors which claims that vaccination is either safe, effective or both. (That Citizens Petition has been “lost” and illegally denied a total of at least 4 times so far!)

The reality is that vaccination is dangerous and ineffective, despite hundreds of year of propaganda to the contrary.

When the act to establish the Vaccine Police, BARDA, was under consideration, I published an article called “The Syringe of Death: Coming Soon to a Police Station Near You” in which I argued that establishment of BARDA, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency by the Richard Burr’s Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005 was a very bad, and very dangerous secret agency and should not be created. BARDA was created, none the less, and now serves as the mandatory vaccination police of the Patriot Act “Public Health” fascism.

“The Syringe of Death” is published in full below. Although BARDA was then under consideration and is now a reality, the discussion of this frightening agency is relevant to today’s discussion as is a look at the 4 myths upon which the barbaric, unnecessary and dangerous treatments called “vaccination” or “inoculation” rest.

Frighteningly, the creation of BARDA was announced on April 26, 2007 by the Department of Health and Human Services. Its Secretary at that time, Mike Leavitt, said in his Press Release, “The creation of BARDA enhances the opportunity for innovation in our efforts to develop effective medical countermeasures against a host of public health threats, either natural or man made,” Secretary Leavitt said. “I am pleased that Congress recognized the importance of advanced development in the establishment of BARDA, and the President’s FY 2008 budget request of $189 million for this purpose will help further the department’s efforts to bridge the gap between the National Institutes of Health’s research and development programs and Project BioShield.”

BARDA, however, is, in essence, a secret Vaccination Police which can, once a “Pandemic” is declared, with or without reason or evidence, require mandatory vaccination for the real or imagined “Pandemic”. If vaccinations were safe or effective, assuming a real Pandemic, of course, perhaps there would be some faint justification for such totalitarian police state tactics in the approach to public health. In fact, vaccination is such a risky activity that it is classified as an un-insurable risk since no insurance company or underwriter in the world will guarantee the financial compensation of those harmed by it – and they are, as we now know, legion.

Documentation of extensive, shameful cover-ups by industry (now absolved from all liability for dangerous vaccines and drugs by a compliant FDA) and government abound and are sadly, old news. Documentation of vaccination dangers abound as well, ranging from the well known tragic and nearly totally preventable autism epidemic to life long neurological dysfunction of many sorts to asthma and immune suppression, leukemias and other cancers, infertility (secondary to UN/US/WHO sponsored vaccination programs in Africa, South and Central America allegedly for diseases like small pox and tetanus but which secretly induce permanent sterility) and a host of other conditions and diseases. But still the beat goes on: one state after another decides that yet another vaccine must be added to the vaccination schedule. New Jersey, for example, has decided that ineffective, but financially productive, mandatory seasonal flu vaccine, which often contains mercury, but always contains other horrific contaminants and toxic substances, MUST be administered to every child from the age of 6 months to 18 year EVERY YEAR (twice in the first year, by the way). Never mind that in the winter of 2007-8, the CDC announced that this same vaccine was ineffective at least 60% of the time. Never mind the dangers. Just focus on the profits!

And just focus on the social control, as well. It is well known by now that the Patriot Acts, the BIOSHIELD Acts and other US laws make mandatory vaccination a reality once the world “Pandemic” is invoked. And those who resist will, says the law, be interred or quarantined for an indeterminate period.

The propaganda war continues: Those who opt out of this questionable procedure are endangering us all, they say. But is that true? No, not at all.

Vaccination is, in fact, based on 4 major myths or, if you want to be more precise, lies.

Vaccination is based on junk science, and has been since the first “experiments” by that mountebank enshrined by history, Edward Jenner, the founder of virology and vaccination. In 1796, when Jenner transferred “cowpox”, actually syphilis, from the hand of milk maid Sarah Nelmes to 8 year old James Phipps, allegedly protecting James from smallpox. In fact, James and Jenner’s own son died from the repeated immune challenges induced by Jenner’s repeated inoculation.

Within 60 years, it was clear that Jenner’s procedures were neither safe nor effective. Since the British Parliament decided that although Jenner’s now-mandatory vaccination against small pox was causing deadly epidemics of syphilis and leprosy in otherwise healthy babies, it would be embarrassing to admit its error to the British public. Rather than reverse its support of both vaccination and Jenner, it chose to protect its own face at the expense of its citizens’ well-being, therefore laying the groundwork for today’s government position on vaccinations.

Much has been written about the dangers of vaccination and those who are interested in learning what vaccination is really about and how to avoid it for themselves and their children are invited to join the Natural Solutions Foundation vigorous and informative No-Forced-Vaccination Forum at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/no-forced-vaccination/join

The article, “The Syringe of Death” is more timely than ever since BARDA was established last year and the United States Government is determined to add both voluntary and mandatory vaccinations to our lives at ever-accelerating rates, despite common sense and good science.

To stop compulsory vaccination and drugging, click on each of the following action steps and ask your friends and neighbors to do the same:
Stop Compulsory Vaccination and Drugging
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=21833

Protect Philosophical Exemptions to Vaccinations
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=23087

Sign the Tiburon Declaration on Compulsory Vaccination
http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?p=460

Remember, your voice is the one that can make the difference.

Yours in health and freedom,

Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.Organics4U.org
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org

The Syringe of Death, Coming Soon To A Police Station Near You
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation

Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) thinks he owns your body. If he’s right, you will have no
say over what gets injected into it and no recourse under the law if it harms or kills you.
That is, if Burr gets what he’s after and S. 1873 passes the US Senate. Burr’s bill,
“Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005”, establishes the
Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA), a secretive and
secret agency exempt from public scrutiny, the Freedom of Information Act and the
Federal Advisory Committee Act. BARDA will be the only agency which can declare a
pandemic condition and may do so for any (or no) reason. Operating in secret, BARDA
will be responsible for the advanced research and development of drugs and vaccines (in
partnership with pharmaceutical companies), and, because the contents of those vaccines
will remain shrouded in BARDA darkness, any injuries and deaths caused by drugs and
vaccines which BARDA labels “countermeasures” to any BARDA-declared threat may
never be known.

Even if those contents do become known, S. 1873 cancels any manufacturer liability for
the companies that made the vaccines or drugs. Injured parties will have no legal means
of securing compensation from either the government or the companies themselves.

And BARDA can declare a pandemic (at any time) and require mandatory universal
forced vaccination.

Can we assume that these vaccines will provide us any protection at all? Perhaps, but
it’s not likely. First, clearly understand that under BARDA you may be (legally)
subjected to experimental drugs – drugs which have no track record at all – and, second,
with or without the advent of BARDA, it is now more important than ever that the real
truth about vaccines be widely and quickly disseminated. There are reported to be more
than 200 new vaccines “in the pipeline”. If they, along with the ones in use now, are not
safe, we, and our children, are not safe.

All of us have been carefully conditioned to believe that vaccines are safe. But the truth
is ugly and, with BARDA staring us in the face, more than a little frightening. Here are
the cold, hard facts:

Cold, Hard Fact # 1: Vaccines are not safe: vaccines are dangerous. The evidence is
abundant that the tragic cost of loading babies and children up with toxic brews of
mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde, injected foreign protein, stealth viruses and, in the
second generation vaccines, the deadly immune enhancer squalene, is unacceptably high.
Lives are ruined and lost in these children when toxins overwhelm their immune systems
and brains and cause tragic, totally preventable suffering and death. Autism (occurring in
4 children per 10,000 when I graduated from medical school in 1970) now afflicts a
minimum of 1 child in 168 in the US. Children have not changed: the poisons we give
them have. Gulf War Syndrome, a pervasive, progressive, deadly auto-immune disease
afflicting over half a million US veterans, appears to be a deadly vaccine reaction to an
experimental vaccine (Anthrax) which the US used on soldiers without their consent in
clear violation of the Helsinki Declaration and the Nuremberg Protocols, international
conventions and agreements which prohibit human experimentation without full
informed consent.

The concept of informed consent, is, of course, is meaningless in the face of compulsory
vaccination with secret ingredients and no manufacturer accountability.

Contaminants make vaccines tremendously dangerous. Swine flu (for a pandemic which
never materialized) was contaminated with polio virus in 1976. Over 45 million
Americans were vaccinated in just 77 days and although there were only 6 cases of Swine
flu in the entire country the vaccine reportedly caused at least 565 cases of polio paralysis
(renamed “Guillain-Barre Syndrome” for the occasion), 60 deaths and other serious
problems, including blindness and impotence. (There is no reason to feel reassured
because this particular disaster occurred in the past: every flu vaccine is capable of
passing along Guillain-Barre (polio) and other unsuspected viral diseases.)

Cold, Hard Fact # 2: Vaccines have not eradicated diseases: vaccines spread diseases.
Attenuated viruses (infective, weakened versions of the dangerous ones) are commonly
used in vaccines so that your body will develop an immune ‘memory’ for that virus. The
next time your immune system meets that specific virus, it rapidly combats it by
producing large numbers of antibodies. This practice and theory derive from the dawn of
vaccination: Edward Jenner’s pioneering use of cowpox pus inoculations to eliminate
smallpox. This innovative and surprising medical treatment is touted as one of the
triumphs of modern medicine. It makes a wonderful story but, in fact, inoculation not
only spread smallpox, it caused well-documented epidemics of syphilis and leprosy in
inoculated people, especially babies (who have immature immune systems). In spite of
the documented associated dangers of leprosy, syphilis, smallpox, death and blindness,
England provided free vaccination in 1840, made it compulsory in 1853, and punished
lack of vaccination with seizure of property and imprisonment in 1857 (which should
sound familiar). It took a British Royal Commission some 41 years more to put a stop to
the deaths and disease that Jenner’s unproven technique caused. Finally, in 1898,
England’s compulsory smallpox vaccination laws were overturned.

In 1854, the first year of British compulsory vaccination, deaths from syphilis in infants
under 1 year increased by 50% and continued to rise steadily after that. In 1802 Jenner
was paid 10,000 pounds by the House of Commons. Shortly afterwards, it became clear
that vaccines did not work. Rather than lose face, the House of Commons granted Jenner
another 20,000 pounds in 1807 and 3,000 pounds a year thereafter.

Jenner knew that milk maids who milked with active pus-filled sores on their hands
transmitted pox to their cows. Local superstition held that the cow’s pus was a
preventive against small pox. Jennings learned from a local farmer, Benjamin Jestey, that
he had inoculated his wife and 3 children with cowpox pus by jabbing them with a
darning needle and they did not contract small pox. Jenner assumed that this meant they
were protected against smallpox. To the modern ear this is absurd. In Jenner’s day,
neither methodology nor the scientific method were part of the culture.

Jenner, a village apothecary who purchased a University of Edinburgh MD for 15
pounds, was a showman who made much of his “discovery” and hastened to induce
Sarah Nelmes, a young milk maid with a fresh lesion on her finger, to allow him to
collect pus from her sore. He inoculated an 8 year old named James Phipps who
developed a fever and a pustule on his skin. Seventeen days later he inoculated the boy
again, this time with small pox. Since the boy did not develop smallpox, Jenner
concluded that “protection was complete”.

Jenner hawked his inoculation but people started to complain because they were
developing smallpox (and syphilis) after vaccination with Jenner’s cowpox. Jenner
switched to infected material from horses’ heels instead (“Horse-grease”). John Baker,
the child he inoculated with horse-grease, however, died before he could expose him to
small pox. Undeterred, he inoculated 6 more children with horse-grease and was so
convinced that the results would be positive that he rushed to London to publish them
before there were any results. The [untested] “success” of James Phipps’ inoculation and
his London paper established Jenner’s method and his success. Revolted by the idea of
horse-grease inoculations, people demanded cowpox inoculations again. Jenner
complied.

But just what is cow pox? In tropical countries it is cutaneous smallpox plus leprosy (a
non-lethal disease often present along with leprosy) while in more moderate climates the
milk maids were transferring syphilis to the cattle along with their cutaneous smallpox.
Jenner was making his brew from the cowpox pus and the results were
nothing short of disastrous for untold numbers of people.

Modern small pox vaccines are produced in much the same way: lesions are induced on
the skin of calves and, after they are “sacrificed” [and sold for veal?], the harvested
material from their lesions is cultured in eggs and prepared as vaccines.

However, although immunity fails to develop more than 80% of the time, serious side
effects are distressingly common from the modern small pox vaccines: At least 52 people
out of every million will have life threatening events and 1-2 will die. Permanent damage
to heart, brain, skin and GI effects are also well known side effects. The Center for
Disease Control (CDC) notes that serious side effects and dangers probably occur much
more often since many people can be harmed by live virus vaccines: immune
compromised people (on steroids, with eczema or psoriasis, nursing babies, pregnant
women and their fetuses, people with HIV/AIDs, transplant patients, chemotherapy and
radiation patients, people with auto-immune diseases, young children, asthmatics, etc.)
are at serious risk for contracting the same disease that the inoculation is designed to
prevent or worse.

In the US, the CDC classifies more than 60 million people as immune compromised.
People who are re-inoculated after many years are particularly susceptible to severe and
life threatening reactions. Those who are ill are likely to develop sever effects as well.
In fact, Tommy Thompson, former Health and Human Services boss, said that he would
not take the vaccine although the US is stock piling “a dose of smallpox vaccine with
every American’s name on it”. Perhaps the one with his name has been changed so it
reads, “To Whom It May Concern”.

S. 1873 and BARDA would, according to its proponents, allow absolutely no exemptions
for medical conditions or personal conviction. None.

Dr. Mike Lane, former director of the CDC’s so-called “smallpox eradication program”
in the 1970’s, is a proponent of mass vaccination with no exemptions saying, “Medical
contraindications would not apply… there would be NO exceptions. [In India] I’m sure
that we killed a few people, but we did the best that we could….If the person is exposed
there will be no exemptions, medical or otherwise.”

When a live virus is used in the vaccine, infective virus is shed for anywhere from 4 to 21
days (or more) and, during that time, inoculated persons can give the disease, or the side
effects of the inoculation, to any vulnerable person they come into contact with.

So, while it may be true that vaccines have spread disease, isn’t it true that vaccines have
eliminated the epidemic diseases of the past? No, actually they have not. Neither
Jenner’s cowpox inoculation nor modern smallpox inoculation did anything to eliminate
smallpox (quite the contrary). The fact is, Dr. Charles A. R. Campbell discovered that
smallpox is transmitted by the flying bedbug, Cimex lectularius, and that eliminating this
parasitic insect from human habitation eliminates smallpox, too. Personal hygiene and
better housekeeping eliminated the deadly scourge. (Dr. Campbell also discovered that
the disfiguring pocks of the disease could be prevented by a diet high in Vitamin C.)

When the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the planet “smallpox free” in
1980, they did so administratively, not medically: small pox incidence was reduced, but
not gone, despite nearly universal vaccination. What to do? WHO solved the problem
cleverly: they renamed the disease “cowpox” and “monkey pox”. Shazam: a smallpox
free planet, quicker than you can say, “Junk Science!”

Other epidemic diseases were in sharp decline at the end of the 19th and early 20th
centuries as a direct consequence of improved hygiene and other life-style changes.
Measles, Diphtheria, Whooping Cough, Polio and Hepatitis B were all in sharp decline
long before vaccines were introduced. The contribution to the decline made by vaccines,
however, was negligible or non-existent. Scarlet Fever, typhoid fever and cholera, for
which inoculation either did not exist or was never wide-spread, declined on the same
sharp curve for the same reasons. So do we need inoculations because of the public
health hazard? Despite the considerable hype, in fact, there is no unbiased evidence
which connects disease prevention with inoculation.

Cold, Hard Fact # 3: Flu vaccines do not protect people from flu-related deaths.
The CDC claims that an astonishing 36,000 people die from flu in an average year. But
according to the former Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson, 68
people under 65 die from flu each year in the US. The truth is that in 4 years, a total
4,440 people, mostly elderly, died from flu, no where near the CDC’s touted 144,000
deaths. While that figure is great for flu vaccine sales, it derivers not from reality but
from the CDC’s industry-friendly statistical trick of classifying all pneumonia-related
deaths, despite any lack of evidence, as flu deaths. Discussing this nonsense, Lone
Simonsen of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease/NIH, writes in The
Archives of Internal Medicine “We could not correlate increasing vaccination coverage
after 1980 with declining mortality rates in any age group. Because fewer than 10% of all
winter deaths were attributable to influenza in any season, we conclude that observational
studies substantially overestimate vaccination benefit.”1

Cold, Hard Fact # 4: Potential pandemic viral diseases like the Bird Flu do not have safe
and effective vaccines to prevent them and there are no drugs to treat them effectively.
Despite that fact, on September 15, 2005 the US purchased $100 Million of a French
experimental flu vaccine designed to protect against bird flu. It’s so experimental, in fact,
that although we have purchased megabucks worth of the stuff, the French manufacturer,
Sanofi-Pasteur, is planning to experiment with adjutants (immune response enhancers) to
rev up human response to it. Perhaps the adjuvant is the same one that the Army used in
the deadly Vaccine A against anthrax: squalene. The purchase is real, but there is
currently no such thing as a vaccine for pandemic bird flu.

Unfortunately, even if vaccines did work (they don’t) and were safe (they’re not), a virus
has to actually exist before you can make a vaccine that can control the disease. The
pandemic version of the latest bird flu does not yet exist. Vaccines are very specific: they
train the immune system to make antibodies to a particular protein sequence. Because
those antibodies are highly specific, guessing wrong on which flu strain is coming soon
to a droplet near you has led to an embarrassing history, year after year, of ineffective flu
shots against the wrong strain of virus. People developed side effects, but the shots did
not ward off the flu since the vaccine misfired with regard to the virus it was supposed to
be protecting people against. And, oh by the way, experimental vaccines are not even
alleged to be safe. No one knows what effects they will have. And, under BARDA, no
one (least of all the manufacturer) will need to worry about that.

Allegedly, the bird flu pandemic version has not yet mutated and therefore does not exist
so there is no way whatsoever to make a vaccine against it. Not even the US Government
can make a vaccine against an imaginary virus. But that is just what the government
wants us to believe they can do. Clearly, the French experimental flu vaccine purchase is
a political, not a public health one. IF the bird flu mutates and becomes pandemic, it
would take between 4 and 18 months to gear up to make commercial quantities of the

1
(http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/165/3/265)
vaccine. In the meantime, anyone getting the bird flu and surviving it would have natural
antibodies to the disease. But right now, unless the already-mutated pandemic H5N1
virus is being stock-piled in a laboratory for convenient release at an opportune moment
(which is certainly possible), the virus needed to make a real bird flu vaccine exists only
in fearful imagination. So what would BARDA inoculate you with? Who knows? A
nanochip to track you, perhaps? The technology exists. An experimental drug, maybe?
Something that someone wants to test on huge numbers of people whether they like it or
not? Squalene? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Only BARDA would know. You won’t.

BARDA would be above the law and beyond investigation. Consider: the anthrax vaccine
currently being tested on US 2nd and 3rd graders contains squalene. The experiment is
therefore not about anthrax (the vaccine is only approved for cutaneous anthrax, a non-
life threatening disease highly unlikely to be used, therefore, as a bio-weapon) but rather
about what happens to children given a deadly substance which stimulates their immune
systems to destroy their bodies over time. After World War II, the managers of IG
Farben, the vast German industrial combine, were imprisoned for Crimes Against
Humanity for precisely this kind of activity. Who will be convicted this time? The head
of super-secret BARDA? On what secret evidence? This is what the
government/pharmaceutical cabal is doing now in full view of the public and of
Congress. Can you imagine what would happen if there were no public scrutiny at all
and no legal liability for any ill deeds whatsoever? Only if you can imagine BARDA.

BARDA is a medical Gestapo. It would have the power to initiate a medical marshal law
from which the only escapes would be prison, death, fleeing the country or rebellion.

Bill S. 1873 has five powerful Republican co-sponsors: Republican Senate Majority
Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee
Chairman Mike Enzi (R-WY), Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg (R-NH),
Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) and Alexander Lamar (R-TN).

Visit www.HealthFreedomUSA.org for the latest in health freedom news. Sign up for
Health Freedom eAlerts (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=187). And don’t forget to make your sustaining, recurring tax exempt donation (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=189) to the Natural Solutions Foundation, a tax exempt organization.

US Bullies Africa on GM Labeling, Africa’s Had Enough: Codex Committee of Food Labeling Report, May 2008

Friday, May 2nd, 2008

The US outdid itself at this Codex meeting. It actually bullied another country into withdrawing its submission because the paper South Africa submitted in favor of Mandatory GM Labeling was so strong and under cut the US position that no labeling should ever be permitted. South Africa is a sovereign nation, with its own concerns, laws and issues, but it was forced by US bullying to rescind its submission because of the international tantrum that the US threw. Read about it here (http://www.prweb.com/releases/GM_Labeling/Codex/prweb909004.htm).

The US DOES NOT want anyone to know if there is GM food in what they are eating under any circumstances. Once the US became aware of South Africa’s paper (apparently before it was generally available to the rest of the meeting), they jumped all over them electronically. This was a major affront to national sovereignty, African and the concept that Codex is anything but a mouth piece for the multinational corporations which the US represents! Africa, however, decided that they have had enough!

Although I am very sorry for the personal and national humiliation which South Africa has been subjected to by the outrageous hubris and imperialism demonstrated by the US, the US may actually have done the world an unintended favor. Their behavior appears to have galvanized the African nations, who have been demanding that Codex supply them with Mandatory GM Labeling for over 15 years, and now see that Codex is not going to do that for them so they will have to do it for themselves. Swaziland, Kenya, Ghana, Egypt, Cameroon, Sudan, Nigeria, South Africa and a host of other African countries came together to express their determination to emerge from CCFL with progress at this meeting for a Codex requirement for Mandatory GM Labeling of foods. South Africa’s submission was part of the discussion.

Once the Agenda item came forward, however, Mama Duck US and her usual band of ducklings following right behind (Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc.) quacked the same old song: These items are safe because they have been exposed to extensive safety testing (not true – see Attachment II of our Press Release (http://www.prweb.com/releases/GM_Labeling/Codex/prweb909004.htm) to read the FDA’s official position refusing to consider or conduct any safety testing of GM products), that Codex is not about consumer health and safety anyway (not true – see the first Codex mandate (http://www.codexalimentarius.net/web/index_en.jsp), that this issue has already been on the floor for many years and no forward progress was possible so it should be dropped (not true – see the report of the Oslo and Ghana Working Groups (Click on CX/FL 08/36/8 on web page http://www.codexalimentarius.net/web/current.jsp?lang=en) to see the proposals which emerged for forward movement on this issue).

The African nations were unanimous in their support for mandatory labeling. Japan, EU, Switzerland, Norway and other countries once again stated their commitments to Mandatory GM labeling. The CCFL discussion concluded with an agreement to scrap previous labeling documents which were at an early stage of the approval process and instead substitute an appendix contained in the report of the meeting in Ghana on this issue. Although this is a very weak document as it stands now, it does offer the opportunity to keep working on the issue and was thus opposed by the US. This strategy was nonetheless adopted by the CCFL.

Astonishingly, the next morning, AFTER the discussion was completed, the South African paper was withdrawn on the direction of the South African government because of the extra procedural shenanigans of the US through its pressure on South Africa!

That over reaching act of economic imperialism may be the beginning of the end for unlabeled GM foods and crops! The pro-labeling nations of Africa – all of them – were SO incensed that they called another meeting again and determined that they would create their own requirements and adopt them en bloc with, or without, the permission of the Codex Alimentarius Commission! The Natural Solutions Foundation has been asked to continue to provide technical and scientific support, which we will, of course, be very happy to do, as you may imagine.

We are deeply gratified that our work of the past 3 years in Africa and at Codex urging solidarity is coming to fruition. We believe that this change could spread throughout Codex. Apparently, so does the US which has been telling delegates not to speak to us! Imagine! The US has nothing better to do than warn pro-health delegations off listening to us. Could we imagine a better confirmation that what we are doing is having an impact?

Of course, we continue to need your support to make this happen. Please make a tax deductible recurring donation (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=189) to keep health freedom moving forward. Natural Solutions Foundation is the most effective voice of health freedom and it speaks for you.

Thanks for your help and support!

Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima

Rima E. Laibow, MD
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.Organics4U.org

NSF on the Road: Days 13-14, April 29-30, 2008

Friday, May 2nd, 2008

Day 13, April 29, 2008
Today was a day that could, ultimately, turn out to have changed the course of Codex and perhaps the history of the world. And we owe that to South Africa’s courage and determination. You can read the story here (http://www.prweb.com/releases/GM_Labeling/Codex/prweb909004.htm)
Virtually every one of the African nations has a policy of extreme caution, or downright rejection of unlabeled GM organisms. So does Norway, Japan, Russia, and the entire 27 countries of the EU. And with good reason. Look at the second attachment to the press release above for a quick compendium of horrors associated with GM food. Then consider why, here in the US, of course, our policies are so corporate friendly that we support them to the death (perhaps ours) while we eat unlabeled GM food.

A good deal of the rest of the world is quite convinced that IF you allow GM food, you MUST label it.
South Africa put her excellent paper in to Codex today. http://www.prweb.com/releases/GM_Labeling/Codex/prweb909004.htm. This paper lists several compelling reasons that Codex MUST have mandatory labeling of GM foods, unlike the US which prohibits any mention of GM ingredients. You can read her excellent paper as the first attachment in this press release:

Early in the day, at 8 AM, the African nations met to work out their policy on this issue. There was total agreement that they would stand united against the US policy of unlabeled GM foods and united for a policy of mandatory labeling. After all, they said, we do not have the laboratory capacity to test these foods at our border and labeling is the only way we can have some protection from them and give our consumers the choices they need and deserve.

But the US does not play fair – it plays big. Read on.

Day 14, April 30, 2008
South Africa withdrew its document, CRD 21 today at the start of the meeting. How did that happen? Where did the sovereign rights of another country to express its views if they differ from those of another country? How about the fact that Codex is not supposedly about one country bullying all the others to get what they, and they alone, want?

Pshaw! Of course it is. At least up until now. On issue after issue after issue, that is EXACTLY what Codex is about. For the past 3 1/3 years, General Bert and I have been traveling the world to deliver the Codex Two Step (http://youtube.com/watch?v=6QNg3MD6BxM&feature=PlayList&p=BF9BBB69479D44EC&index=5)
and the message that only by uniting and standing together can the developing world protect its food, its health and its people – to say nothing of its freedom.

This process took another step forward today when the African countries, having had a meeting yesterday in which each one declared that they are adamantly determined to have mandatory labeling on GM foods held yet another meeting this afternoon. This one was to say, “Let the US say what it wishes, Africa WILL have mandatory GM labeling. And we will do it by determining what is important to us and adopting it en bloc, all of us!

Sweet fresh wind blowing! Sweet words! Of course the Natural Solutions Foundation will provide its support, scientific and technical capacities. Of course, with your tax deductible support (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=189), we will be at Codex in Geneva to help move that process forward. Of course, being here is critical to the forward motion of the process. There is no possible way we can have the impact we are having unless we are here and on the home turf of the countries involved to meet their decision makers, stay abreast of their developments, etc. And the ONLY way we can do that is with your generous participation through, 1. Donations (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=189) and 2. your joining the ranks of the Mouse Warriors.

To do that, you need to make sure that you are on the Health Freedom eAlerts distribution list (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=187) and enlist as many people as you can to get involved as well. That last item, enlisting other people, is absolutely key since each person taking our action steps adds strength to that voice we are raising to speak truth to power!

Speaking of speaking truth to power, this evening I did a 1 hour radio show hosted by Steve Shenk. We’ll be putting up the link shortly! Watch for it.

Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima

Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthStrategy.org
www.Organics4U.org

NSF on the Road: Days 7-12, April 23-28 , 2008

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

Day 7, April 23, 2008
This morning we met with Dr. Col. Denis Mikode, Beninese Codex Contact Point and asked if there was some way that he would be able to go to Codex if the Natural Solutions Foundation paid for his trip. He clearly was moved that we cared so much about the ability of Africa to determine its own future in relationship to Genetically Modified foods but, alas, was not able to get either a Government Mandate for the meeting on such short notice or a Canadian visa. For that, he would have had to go to Ghana for the visa and, if it failed, come home or, if he should succeed, would be able to continue. Of course, there were no airplane tickets for him at that point, etc.

We told him that we would take care of all that but he felt that the only way Benin could be represented was if a miracle occurred. Long story short: no miracle on that one.

Later that day we got ourselves packed and set off for the airport to make the grueling flight from Cotonou to Paris to Newark to Ottawa – all in economy seats. General Stubblebine is well over 6′ tall. Tyson hovers right around 6′. I am merely uncomfortable: they are really, really uncomfortable on these long haul flights.

While we were waiting in the Cotonou airport, Tyson got talking with a fellow whom, when we staggered off the airplane to spend 6.5 hours in the Paris airport at 6 AM, he decided to wait for on the jet way. Tyson introduced us to Jeff, a semi-nomadic Environmental Engineer who had just finished a solo 3 month bike trip through West Africa. JEFF DOES NOT SPEAK FRENCH!

Tyson and Jeff were going to take the train to Paris and asked if General Stubblebine and I wanted to come. Of course I wanted to come! It was a magnificent Spring day and we got out of the subway (“Metro”) directly opposite Notre Dame Cathedral as the bells were chiming and the clear sky provided a backdrop of perfect cerulean. Jeff led us on a stroll down the boulevards and streets until we came to a perfectly charming side walk cafe (with heaters – it was a tad nippy so early in the day) and we had double espressos and the most perfect croissants I have ever tasted.

But the best part of the feast and ramble was Jeff. He is a lovely, earth-sensitive free spirit who, like so many other exceptional people, is very interested in the Panama project. One of his specialties is environmental impact studies! Perhaps, if all goes well, he will be able to do some or all of the environmental impact statement required by the Panamanian Government before we build the actual project!

Then Tyson reluctantly got back on the train to return to the airport and find General Stubblebine buried under our hand luggage, all of which we left with him. About 6 hours after we started out, we were back in Charles de Gaulle airport, ready to take off on the next leg of our trip.

That was not only a delightful break, but some sort of a forward propulsion in the coming-together of the Santa Clara Project (www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org).

Day 8, April 24, 2008

MMMMMMRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR That’s the sound of an airplane engine humming for 7 hours. When we landed in Newark Airport we had been traveling for two days and we were not finished yet! But our good friends Nicholas and Marie drove to the airport, took us to their nearby home, fed us a wonderful homemade dinner and took us back to the airport again JUST in time to make our plane to Ottawa.

We got there, found our bags and bought round trip tickets on the hotel shuttle which took us to the front door of the lovely bed and breakfast we like to stay in here in Ottawa when we attend the CCFL (Codex Committee on Food Labeling) meetings. Then sleep.

Day 9, April 25, 2008

Finding an Apple repair store in a city we do not know without a car to get to the store (my brand new computer was going black for longer and longer and finally I could not turn it on when it was off or off when it was on: time to consult the computer doctors!). Eventually we succeeded, found a place for dinner and crashed.

Day 10, April 26, 2008

Today the pre-CCFL meeting started. The activity today is a workshop deciding, once again, how the World Health Organization’s Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Exercise (GS) was to be implemented by Codex. This strong document (not perfect, it is true, but strong) was presented to the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) in 2005 as something which the WOULD implement and the way it was to be implemented was left to the Codex Committee of Food Labeling (CCFL) and the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) to decide. Strategies were to be presented to the CAC on a strict time line.

The foot dragging and shenanigans to avoid doing this have been mind boggling and I have reported on them since the first time CCNFSDU’s Dr. Grossklaus moved the agenda item on the to the very end of the meeting and made any meaningful discussion impossible (2005). Since then, things have not gotten a whole lot better and the implementation so far comes down to endless argument over which nutrients should be labeled and which should not be and how they should be represented.
Now, labeling in important to consumers and does, in fact, contribute to reformulation of products (“What? You put THAT in something you expect me to eat?”) and in risk assessment and post market surveillance (“Everyone who ate lot number 27449X2 of the product got sick and 42% of them had to be hospitalized.”) and are thus good things.
But labeling will not, in my opinion, take care of the serious concerns which caused the GS to come into existence: preventing the non communicable diseases of UNDERNUTRITION.

The Codex strategy of considering all nutrients as toxins which need to be limited – limited! – through the process of Risk Assessment as if nutreints, and not terrifyingly high levels of pesticides or anti-nutrients caused by genetic modification of plants and animals, free radicals caused by irradiation of food and all the other dangers to which Codex blithely exposes us WITHOUT LABELING OF ANY KIND were a danger to human kind!

Outrage in my words? Yes, outrage. While diddling with Nutrient Labels for years on end (important though they be), nutrients are being taken off the shelves in the EU, threatened in Canada through a terrible bill and LIMITED as if they were risks through Codex all over the world. Make no mistake: the US will be next, again, if we do not do something about it before it happens so we are not fighting a rear guard action.

Recall for a moment the disastrous FDA Guidance whose comment period ended on April 30 last year. The FDA proposed to make all nutrients and objects used for health purposes unlabeled drugs and devices. That would mean that healthful foods like cherry juice (the first subject of their attack) could not be used with a health intent or the FDA would classify it as an untested drug.

The FDA provided no website for your comments. They told the Natural Solutions Foundation that snail mail was not tallied. The Receiver of Dockets gave us her personal email and so 588,000 people were able to use our web site to access the only working email address available to tell the FDA to back off in no uncertain terms. Well, only about 198,000 people actually got their message through because our site was constantly being hacked and attacked at that time. Even with “only” 198,000 voices, the roar was deafening: the FDA backed off, at least for the time being.

The WHO/FAO, parent organizations of Codex, makes the point in its document on the cause and prevention of chronic degenerative diseases: they ARE the diseases of UNDER nutrition. The number of people who die from over nutrition is so small as to be equivalent to zero. The number of people who die from under nutrition is in the billions:
Cardiovascular disease including stroke, diabetes and obesity are diseases of under nutrition. They are preventable through nutrition, which includes supplements. They are the major killers of the industrialized and, as it moves toward our disastrous diet of prepared and degraded food, the developing world. (Of course, properly used drugs are the other major killer of those unlucky enough to be able to afford them!)

So what is Codex planning? Nutrient Reference Values, upper limits beyond which nutrition may not go, are being established even as we speak. Just as the solution of Congress in dealing with a totally failed FDA was to throw much more money at it in the last session of Congress with S. 1082. So Codex wants to treat the chronic degenerative preventable diseases of under nutrition by restricting nutrition. Logical? Not at all. But that’s what passes for Codex logic!

So half way through the meeting I was pretty well disgusted and saying to myself that we needed a miracle to deal with Agenda Item 5, labeling of GM Foods, when I turned around and there was our miracle, Antoinette Booyzen, the Delegate from South Africa.

Antoinette is fearless and knows nutrition and Codex very, very well. She fights tirelessly for what is right, regardless of what the politics might be. In fact, for her decade of dedication to optimal health and what is good for people, not profits, the Natural Solutions Foundation awarded Ms. Booyzen with the coveted Linus Pauling Health Freedom heroes Award in 2006.

I knew that we could rely on Ms. Booyzen to use her position as a National Delegate to further the good of the world’s eaters if she could, not the position of the world masters.

Day 10, April 27, 2008
After a good deal of highly pleasurable reunion talk (our emails have been interfered with so being in contact has been very difficult) we started to talk about GM labeling in South Africa and Africa. We talked and talked and talked and the net result was a South African paper demanding, for a variety of reasons, mandatory labeling of all GM foods.

Day 11, April 28, 2008
Today was the first day of the Codex meeting and we sat through the requisite speeches of welcoming telling us what a great bunch of people we were and how important our would would be to the world. Now, you can take that two ways: either the meeting’s lack of action would have a huge impact on the world through degraded food standards, degraded food and degraded health or 2., that if Codex actually did something positive, it would have a huge impact on human health.

However they meant it, the droning banality started in the morning and continued on and on and on and on.

By today, Monday at 1 PM, Antoinette has put her paper on compulsory mandatory labeling in as a Conference Room Document. You can read her document here (http://www.prweb.com/releases/GM_Labeling/Codex/prweb909004.htm):

There was a reception in the evening where we could lobby, if we wanted to, for mandatory GM labeling, which would likely come up tomorrow. We decided to skip it, though, since we were all so tired and we know that the food served there is exactly what we would put in our bodies: in fact, food served at the receptions is a perfect example of why we cannot let Codex run the food world!

Stay tuned!
Yours in health and freedom,

Dr. Rima

Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.Organics4U.org

Vaccine Vituperation: Defending Vaccination By Calling People Names

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

Here is the outstandingly nasty blog posted by a person claiming to be a physician. I post it to demonstrate the irrational, ad hominum vitriol which pro vaccination freedom advocates are bombarded with. If you speak the truth as you see it, and that truth is not favorable to vaccines, you WILL be attacked, perhaps in terms like these, by people claiming to be knowledgeable. Be forewarned and expect this kind of vitriol.

And you, sir: Shame on you, Orac. Shame on you for abandoning logic and defending your position, right or wrong, in this primitive and inappropriate way. Shame on you, if you really are a surgeon, for failing to think and to use logic to reach your conclusions and substitute dogma instead. Welcome to the Natural Solutions Foundation Hall of Shame, “Dr.” Orac!
And shame on you, too, for your shocking lack of respect or compassion. Although you call your blog “Respectful Insolence”, your blog exceeds insolence by many epithets and there is nothing even vaguely respectful in your communication.

Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.Organics4U.org

The Huffington Post and antivaccinationists

Category: Antivaccination lunacy • Autism • Medicine
Posted on: April 9, 2008 12:00 PM, by Orac

I don’t much like The Huffington Post.

My dislike for The Huffington Post goes way, way back–all the way back to its very beginnings. Indeed, a mere three weeks after Arianna Huffington’s little vanity project hit the blogosphere, I noted a very disturbing trend in its content. That trend was a strong undercurrent of antivaccination blogging, something I wrote about nearly three years ago. At the time, I pointed out how Santa Monica pediatrician to the stars and “vaccine skeptic” Dr. Jay Gordon had found a home there, long with David Kirby, author of the mercury militia Bible Evidence of Harm, and Janet Grilo.

This was right from the beginning.

These antivaccination luminaries were soon joined by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr and more recently by Deirdre Imus, the driving force ramping up the antivaccinationist mercury militia proclivities of aging shock jock Don Imus and whose ignorance and stupidity when it comes to vaccines threaten to rend the fabric of the space-time continuum. (Indeed, if Jenny McCarthy didn’t exist, Deirdre Imus would get my vote for the antivaccinationist who routinely says the most astoundingly ignorant things about science.) Although we don’t hear much from Grilo or Gordon anymore, unfortunately we do hear from Kirby, Imus, and Kennedy on a fairly regular basis, all on The Huffington Post, with the only voice of reason when it comes to vaccines being Arthur Allen, author of Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine’s Greatest Lifesaver, who, unfortunately, has not posted to HuffPo in a long time. It’s not for naught that I’ve dubbed the Huffington Post “Arianna’s Home for Happy Antivaccinationists” and seriously questioned whether it could do a science section.

I’m revisiting this topic because I think I’m starting to understand a bit why this may be the case. Oddly enough, the impetus was Jenny McCarthy’s appearance on Larry King Live last week for Autism Awareness Day, following her breathtakingly self-absorbed and inane article published on CNN.com. Several readers sent me both her article and later the transcript of her appearance on Larry King’s love-fest. Perhaps some of my readers were wondering why I didn’t blog about it, and, before I get to the antivaccinationist blather at HuffPo, you deserve an explanation why. It’s simple.

Jenny McCarthy bores me now.

The reason McCarthy bores me is, quite frankly, because she is so unbearably, unbelievably, and willfully stupid, full of the arrogance of ignorance. Rebutting her brain-dead pronouncements is like fighting the Black Knight–after all his limbs have been cut off, that is. Sure, these days sometimes I’m in the mood to do it, but only when I’m in a really nasty mood, the kind of mood that makes one feel an intense urge to pull the wings off of flies. However, like pulling the wings off of flies, there’s just no challenge to refuting McCarthy’s nonsense. True, it does have to be done sometimes if only because at present McCarthy appears to be the loudest antivaccinationist out there, the one who’s getting the most media attention, but increasingly slapping down her cult pseudoscience has become a chore. After all, look at something like this gem from Jenny:

Evan is now 5 years old and what might surprise a lot of you is that we’ve never been contacted by a single member of the CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics, or any other health authority to evaluate and understand how Evan recovered from autism. When Evan meets doctors and neurologists, to this day they tell us he was misdiagnosed — that he never had autism to begin with. It’s as if they are wired to believe that children can’t recover from autism.

So where’s the cavalry? Where are all the doctors beating down our door to take a closer look at Evan? We think we know why they haven’t arrived. Most of the parents we’ve met who have recovered their child from autism as we did (and we have met many) blame vaccines for their child’s autism.

We think our health authorities don’t want to open this can of worms, so they don’t even look or listen. While there is strong debate on this topic, many parents of recovered children will tell you they didn’t treat their child for autism; they treated them for vaccine injury.

Against such hunks o’ hunks o’ burnin’ stupid coupled with malignant self-absorption, the gods themselves contend in vain. Or perhaps I should say “in pain,” because pain is what happens to one’s brain when Jenny cranks the Stupid-O-Meter past 11, all the way to 13 or 14–into the realm of stupid that would not just cause a rent in the fabric of the space-time continuum but collapse on itself like a black hole, sucking all intelligence, logic, and rationality into its unquenchable maw of dumb. Jenny can’t believe she isn’t taken seriously by the medical profession? I can’t imagine why. Can you? Could it maybe–just maybe–have anything to do with McCarthy’s ignorance and her extreme arrogance in thinking that her time perusing the University of Google’s Antivaccination Institute qualifies her to bluster, swear at, and yell over experts in the field on Larry King’s show as though she is on equal terms with them in scientific knowledge? Naah! Perish the thought! Or maybe it’s her frequently sweeping denunciations of the CDC and entire vaccine establishment as wanting to “poison” our babies. Naahh, that couldn’t be it, either!

What I find even more disturbing than the ignorance that Jenny McCarthy routinely delivers on the topic of vaccines and autism (such as the “toxins in vaccines” canard) is her apparent belief that she cured her son of autism and that she could make him autistic again if she ever lets up. Yes, Jenny McCarthy is definitely a piece of work these days. In fact, I rather miss the old bimbo, gross-out Jenny of a decade or more ago. She was certainly easier to tolerate than this loud-mouth “warrior mom” incarnation who’s arrogant enough to think that the scientific community should accept her pronouncements that vaccines cause autism and that she has “cured” her son of autism over the conclusions of large, well-designed scientific and epidemiological studies. At least the old gross-out Jenny was occasionally–very occasionally–actually funny and entertaining. At least she didn’t risk harming anything other than the sensitive stomachs of people who might not like to see her barfing for comic effect or being portrayed in a pool of her own menstrual blood. The new Jenny, on the other hand, has a very real power to influence parents not to vaccinate their children, contributing, along with other antivaccinationists, to the return of vaccine-preventable illness.

Too bad Rachel Sklar, the Media & Special Projects Editor of The Huffington Post, doesn’t agree with me. She appears to have been quite impressed with McCarthy’s antics on CNN:

Former MTV star Jenny McCarthy is now an outspoken activist on behalf of parents, ever since her son Evan was diagnosed with autism at age 2. McCarthy was on with King for the full hour, and her passion and fierceness was riveting as she described how parents kept having identical stories about a perfectly healthy child getting immunized, coming down with a fever and never quite being the same again.

What Sklar calls “passion,” I call boorishness. Be that as it may, in particular Sklar seemed impressed with this statement by McCarthy:

I believe that parents’ anecdotal information is science-based information. And when the entire world is screaming the same thing — doctor, I came home. He had a fever. He stopped speaking and then he became autistic. I can’t — I can see if it was just one parent saying this. But when so many — and I speak to thousands of moms every weekend and they’re all standing up and saying the same thing. It’s time to start listening to that. That is science-based information. Parents’ anecdotal is science-based information.

The stupid here really burns (even by Jenny McCarthy standards), and Sklar just eats it up, letting it digest in her gut and be absorbed into her bloodstream to make her stupid too. If Sklar had two neurons remaining to rub together, she’d realize how easy it is to confuse correlation with causation, which is what parents who think that vaccines caused their children’s autism do all that time, no matter how intelligent they are. It’s a very seductive logical fallacy, a normal human failing in reasoning to which we are all prone. Indeed, humans are always mistaking correlation of unrelated incidents with causation, and that’s one reason why the scientific method and epidemiology are so essential to trying to differentiate correlations that are likely to represent causation from those that are not. One reason that the myth that vaccines cause autism is so pervasive is because the first symptoms of autism often occur around the same time that children are getting series of vaccinations. Because in the U.S. this represents hundreds of thousands, if not millions of children, it is not surprising that a a significant number of children diagnosed with autism who regress manifest their regression in close temporal proximity to having received a vaccine or vaccines. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the vaccine(s) caused the regression, and several large epidemiological studies have shown us that there is no epidemiological link between vaccines and autism.

Anecdotal evidence, particularly in cases as emotionally charged as a parent observing her child regress, cannot be definitive. At best, if it’s clearly documented, it might serve as the basis for the generation of hypotheses to be tested–at best. Steve Novella has written a very accessible and useful guide to what the true role of anecdotes in science-based medicine is, and Prometheus has written a series of excellent posts about why testimonial evidence can be particularly deceptive even to very intelligent people. Sklar should read them before she credulously cheers on such idiocy from know-nothings like McCarthy. So should McCarthy, but I have much less hope that she would ever understand them, much less accept that the plural of “anecdotes” is not “data” and that anecdotes are considered a very weak form of scientific evidence, weaker still if they’re poorly documented.

Sklar also cheered on McCarthy’s boorish behavior on the show, behavior that, based on her entire career and her activities since she stopped being an “indigo mom” and started being a “warrior mom” fighting what she seems to think to be the evils of vaccination, should have come as no surprise:

In the second half of the program, two pediatricians joined the program who didn’t believe that there was a link between vaccines and autism, and McCarthy wasn’t having any of it. “Are we considered acceptable losses?” she asked dangerously after a point was raised on the cost-benefit of vaccinations, and what they offered in terms of prevention. “Give my son the measles! I’ll take that over autism any day.” It was also around that point that she called the standard vaccination program “bullshit” without missing a beat.

I just wrote about how unbelievably, incredibly, irredeemably stupid preferring the measles to vaccination against measles is. Given that there is no good evidence that vaccines cause autism, McCarthy’s “preferring” the measles, which can cause encephalitis, deafness, and death, is irresponsible and inexcusable. So is Sklar’s credulous agreement with McCarthy’s pronouncements:

The whole show was riveting and so is the read, if you want to check out the transcript here. I’m with Jenny, 1 in 150 is a staggering number and these dots don’t connect any other way.

There’s no other way to put it: Sklar’s stupid, it burns too. Maybe not at the supernova intensity that McCarthy’s does, but it still burns pretty darned hot. Contrary to the Sklar’s lack of imagination, which clearly keeps her from seeing more than one explanation for this phenomenon, the dots do “connect.” Paul Shattuck showed how the dots “connect,” as did a more recent study (which I may blog about soon). It’s called broadening the diagnostic criteria (which occurred in the early 1990s for autism) and diagnostic substitution. Children who in the past would have been diagnosed with mental retardation or a learning disability are now frequently being diagnosed with autism or autism spectrum disorders, hence the apparent massive apparent increase in autism prevalence since the early 1990s.

The antivaccinationist slant of HuffPo continues, and I’m guessing that Sklar has at least something to do with it. Meanwhile, Sklar’s not the only credulous fool posting glowing reviews about Jenny McCarthy’s CNN performance on HuffPo. We also have Alison Rose Levy mining into arguably even greater depths of stupid about vaccines and autism:

Unfortunately, there’s much that this research focus fails to address. The totality of the human being, the complexity of human health factors, the wide range of health stressors, the multiplier effect when all of these variables interact, not to mention the biochemical individuality of each human being. Yes, each of us is unique.

Testing single vaccine ingredients to refute vaccinations as a major autism contributor is inconclusive, especially given the poor nature of the studies. Vaccines are not single agents.

Imagine consuming several different type of cocktails at once. Each cocktail contains multiple infectious agents, microbes, and metals acting together and creating new and unexamined synergies in interaction with each individual. Our research model doesn’t assess those synergies or predict which individuals are vulnerable.

So when science repeatedly proffers findings that “No, it isn’t this single agent,” rather than proving that vaccinations don’t precipitate autism, what’s demonstrated are the limitations of the modern reductive research approach.

Yes, regular readers will recognize right away that Levy is mindlessly parroting the dreaded “toxin” myth about vaccines. She’s repeating the ideal antivaccinationist fallacy, too. From the perspective of antivaccinationists and their belief that vaccination is too dangerous to continue to be mandatory, the problem with the thimerosal hypothesis as an explanation for the apparently increasing prevalence of autism was always that the hypothesis produced a relatively easily testable hypothesis, a test of which could yield a concrete, inarguable falsification of the hypothesis. If thimerosal were to be removed or drastically reduced in vaccines, then the thimerosal-autism hypothesis would predict that autism prevalence should fall. Well, guess what? Thimerosal was removed from vaccines by late 2001, and autism prevalence has not shown any sign of decreasing, thus refuting the thimerosal-autism hypothesis about as definitively as it can be refuted. Antivaccinationists aren’t about to make that mistake again, hence the origin of the amazing ever-changing “toxins in vaccines” myth, where antivaccinationists can postulate endless “interactions” between various postulated “toxins” in vaccines. Of course, they opine, each and every one of these “interactions” could be what causes autism, intentionally producing such a large number of trivial hypotheses that they can never all be tested and refuted. Even if they could, there’s the “every person is unique” gambit, meant to imply that even though the evidence doesn’t support the contentions that vaccines cause autism it can’t be applied to individual cases.

And don’t even get me started on Levy’s citing Rustum Roy as an “authority” on healing, which really shows where she’s coming from. Remember that Roy is a woo-meister supreme who has justified homeopathy with all sorts of dubious arguments.

Sadly, nearly three years after HuffPo’s start, it’s clear to me that it has not changed its game one whit. True the HuffPo may on occasion allow a blogger who has not drunk the Kool Aid when it comes to claims that vaccines cause autism write a post arguing against a link between vaccines and autism, but that’s just window-dressing. At its core, HuffPo culture appears to remain deeply antivaccinationist. After all, one of its editors is clearly quite sympathetic to Jenny McCarthy while David Kirby, Deirdre Imus, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (now joined by Alison Rose Levy) crank out antivaccination nonsense. Antivaccinationism is clearly so deeply ingrained in the HuffPo blogging culture that it is not going to be dislodged unless Her Highness herself intervenes, a highly unlikely possibility. Clearly, the next phase in HuffPo’s antivaccination evolution will be to invite Jenny McCarthy to become a regular blogger. It’s coming. Just you wait.

Even worse, she’ll fit right in from day one.