Archive for 2008

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

GM Files: Monsanto Bullies Dairy Farmers, States to Deceive Consumers

Thursday, March 6th, 2008

The Natural Solutions Foundation, the leading Global Health Freedom organization, is proud to present this information to you. We protect your right to know about – and to use – natural ways to maintain and regain your health, no matter where in the world you live. Among your freedoms is the right to clean, unadulterated food free of genetic manipulation, pesticides, heavy metals or other contaminants and access to herbs, supplements, frequency devices and other means as therapies that may benefit or to protect your well-being without drugs and other dangerous interventions, if you choose.

For more information on our global programs, including the International Decade of Nutrition, and our US based ones, please visit us at www.HealthFreedomUSA.org and www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org and join the free email list for the Health Freedom eAlerts to keep you in the loop, informed and active defending your right to make your own decisions about your health and wellbeing!
Our activities are supported 100% by your tax deductible donations. Please give generously (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=189) to the Natural Solutions Foundation. Thank you for your support.
Feel free to disseminate this information as widely as possible with full attribution.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima

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

When reading the following article, bear in mind that under Codex, all cows are to be treated with Monsanto’s recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone and there are no upper limits. Since peasant farmers who cannot read or write have neither the money nor the skills necessary to manage chronically ill cows who require antibiotics, etc., to control their constant infections (including mastitis which creates continual production of pus in milk), they will be driven out of the milk business which means, in all too many cases, off their farms.
The creation of every increasing cadres of the abjectly urban poor is fueled by just this process.

The Natural Solutions Foundation International Decade of Nutrition is helping to stop this cycle.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org

Monsanto doesn’t want consumers to know the truth about the milk they’re drinking. The corporation’s monopoly is at stake.
‘Frankenfoods’ Giant Monsanto Plays Bully Over Consumer Labeling

By Scott Thill, AlterNet. Posted March 6, 2008.

“There are some corporations that clearly are operating at a level that are disastrous for the general public … And in fact I suppose one could argue that in many respects a corporation of that sort is the prototypical psychopath, at the corporate level instead of the individual level.”

–Dr. Robert Hare, The Corporation

Since 1901, Monsanto has brought us Agent Orange, PCBs, Terminator seeds and recombined milk, among other infamous products. But it’s currently obsessed with the milk, or, more importantly, the milk labels, particularly those that read “rBST-free” or “rBGH-free.” It’s not the “BST” or “BGH” that bothers them so much; after all, bovine somatrophin, also known as bovine growth hormone, isn’t exactly what the company is known for. Which is to say, it’s naturally occurring. No, the problem is the “r” denoting “recombined.” There’s nothing natural about it. In fact, the science is increasingly pointing to the possibility that recombined milk is — surprise! — not as good for you as the real thing.

“Consumption of dairy products from cows treated with rbGH raise a number of health issues,” explained Michael Hansen, a senior scientist for Consumers Union. “That includes increased antibiotic resistance, due to use of antibiotics to treat mastitis and other health problems, as well as increased levels of IGF-1, which has been linked to a range of cancers.”

For its part, Monsanto is leaning on the crutch of terminology to derail the mounting threat to its bottom line: The consumer-driven revolution against recombined food. And so the St. Louis-based agri-chem giant has launched a war of words in the form of a full-court press to suppress the “rBGH-free” label at the state level. And it’s sticking to its guns by obfuscating and indulging in cheap semantics.

“RBST is a supplement that helps the cow produce more milk,” Monsanto spokesperson Lori Hoag explained to me via email. “It is injected into the cow, not into the milk. There is no way to test because the milk is absolutely the same. Neither the public nor a scientist can tell the difference in the milk because there is not a difference. Consumers absolutely have a right to know if there is a difference in foods they are buying. In this case, there simply is not a difference.”

“Monsanto has an unfortunate habit of mixing some things together that confuse the issue,” counters Rick North, director of Campaign for Safe Food from Physicians for Social Responsibility’s Oregon chapter. “It’s true that all cows have natural bovine growth hormone. But only cows injected with recombinant, genetically engineered bovine growth hormone have rBGH. And this isn’t a ‘supplement.’ This is a drug that revs up cow metabolism so high that they’re typically burned out after two lactation cycles and slaughtered. Non-rBGH cows typically live four, seven, ten or more years.”

The threat of rBGH to cows and humans alike encouraged Canada, Australia and parts of the European Union to ban Monsanto’s recombined milk outright. As for the corporation’s native United States, it has predictably signed off on another unproven growth opportunity with possibly lethal environmental side effects. They’re in it for the money. And so the battle lines on the threat have been drawn, as North takes pains to point out, between “the FDA and those who follow them,” and those who don’t. “These proposed state bans or restrictions on rBGH-free type of labeling have nothing to do with protecting consumers,” he asserts. “They have everything to do with protecting Monsanto’s profits.”

But that battle over labels and profits hasn’t stopped Monsanto from creating its own press at home in the United States, where it infamously got two Fox News journos fired in 1997 for refusing to bend the truth about rBGH on the air. Yet, over the long term, the multinational’s attention to press relations hasn’t paid off so well. Medical authorities like Samuel Epstein and Robert Hare, quoted above, have targeted them from both the physical and psychological health perspective. Meanwhile, farmers and consumers across the world have demanded labels that differentiate the recombined milk from its naturally occurring counterparts on the store shelves. And they don’t think it’s too much to ask, given the facts.

Hoag is “accurate” when she argued “that there is no commercial test for this drug,” North concedes. “But that’s entirely different than saying there is no difference. Monsanto and its front groups have tried to equate the lack of a verifying lab test with the label being false or misleading. This is a non sequitur. There are all kinds of legitimate labels that aren’t verified by lab tests, such as state or country of origin labeling, fair trade labeling, bottled water that is labeled as originating from a spring, and so on.”

Monsanto, meanwhile, is bedeviling the details to distort the big picture. “Sure, the label can make a claim one way or the other,” Hoag admitted, “but there is no way to verify that the claim is true. This is precisely why the labels are misleading. They make consumers believe there is a difference, when in fact there is none.”

That sounds simple enough, but consumers don’t seem to need or want Monsanto’s mothering. In 2007, its efforts at an outright ban on rBGH-free labels in Pennsylvania were almost cleared for takeoff, until the state invited its citizens to publicly comment, which eventually doomed the move. That scenario has replayed itself across the United States in accelerated fashion with success.

“The issue looks pretty dead in Indiana and Ohio, and there are solid victories in Pennsylvania and New Jersey,” explains Recipe for America’s Jill Richardson, author of the forthcoming book Vegetables of Mass Destruction. “Utah and Kansas are probably going to revise their bills after their hearings, because of opposition.”

This opposition comes in spite of Monsanto’s funding of so-called grass-roots farming coalitions like the American Farmers for Advancement and Conservation of Technology — also known as, cleverly enough, AFACT. Monsanto’s public relations firm Osborn & Barr built a site for AFACT pro bono, knitting the two organizations together in a way that may not sit well in states currently pondering their own label bans. AFACT’s attacks have virally replicated across the nation, as farmers on Monsanto’s payroll have taken to harassing their state legislatures in concert with the multinational’s usual tactics at the federal level, such as forcing skeptical scientists off advisory panels, intimidating critics and so on.

But the assault has only met equally powerful resistance, as environmental awareness has driven the market into a recombinant-free zone. In the end, this might be Monsanto’s last gasp in the fight.

“Monsanto has seen the writing on the wall in terms of consumer rejection of artificial growth hormones,” claims National Family Farm Coalition policy analyst Irene Lin. “Consumers are becoming more aware and educated about what goes into their bodies and what their kids are drinking. And this is Monsanto’s last-ditch, desperate attempt to maintain its profit. And they are hiding behind dairy farmers to do it.”

But for every farmer who toes Monsanto’s line, there are as many if not more, and not just in the United States, who are amassing in opposition to the multinational’s attempt to change, and then patent, how America grows (and describes) its food. And behind them, in ever larger numbers, are consumers and stores themselves, who are demanding more, not less, information from those who produce the food.

“In the last year or so, some really big names have announced that they will only buy rBGH-free milk,” explains Food and Water Watch’s assistant director Patty Lovera, “including Chipotle, Starbucks, Tillamook and lots of supermarket house brands, like Kroger, Meiers and Publix. Even Kraft is going to do an rBGH-free line of cheese.”

In the end, Monsanto’s quibbling over labels has added up — ironically enough, given all the text it has generated — to censorship, pure and simple. And, as with past debacles like the aforementioned Agent Orange, PCBs and Terminator seed, they’ve established a pattern of stopping at nothing to increase not your health but their profits. At your expense.

“Absolutely nothing good could come from a ban on rBGH-free labeling,” concludes Hansen. “More information is a good thing, and all these state actions are anti-consumer, restrict free speech and interfere with the smooth functioning of free markets.”

Learn more about the ban on rBGH-free labeling and take action.
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/78660/

Posted in About Codex Alimentarius, Activism, Buy-Cott, CODEX Consequences, CODEX Industries, GMOs, Hall of Shame, International Decade of Nutrition, Medical Hazards, The Law & CODEX | No Comments »

GM Files: GM Corn to Make Men Sterile Already a Reality

Thursday, March 6th, 2008

The Natural Solutions Foundation, the leading Global Health Freedom organization, is proud to present this information to you. We protect your right to know about – and to use – natural ways to maintain and regain your health, no matter where in the world you live. Among your freedoms is the right to clean, unadulterated food free of genetic manipulation, pesticides, heavy metals or other contaminants and access to herbs, supplements, frequency devices and other means as therapies that may benefit or to protect your well-being without drugs and other dangerous interventions, if you choose.

For more information on our global programs, including the International Decade of Nutrition, and our US based ones, please visit us at www.HealthFreedomUSA.org and www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org and join the free email list for the Health Freedom eAlerts to keep you in the loop, informed and active defending your right to make your own decisions about your health and wellbeing!
Our activities are supported 100% by your tax deductible donations. Please give generously (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=189) to the Natural Solutions Foundation. Thank you for your support.
Feel free to disseminate this information as widely as possible with full attribution.

The World Health Organization has a Task Force on the Regulation of Male Fertility. In 1990 a paper was published in Lancet, a well-regarded British medical journal detailing the use of testosterone injections to render men sterile. The abstract of the article noted “Hormonal regimens that induce azoospermia [lack of fertile sperm] can provide highly effective, sustained, and reversible male contraception with minimum side-effects.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1977002
Minimum, that is, if the increase in testosterone does not promote tumors (including cancer) in the brain, prostate and elsewhere as it is well documented to do.

The Natural Solutions Foundation believes that the genetic engineering of food will inevitably lead to serious damage to animals, plants and the environment which have not been taken into account through the US policy of declaring GM foods equivalent to non GM ones. This policy was put into action by President George H. W. Bush and has led to the FDA’s refusal to require or conduct safety (or other) tests on GM foods and to allow ANY food patented for its GM modifications on the market. In a clever end-run, the US is now attempting to have Codex Alimentarius, the body which sets standards for the international trade of food, to declare that any food on the market is, by definition, to be considered safe. That way, countries which require labeling of GM foods, or which ban it outright, will likely face crippling World Trade Organizations sanctions.

At the Working Group convened by the Codex Committee on Food Labeling (CCFL) this past February in Accra, Ghana, the US worked mightily to make that language part of a document which it helped to author and which may become an official Codex text. African countries saw the strategy and opposed it en bloc, supported by Russia, Japan, Norway, Switzerland and the EU.

This first step toward autonomy from the US corporate friendly policy on GM foods must be followed by similar strong stands at the upcoming CCFL meeting and forthcoming ones as well.

The Natural Solutions Foundation is giving its strong support to such efforts. As an organization supported totally by donations, our work requires your support. US donations are fully tax deductible. Recurring donations are particularly helpful to us. Click here (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=189) to make your donation now. And don’t forget to sign up for the free Health Freedom eAlerts covering the full range of health freedom issues with powerful action steps in every issue. Click here (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=187) to sign up now.

Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima

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

The World Health Organization also has a Task Force on Vaccines for Fertility Regulation. An article in Human Reproduction (Human Reproduction, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 166-172, 1991© 1991 European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology) called “The WHO Task Force on Vaccines for Fertility Regulation. Its formation, objectives and research activities” by P.D. Griffin of the Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction, World Health Organization 1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland summarized its work this way:

“Over the past 18 years, the WHO Task Force on Vaccines for Fertility Regulation has been supporting basic and clinical research on the development of birth control vaccines directed against the gametes or the preimplantation embryo. These studies have involved the use of advanced procedures in peptide chemistry, hybridoma technology and molecular genetics as well as the evaluation of a number of novel approaches in general vaccinology. As a result of this inter national, collaborative effort, a prototype anti-HCG vaccine is now undergoing clinical testing, raising the prospect that a totally new family planning method may be available before the end of the current decade.”

That means that since 1973 the World Health Organization has been looking for ways to use vaccines and injections to control the world’s fertility. If those methods are offered to men and women so that they can make a choice about their reproductive lives, well and good. If, however, they are hidden in smallpox vaccines (Africa) with the avowed purpose of “eliminating 150 million excess Sub Saharan Africans” as they were in vaccines distributed by the WHO starting in 1985, or in tetanus vaccines which would cause abortions in South and Central America women starting in the 1990’s, we are not dealing with reproductive options, but reproductive genocide.

The FDA approved the same sterility vaccine in the US within the last 18 months. For what purpose? Which group will receive it in which vaccine, hidden in a syringe supposedly offered to “protect” patients?

Is the World Health Organization empowered to decide which group of people may reproduce and which must become sterile? And if so, by whom is it so empowered? How about the FDA?

As bad as this news is, there is worse news yet to come. Corn, sacred in Mexico and Central America as the very staff of life, has been turned into the very end of life. Genetic modification of corn has turned the Mexo American giver of life into the stuff that can end a race – perhaps the human race – by engendering sterility in males who eat it.

Genetically modified corn is used to create high fructose corn syrup, flavors, starches, flours, proteins, sugars and most of the other ingredients which make up our processed foods. The US refuses to allow the labeling of foods which contain genetically modified ingredients (like corn) to be labeled to indicate that fact so we are looking at the possibility of undeclared birth control “foods” rendering whole populations sterile. The US Government, starting with George Herbert Walker Bush, has adopted the policy that genetically modified foods are the same as unmodified ones. The sterility corn is therefore, under this policy, the same as natural corn.

If the US has its way, all such products will be acceptable for international trade without any labeling. It behooves the other countries of the world to face down the demands of the US and its allies at the Codex table to make sure that no such permission is granted, that a ban on GM food is put in place for the international trade of seed and processed food, flours and other consumables, that animals are not fed GM feeds and that all genetically modified foods imported from countries such as the US bear not only the information that they contain GM food, but the specific strain which they contain listed on their label for both bulk processors and the final consumer

A small California biotech company, Epicyte, in 2001 announced the development of genetically engineered corn which contained a spermicide which made the semen of men who ate it sterile. At the time Epicyte had a joint venture agreement to spread its technology with DuPont and Syngenta, two of the sponsors of the Svalbard Doomsday Seed Vault. Epicyte was since acquired by a North Carolina biotech company. Astonishing to learn was that Epicyte had developed its spermicidal GMO corn with research funds from the US Department of Agriculture, the same USDA which, despite worldwide opposition, continued to finance the development of Terminator technology, now held by Monsanto.

In the 1990’s the UN’s World Health Organization launched a campaign to vaccinate millions of women in Nicaragua, Mexico and the Philippines between the ages of 15 and 45, allegedly against Tentanus, a sickness arising from such things as stepping on a rusty nail. The vaccine was not given to men or boys, despite the fact they are presumably equally liable to step on rusty nails as women.

Because of that curious anomaly, Comite Pro Vida de Mexico, a Roman Catholic lay organization became suspicious and had vaccine samples tested. The tests revealed that the Tetanus vaccine being spread by the WHO only to women of child-bearing age contained human Chorionic Gonadotrophin or hCG, a natural hormone which when combined with a tetanus toxoid carrier stimulated antibodies rendering a woman incapable of maintaining a pregnancy. None of the women vaccinated were told.

It later came out that the Rockefeller Foundation along with the Rockefeller’s Population Council, the World Bank (home to CGIAR), and the United States’ National Institutes of Health had been involved in a 20-year-long project begun in 1972 to develop the concealed abortion vaccine with a tetanus carrier for WHO. In addition, the Government of Norway, the host to the Svalbard Doomsday Seed Vault, donated $41 million to develop the special abortive Tetanus vaccine.

Is it a coincidence that these same organizations, from Norway to the Rockefeller Foundation to the World Bank are also involved in the Svalbard seed bank project? According to Prof. Francis Boyle who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by the US Congress, the Pentagon is ‘now gearing up to fight and win biological warfare’ as part of two Bush national strategy directives adopted, he notes, ‘without public knowledge and review’ in 2002. Boyle adds that in 2001-2004 alone the US Federal Government spent $14.5 billion for civilian bio-warfare-related work, a staggering sum.

Rutgers University biologist Richard Ebright estimates that over 300 scientific institutions and some 12,000 individuals in the USA today have access to pathogens suitable for biowarfare. Alone there are 497 US Government NIH grants for research into infectious diseases with biowarfare potential. Of course this is being justified under the rubric of defending against possible terror attack as so much is today.
Many of the US Government dollars spent on biowarfare research involve genetic engineering. MIT biology professor Jonathan King says that the ‘growing bio-terror programs represent a significant emerging danger to our own population.’ King adds, ‘while such programs are always called defensive, with biological weapons, defensive and offensive programs overlap almost completely.’

Time will tell whether, God Forbid, the Svalbard Doomsday Seed Bank of Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Foundation is part of another Final Solution, this involving the extinction of the Late, Great Planet Earth.

F. William Engdahl is the author of Seeds of Destruction, the Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation just released by Global Research. He also the author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, Pluto Press Ltd.

Posted in GMOs, Medical Hazards, Privacy | No Comments »

State Using Children as Young as Five As Informants Against Parents

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

The Natural Solutions Foundation, the leading Global Health Freedom organization, is proud to present this information to you. We protect your right to know about – and to use – natural ways to maintain and regain your health, no matter where in the world you live. Among your freedoms is the right to clean, unadulterated food free of genetic manipulation, pesticides, heavy metals or other contaminants and access to herbs, supplements, frequency devices and other means as therapies that may benefit or to protect your well-being without drugs and other dangerous interventions, if you choose.

For more information on our global programs, including the International Decade of Nutrition, and our US based ones, please visit us at www.HealthFreedomUSA.org and www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org and join the free email list for the Health Freedom eAlerts to keep you in the loop, informed and active defending your right to make your own decisions about your health and wellbeing!
Our activities are supported 100% by your tax deductible donations. Please give generously (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=189) to the Natural Solutions Foundation. Thank you for your support.
Feel free to disseminate this information as widely as possible with full attribution.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima

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

(NaturalNews) Encouraged by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), pediatricians across the United States have begun questioning children about their parents’ habits, in some cases even filing police reports based on this information, according to an opinion article published in the Boston Herald.

Article author Michael Graham recounts that his own children were asked by their doctor whether their parents used drugs and alcohol, owned guns, or were abusive. The doctor did not seek parental permission before asking the questions, nor did he inform them that they were being asked; Graham and his wife found out only after their children came home from the visits.

“The doctor wanted to know how much you and mom drink, and if I think it’s too much,” Graham reports his daughter saying. “She asked if you two did drugs, or if there are drugs in the house. The doctor wanted to know how we get along. And if, well, Daddy, if you made me feel uncomfortable.”

Graham also reports the case of an Uxbridge, Massachusetts man who had his legal gun ownership reported to the police by his daughter’s doctor. The doctor filed a police report after asking the 5-year-old girl if her father owned a gun, then following up with questions to her and her mother about the type and number of the weapons.

Graham blames the trend on guidelines issued by the AAP, which classifies parents as “persons of interest” and encourages doctors to ask children questions in order to uncover inappropriate or illegal behavior.

“The paranoia over parents is so strong that the AAP encourages doctors to ignore ‘legal barriers and deference to parental involvement’ and shake the children down for all the inside information they can get,” Graham writes.

According to Graham, anti-gun advocacy by pediatricians is widespread enough that “some states are considering legislation to stop it.”

“What this interrogation of children demonstrates,” added consumer health advocate Mike Adams, “is just how deeply the medical establishment now believes it has total authority over the lives of patients. This kind of behavior is arrogant, outrageous and should be outlawed,” Adams said.

http://www.naturalnews.com/022764.html

Posted in Medical Hazards, Privacy | No Comments »

Vaccine Freedom Movement Growing

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

Barbara Loe Fisher, the tireless vaccine freedom advocate, has published an excellent partial summary of the growing grassroots opposition to the forced vaccination of children. Here it is:
Grassroots Vaccine Freedom Movement Gears Up

by Barbara Loe Fisher

The grassroots vaccine safety and freedom movement in America, which was launched by parents of DPT vaccine injured children in 1982, has been gaining public support during the past quarter century as the numbers of vaccines medical doctors force children to get has more than doubled. From New York and New Jersey to Missouri and Mississippi Americans young and old in big towns and small cities around the nation are joining together to talk about how to change the increasingly oppressive mandatory vaccination laws in their states so they can make informed, voluntary decisions about vaccination.

It is no surprise that decades of collective denial and neglect by the medical community has led to a demand for fewer and more flexible vaccine laws. The calls jamming the phone lines and the emails and letters from desperate parents pouring into the National Vaccine Information Center have never been more alarming or heartbreaking than they are right now.

Mothers describe how they took their child to a pediatrician or public health clinic for a scheduled well baby “check-up” or sick child visit and witnessed nurses and doctors injecting their child with 5 or 8 or 12 vaccines all at once, Then, they say, they watched their children regress into chronic poor health and disability. Many of the children have suffered previous vaccine reactions, which were ignored or dismissed as “a coincidence” by doctors insisting the children be re-vaccinated. Other children are sick and on antibiotics. Others have been born premature or have personal or family histories of severe allergies and autoimmune and neurological disorders.

Over and over again, mothers describe in identical terms what they witnessed, their babies and children suffer following vaccination – seizures, high pitched screaming, collapse, unconsciousness, high fevers, body rashes, head banging, flapping, profound personality changes – cognitive and physical regression that changes the child physically, mentally and emotionally forever. And over and over again, mothers describe how their pediatricians stubbornly deny the vaccines just given had anything to do with what happened.

As someone who has witnessed the proliferation of vaccines and vaccine laws devastate the health of three generations of children, there are no words to adequately describe the pain, despair and fear that has destroyed the once joyful time of young parenting in America today. Children and their parents have become unwilling victims of a medical- industrial complex driven by the profit motive and powered by an ideology that has a callous disregard for individual human life.

It is no wonder that more and more Americans, young and old, are demanding the right to make informed, voluntary vaccination choices for themselves and their families. The grassroots vaccine safety and freedom movement in America is taking root in many states, particularly in those with the fewest exemptions and most vaccine mandates inflexibly implemented.

The conscientious belief exemption to vaccination should be added to the religious exemption in every state and medical exemptions should be widened to provide enlightened physicians with the power to write exemptions for those who do and do not have medical conditions conforming to the narrow one-size-fits-all contraindication guidelines of the CDC and AAP.

The right to informed consent to use of any pharmaceutical product or medical procedure, which carries a risk of injury or death, is a human right. Vaccination should be no exception.

NVIC supports the efforts in every state to change vaccine laws to allow informed, voluntary vaccine decision-making. In Mississippi, parents will be meeting March 17, 2008 at 6 p.m. at the Flowood Public Library, 103 Winners Circle, Flowood, MS to talk about adding a conscientious belief exemption to Mississippi state laws, which only allow a medical exemption. Go to http://parents.m eetup.com/465/ for more information.

***********************************************************

“As states move to require more vaccines for school-age children, an increasing number of parents are saying no to some of the inoculations. They are seeking exemptions from the state in growing numbers….Rita M. Palma, of Bayport, N.Y., sought a religious exemption from vaccines for her three sons but was turned down after a hearing with school officials. She said she had become increasingly uncomfortable with the vaccines the boys were getting…..After submitting a written request for a religious waiver, she was questioned at a two-hour hearing by the lawyer for the Bayport-Bluepoint School District and turned down last February by the school board. The New York Civil Liberties Union is now pursuing her case. “It is unbelievably traumatic to have your religious convictions questioned,” Mrs. Palma said. “For schools to be in the religious sincerity business is just outrageous.” Sue Collins, co-founder of the New Jersey Alliance for Informed Choice in Vaccination, said parents often face a variety of roadblocks when seeking vaccine exemptions in the state. “We see schools decline letters, or tell parents that clergy must write letters,” she said. “Parents are being harassed and being asked to do things above and beyond the law.” Assemblywoman Charlotte Vandervalk, a Republican from Bergen County, who introduced a conscientious exemption bill for vaccines, said parents shouldn’t have the burden of proving a religious or medical reason to refuse vaccines. “This is America; you don’t force it on everybody,” Ms. Vandervalk said.” – Fran Silverman, New York Times, (March 2, 2008)
http://www.nytimes.com/ 2008/03/02/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/02Rvaccine.ht ml? _r=3&pagewanted=1&ref=nyregionspecial2&oref=slog in&oref=slogin

“The point of it is the parents should be in charge of the health care needs of their children,” said Drumright, whose daughter is 8 and sons are 6 and 4. “It’s not up to the state to dictate to parents how they should make important health care decisions about their children.” Sen. John Loudon, R-Chesterfield, said he’s considering backing a proposal for a personal exemption. He has headed similar efforts in the past, most recently in 2003. “I am always open to it,” Loudon said of the idea of a personal exemption. “I think when a parent does their diligence and has cause for alarm, they should have the authority over government to control the health of their children.”……Missouri parents once had the right to exempt their children from immunizations without needing to provide a reason. But the law changed in 1992, and now parents can only opt out of their kids’ shots for religious or medical reasons…..”As more and more vaccines are being added to the list, that is where you’re getting some pushback by parents, and legitimately so,” said Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, a vaccine safety watchdog agency in Vienna, Va. She said parents are feeling pressured and powerless with all the vaccine mandates. “The one- size-fits all approach to vaccinations … is simply not medically responsible,” Fisher said. “Parents have to be given more flexibility.” – Andale Gross, Associated Press (February 29, 2008)
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/new s/stories.nsf/missouristatenews/story/6B1F6136D15D 8F1F862573FF00201C8D?OpenDocument

“Tyler’s father, Chris Holzinger, said, “After his 2-year-old vaccinations, he became less verbal; eye contact ceased. He started swaying, head-butting, doing a lot of these autistic characteristics.” Tyler’s parents and 200 others are active in an online support group backing a bill giving Mississippi parents the choice to not have all vaccines….Kellie Bischoff, president of the support group, said,”Well, that’s a scary thought, but if you look at the other 48 states with nonmedical exemptions, it really is not an issue. They do not have outbreaks.” Just like the other 48 states, the support group wants religious and philosophical exemptions added to the bill. Mississippi and West Virginia are the only states without the exemptions. Even though it’s risky, the support group president stopped vaccinating her oldest daughter, Emma, at 2 years old because she had seizures. Her youngest, 2- year-old Addie, hasn’t been vaccinated yet. Bischoff said, “If something were to happen and there were a serious vaccine reaction, the parent is ultimately responsible for taking care of this child, not the doctors, not the state, not the school board.” – WAPT-TV (ABC affiliate in Jackson, MS) (February 11, 2008)http://www.wapt.com/news/15276018/detail.html

Posted in Disinformation, Medical Hazards, Miscellaneous, Vaccination | No Comments »

Vaccination Myths and Timelines by Barbara Loe Fisher

Sunday, March 2nd, 2008

The Natural Solutions Foundation, the leading Global Health Freedom organization, is proud to present this information to you. We protect your right to know about – and to use – natural ways to maintain and regain your health, no matter where in the world you live. Among your freedoms is the right to clean, unadulterated food free of genetic manipulation, pesticides, heavy metals or other contaminants and access to herbs, supplements, frequency devices and other means as therapies that may benefit or to protect your well-being without drugs and other dangerous interventions, if you choose.

For more information on our global programs, including the International Decade of Nutrition, and our US based ones, please visit us at www.HealthFreedomUSA.org and www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org and join the free email list for the Health Freedom eAlerts to keep you in the loop, informed and active defending your right to make your own decisions about your health and wellbeing!
Our activities are supported 100% by your tax deductible donations. Please give generously (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=189) to the Natural Solutions Foundation. Thank you for your support.
Feel free to disseminate this information as widely as possible with full attribution.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima

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

Barbara Loe Fisher is an articulate and knowledgeable information source on vaccine dangers and illogic. Her article published below is of outstanding importance. Thank you, Barbara, for your continuing good work.

The Natural Solutions Foundation, too, is continuing to bring you information that you need in every area of health freedom. Keep us strong with your tax deductible donations by setting up a recurring donation at Myths and Timelines

by Barbara Loe Fisher

There are two reasons why people perpetuate a lie, even if they are not the original creators of it. Some do it out of ignorance or carelessness. Others do it deliberately with full knowledge. Sometimes it is difficult to determine whether facts are falsified deliberately or out of ignorance. Whatever the case, it is important to set the record straight when distortion of facts perpetuate a lie, especially when the lives of human beings are at stake.

A June 3, Boston Globe OpEd authored by Paul Offit, M.D. is littered with factual errors that perpetuate pharmaceutical industry-created myths, which have been used for two decades to persuade Congress to pass laws shielding vaccine makers from liability for vaccine injuries and deaths, while giving drug companies huge financial incentives to develop vaccines and lobby for vaccine mandates. Offit blames parents of DPT vaccine injured children seeking financial support for their children for driving drug companies out of the vaccine business. He does this even though he knows perfectly well there are more drug companies producing childhood vaccines today than in 1982.

Offit also blames parents of vaccine injured children for vaccine shortages even though he knows the main causes for vaccine shortages rest with the vaccine manufacturers themselves: production problems affecting distribution, incomplete compliance with FDA standards, and inaccurate predictions for public demand for a vaccine.

Offit further attempts to rewrite medical history by alleging that DPT vaccine does not cause brain damage. He does this even though he knows (1) the largest case controlled study ever conducted to investigate causes of brain damage in children, the 1981 British National Childhood Encephalopathy Study, concluded that the pertussis (whooping cough) portion of DPT vaccine causes acute brain inflammation and permanent brain damage; and (2) the Institute of Medicine agreed with that conclusion in 1994.

Although the federal vaccine injury compensation program (VICP) created by Congress in 1986 was not designed to function as the judge of whether a causal relationship between a particular vaccine and health outcome has been scientifically proven to exist – only to determine whether a child’s injury could be reasonably presumed to be related to vaccination in the absence of a more plausible explanation – it is important to note that the vast majority of vaccine injury awards in the VICP have been for children suffering DPT vaccine brain injuries and deaths. Offit’s attempt to exonerate DPT is part of a larger effort to convince the public – and drug company stockholders – that most vaccines, including his own, have no risks whatsoever.

A relatively small group of individuals worldwide personally profit from patents on childhood vaccines . However, a much larger group of individuals in the medical, research and public health professions in society benefit personally and professionally from government recommendations for universal use of many vaccines, recommendations that are subsequently turned into state vaccine mandates which generate millions, even billions, of dollars for vaccine manufacturers. Vaccine apologists and profiteers have a right to voice their opinions and legally make money in America’s free enterprise system. However, their opinions should be put into proper perspective and the “facts” they use to aggressively promote widespread use of multiple vaccines and advocate one-size-fits-all vaccine policies should be verified before they become urban legend.

When the public trusts blindly, often what is most at risk is the truth.

The National Vaccine Information Center is committed to disseminating information about vaccines and infectious diseases in order to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths through public education and defend the informed consent ethic. Following is information about several myths being perpetuated by those who should know better, as well as a chronology of events between 1982 and 2007 that set the record straight.

MYTH #1: DPT vaccine injury lawsuits in the 1970’s and 1980’s drove most drug companies making vaccines out of US market; or specifically, as Offit states in the June 3, 2007 Boston Globe Op Ed, ” at the beginning of the 1980’s, 18 companies made vaccines, by the end of the decade, only four were left.”

FACT: In 1982, there were four drug companies making and selling vaccines for children in the U.S.: Merck, Wyeth, Lederle and Connaught. In 2007, after two decades of mergers and acquisitions, there are six drug companies making and selling vaccines for children in the U.S.: Merck, Wyeth, Sanofi Pasteur, GlaxoSmithKline, MedImmune and Novartis. Foreign companies, like Australia’s CSL Biotherapies, are poised to enter the lucrative US vaccine market soon. There are more than 200 vaccine trials in various stages worldwide and most vaccines being developed will be targeted by CDC officials and drug company lobbyists for widespread use in order to guarantee stockholder profits for vaccine manufacturers.

MYTH #2: Because DPT vaccine injury lawsuits in the 1970’s and 1980’s drove drug companies out of the US market, vaccine shortages occurred and continue to occur; specifically, Offit blames “the legacy of pertussis litigation” for shortages of tetanus vaccine “in 1998,” pneumococcal (Prevnar) vaccine “beginning in 2000” and influenza vaccine “between 2003- 2004.”

FACT: In a 2002 Government Accounting Office (GAO) investigation and report,”Childhood Vaccines: Ensuring an Adequate Supply Poses Continuing Challenges,” the threat of vaccine injury lawsuits was not listed among reasons for vaccine shortages in the U.S.. Instead, the GAO identified primary reasons as (1) manufacturing production problems; (2) calls by immunization policy-making bodies to remove a preservative from vaccines as a precautionary measure; (3) a manufacturer’s decision to cease production of some vaccines; and (4) greater than- expected demand for a vaccine that had recently been added to the immunization schedule.

Almost all of the vaccine shortages that the U.S. has experienced have been due to vaccine manufacturer production and government regulation compliance problems. Dr Offit should be well aware of reasons for vaccine shortages in the past decade because he was publicly identified as a member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) from 1998 to 2003.

The shortage of adult tetanus vaccine occurred in early 2001, not 1998, when Wyeth-Lederle abruptly announced it had stopped production of tetanus-toxoid containing products, as well as DTaP vaccine. The 2002 GAO report revealed Wyeth had been planning to leave the DTaP and tetanus vaccine market but accelerated its departure when it realized it would have problems responding to FDA requirements to make “significant upgrades to its facilities where tetanus toxoid was manufactured.” In addition, in August 2001, Merck temporarily suspended operations in one of its facilities manufacturing MMR and Varicella (chicken pox) vaccines to address issues raised by FDA inspectors during a plant inspection and to make scheduled modifications to its facility. According to the 2002 GAO report, the time it took to make plant modifications and difficulties in meeting FDA manufacturing requirements contributed to shortages of MMR, varicella, DTaP, and Td vaccines between the end of 2001 and summer of 2002.

The shortage of pneumococcal vaccine in 2001- 2002, occurred when Wyeth-Lederle aggressively promoted its vaccine after FDA licensure in 2000 but failed to correctly predict public demand for the vaccine that made Prevnar the best selling new pharmaceutical product in 2001. Although failure of supply to meet demand was the main reason for the shortage, the 2002 GAO report added “”the company’s production of the vaccine was also hampered by ongoing manufacturing problems” and “changes made in the company’s quality assurance procedures” to comply with FDA standards.

The shortage of influenza vaccine in 2003-2004 and flu-related deaths resulted when a more severe type of influenza circulating that year (A/Fujian) was not contained in the flu vaccine. CDC officials, who knew it but didn’t tell Americans, publicized the deaths of children attributed to the Fujian flu in the fall of 2003 and urged that everyone get vaccinated, which generated a huge demand for flu vaccine that exceeded supply.
http://www.nvic.org/History/Newsletters/3770Reaction.pdf

MYTH #3: DPT vaccine does not cause brain inflammation and permanent brain damage; specifically Offit states that “Subsequent studies of hundreds of thousands of children showed that the risk of permanent brain damage was the same in children who had not received the vaccine as in those who had.”

FACT: Of all the vaccines which have been routinely used by children in the past century, the brain damaging effects of the pertussis (whooping cough) portion of DPT vaccine is among the most well documented in the scientific literature. Created in 1912, the crude pertussis vaccine basically consisted of B. pertussis bacteria killed with heat, preserved with formaldehyde, and injected into children. In the early 1940’s, aluminum was added as an adjuvant and later the mercury preservative, thimerosal, was added when pertussis was combined with diphtheria and tetanus vaccines to create DPT. Pertussis vaccine was never studied in large clinical trials before being given to children in the first half of the 20th century or after it was combined into DPT and recommended for mass use by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 1947.

The pertussis vaccine’s ability to kill was first signaled in 1933 when T. Madsen reported two babies died within minutes of vaccination. In 1947, Matthew Brody gave detailed descriptions of two cases involving brain damage and death after pertussis vaccination. But, it was the 1948 published case study by Byers and Moll that gave the strongest warning that children were suffering brain inflammation within 72 hours of pertussis vaccination and being left with various kinds of brain damage. Forty years later, the prospective UCLA/FDA study published in Pediatrics in 1981 comparing DT and DPT vaccines would find that 1 in 875 DPT shots is followed by either a convulsion or collapse shock episode within 48 hours of vaccination.

Biological mechanisms for pertussis vaccine induced brain damage center on pertussis toxin (PT), one of the most lethal toxins in nature. Pertussis toxin is a known neurotoxin, a reliable inducer of brain inflammation and brain damage, which is why it is used in lab animals to deliberately induce EAE (experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis). Pertussis toxin is implicated in brain inflammation caused by pertussis (whooping cough) complications as well as pertussis vaccine complications. Unfortunately, pertussis toxin is also thought to be responsible for stimulating immunity which is why it remains in DPT, DTaP and Tdap vaccines.. Other ingredients in DPT vaccine, which have been associated with neuroimmune dysfunction and may interact synergistically with pertussis toxin to cause shock, brain damage or death are: endotoxin, aluminum, and mercury.

After decades of reports in the medical literature that the pertussis portion of DPT vaccine was causing brain damage in some children, the large, case controlled National Childhood Encephalopathy Study was conducted in Britain and published in 1981. It confirmed a statistically significant association between pertussis vaccine or pertussis-containing vaccines (DPT) and acute brain inflammation leading to permanent brain damage. An NCES reanalysis 10 years later re-confirmed the finding. In 1994, the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, published a report validating the conclusions of NCES, stating that ” “the balance of evidence is consistent with a causal relation between DPT and the forms of chronic nervous system dysfunction in the NCES in those children who experience a serious acute neurological illness within 7 days after receiving DPT vaccine.”

1982- 2007: FACTS ABOUT VACCINES, LAWSUITS & SHORTAGES

In April 1982, before the NBC Emmy award winning documentary “DPT: Vaccine Roulette” was broadcast and alerted American parents that children were suffering brain damage after receiving DPT vaccine, there were four commercial vaccine manufacturers producing and marketing childhood vaccines: Merck, Wyeth, Lederle and Connaught. In 1982, children were given only three vaccines: live oral polio vaccine (Lederle, sole source); MMR vaccine (Merck, sole source); and DPT vaccine (Wyeth, owned by American Home Products; Lederle, owned by American Cyanamid; and the Canadian corporation, Connaught shared the DPT market).

1982-1984: A series of congressional hearings were held in the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources on DPT vaccine safety.

April 1984: A jury in Idaho found Lederle negligent in the manufacture of DPT vaccine on strict liability grounds. Between 1978 and 1984, DPT vaccine injury cases had been settled out of court or the manufacturer had prevailed but a jury had never returned a guilty verdict against a DPT vaccine manufacturer. In Toner v Lederle, the Idaho jury awarded Kevin Toner $1.4M for paralysis he suffered after reacting with transverse myelitis to his first DPT shot at two months of age. Lederle was found guilty on the grounds of strict liability. The jury agreed with plaintiff’s lawyers that a drug company could produce a vaccine that was “unavoidably unsafe” and passed FDA standards, while still being negligent for not doing everything it could do to reduce the risk associated with the vaccine. [Lederle would eventually appeal the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which would uphold the jury verdict in an opinion written by Judge Anthony Kennedy, now serving on the US Supreme Court. In 1988, Lederle appealed to the US Supreme Court, who turned the case down, and the jury verdict and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decisions held.]

June 1984: Wyeth announced it was no longer going to produce and sell DPT vaccine, leaving the market to Lederle and Connaught. Merck, Lederle and Connaught increased pressure on Congress to pass legislation shielding them from liability by suggesting that if they were not protected, they would leave the nation without a vaccine supply.

December 1984: The CDC announced an emergency shortage of DPT vaccine and blamed it on the fact Wyeth abruptly ceased production of DPT due to DPT vaccine injury lawsuits. However, in testimony before the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health and the Environment, the vice president of Wyeth testified that the company was producing more vaccine in 1984 than it had in 1983 and planned to produce still more in 1985 because it was selling all of its pertussis vaccine to Lederle for Lederle to distribute. When questioned, federal health officials claimed they didn’t know Wyeth was doing that.

February 1985: The book DPT: A Shot in the Dark by Coulter & Fisher was published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, documenting scientific evidence for DPT vaccine-induced brain and immune system dysfunction and included more than 100 new original case histories. The book would eventually be used by the Institute of Medicine as a reference for its 1991 report “Adverse Effects of Pertussis and Rubella Vaccines,” which confirmed a causal relationship between DPT vaccine and acute encephalopathy.

1985: The FDA gave a license to Praxis Biologicals for the first HIB vaccine for use in 24 month old children and, shortly after, Lederle and Connaught also were given licenses to manufacture HIB vaccine.

1985: More than 200 lawsuits were pending in US courts against DPT vaccine manufacturers and pediatricians for DPT vaccine injury but most lawsuits continued to be settled on the courthouse steps for modest sums, after which all records were sealed from public view. Under pressure from drug companies and pediatricians to ensure the vaccine supply, Congress continued to hold hearings on a proposed federal vaccine injury compensation program. The program would provide a no-fault, expedited, less adversarial alternative to a court trial for families of catastrophically injured vaccine victims.

July 1986: After justifying a 10,000 percent in DPT vaccine prices to Congress by blaming it on DPT vaccine injury lawsuits, a July 25 hearing of the House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment heard charges that Lederle told the Securities and Exchange Commission, Wall Street and prospective investors that DPT vaccine injury lawsuits pose no risk of “material adverse effect” on the company. A US House Subcommittee report revealed $16.2 million was paid in settlements by US vaccine manufacturers to 52 children injured by all childhood vaccines (DPT, MMR and polio) during the previous five years, which worked out to an average of $300,000 per case. Out of the 15 cases that went to jury trial, the manufacturers won four cases, lost six and five were on appeal.

November 1986: President Reagan signed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act creating the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), the National Vaccine Program, and instituting safety provisions in the mass vaccination system which required doctors to give parents benefit and risk information before vaccination; to report serious health problems following vaccination to a centralized federal Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS); to write down serious health problems following vaccination in a child’s permanent medical record; and to keep a permanent record of all vaccines and lot numbers administered. Under the law, the VICP would use a Table of Compensable Events to determine whether a child’s injury would automatically be presumed to be vaccine-related in the absence of a more plausible explanation. A provision in the law required the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine, to assemble physician committees to review the medical literature for evidence that vaccines can cause injury and death.

1986: The FDA gave Merck a license for the first recombinant DNA vaccine, hepatitis B vaccine

1987: Wyeth and Ayerst merged into Wyeth- Ayerst.

December 1987: The FDA gave a license to Connaught for a conjugate HIB vaccine.

1988: The FDA gave Lederle a license for a conjugated HIB vaccine and the CDC recommended universal use of conjugate HIB vaccine for all children at 18 months.

1989: The British drug company, SmithKline Beecham (SKB), entered the lucrative US vaccine market and the FDA licensed SKB’s genetically engineered hepatitis B vaccine.

1989: The FDA gave Merck a license for conjugated HIB vaccine.

1989: Praxis Biologicals was acquired by American Cyanamid to create Lederle- Praxis.

1989: The French Merieux Institute acquired Connaught Lab of Canada and became Pasteur Merieux.

January 1991: The CDC recommended the universal use of HIB vaccine and hepatitis B vaccine for all infants.

December 1991: The FDA gave Lederle a license for acellular DTaP vaccine for the fourth and fifth booster doses for children 18 months and older and, in 1992, Connaught received a license for acellular DTaP vaccine for booster doses.

January 1993: A unanimous US 4th Circuit Court of Appeals decision affirmed the right of seven adults and children who contracted polio from the oral polio vaccine between 1979 and 1987 to recover damages from the federal government because the FDA permitted vaccine manufactured by Lederle Labs to be released to the public even though the vaccine failed to meet FDA safety standards.

1993: The Vaccines for Children Program was established by Congress, which allocated federal funds to provide CDC recommended vaccinations for all children, without regard for ability to pay. Vaccine tracking systems were created.

1994: Wyeth-Ayerst acquired American Cyanamid and its subsidiary Lederle-Praxis to form Wyeth- Lederle.

1994: The Institute of Medicine published two congressionally mandated reviews of the medical literature, “Adverse Events Associated with Childhood Vaccines,” which confirmed that vaccines can cause chronic brain and immune system dysfunction and death; and “DPT Vaccine and Chronic Nervous System Dysfunction,” which confirmed a reanalysis of the findings of the 1981 landmark British National Childhood Encephalopathy Study (NCES). IOM concluded that “the balance of evidence is consistent with a causal relation between DPT and the forms of chronic nervous system dysfunction in the NCES in those children who experience a serious acute neurological illness within 7 days after receiving DPT vaccine.”

March 1995: The FDA gave Merck a license for live varicella zoster (chicken pox) vaccine.

1995: The FDA gave SmithKline Beecham a license for the first hepatitis A vaccine.

1995: Public health officials at the Department of Health and Human Services, with the assistance of the Department of Justice officials, change the Table of Compensable Events in the VICP to reduce the numbers of children automatically awarded compensation under the Table; from this point on, almost all vaccine victims would be required to meet a higher causation standard for presumption in order to obtain an award in the VICP.

1996: The FDA gave Wyeth-Lederle and Pasteur Merieux licenses for their acellular DTaP vaccines for use in infants two months and older.

July 1996: The CDC recommended all 12-18 month old children receive varicella zoster (chicken pox) vaccine.

1997: The FDA gave a license to a new vaccine manufacturer to enter the US market, North American Vaccine, for DTaP vaccine and gave SmithKline Beecham a license for DTaP.

1998: Andrew Wakefield, M.D. and colleagues in Britain published a study presenting clinical evidence for an association between MMR vaccine, intestinal bowel dysfunction and autism.

1998: The CDC recommended acellular DTaP vaccine for all five doses to replace whole cell DPT.

August 1998: The FDA gave a license to Wyeth- Lederle for the first live rotavirus vaccine (monkey- human hybrid virus) and the CDC recommended it for universal use in all infants in early 1999.

1999: Pasteur Merieux merged with Aventis to become Aventis Pasteur.

May 1999: U.S. House Committee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources of the Government Reform Committee helds a hearing on hepatitis B vaccine immune and brain dysfunction.

June 1999: The CDC recommended exclusive use of inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) for infants and children, to replace the live oral polio vaccine (OPV) that can cause vaccine strain polio in a vaccinated person or someone who comes into close contact with a recently vaccinated person’s body fluids.

July 1999: The FDA and EPA jointly advised the vaccine manufacturers to remove thimerosal (mercury) preservatives from childhood vaccines as a precautionary measure after a congressionally mandated review of mercury in products revealed cumulative exposures from childhood vaccines that exceeded EPA guidelines.

July 1999: The CDC announced recommendations for use of rotavirus vaccine in infants was suspended due to reports of bowel obstruction in infants. Wyeth- Lederle withdraws the vaccine from the market in the fall.

August 1999: The U.S. House Government Reform Committee, chaired by Congressman Dan Burton, held the first of a several year series of investigative hearings on vaccine safety issues, including vaccines and autism.

August 1999: The FDA gave a license to Merck for thimerosal-free hepatitis B vaccine and thimerosal-free HIB vaccine and gave SmithKlineBeecham a license for a trace thimerosal hepatitis B vaccine in March 2000.

2000: SmithKline Beecham merged with Glaxo Wellcome to become GlaxoSmithKline.

February 2000: The FDA gave Wyeth- Lederle a license for the first 7-valent pneumococcal vaccine (Prevnar) and in June 2000 the CDC recommended it for universal use in all infants.

January 2001: Wyeth-Lederle abruptly announced it had stopped production of tetanus-toxoid containing products, as well as DTaP vaccine, leaving the market to Aventis Pasteur and GlaxoSmithKline. As a result, adult tetanus vaccine lagged behind demand between 2001-2002, temporarily resulting in Td shortages. The 2002 GAO report revealed the reasons behind Wyeth- Lederle’s action: the company had been planning to leave the DTaP and Td market but accelerated its departure when it realized it would be difficult “to respond to requirements set forth in a consent decree with the federal government. To comply with these requirements, the company faced making significant upgrades to its facilities where tetanus-toxoid was manufactured.”

2001: An hypothesis entitled Autism: A novel form of mercury poisoning by Sallie Bernard and others is published in Medical Hypothesis.

2001: Wyeth-Lederle’s Prevnar vaccine became the number one best selling new pharmaceutical on the US market. However, Prevnar supply shortages occurred because Wyeth-Lederle had aggressively promoted the vaccine before and after licensure while failing to gauge public demand so supply fell far short of demand and caused temporary shortages. In addition, there were significant manufacturing problems that reduced Prevnar production and release of vaccine in 2001 and 2002. A 2002 GAO report “Childhood Vaccines: Ensuring an Adequate Supply Poses Continuing Challenges” confirmed that “CDC estimates the monthly national need for this vaccine to be 1.3 million doses, but the manufacturer was only able to provide about half the needed doses during the first 5 months of 2002. Company officials said an extensive pre-education campaign resulted in record-breaking adoption of the vaccine. The company’s production of the vaccine was also hampered by ongoing manufacturing problems. Changes made in the company’s quality assurance procedures, partly to comply with the terms of a consent decree with the federal government, resulted in delays in the release of the vaccine. Manufacturing equipment problems also affected the manufacturer’s ability to meet demand.”

March 2001: The FDA gave Aventis Pasteur a license for thimerosal free DTaP vaccine.

April 2001: The Institute of Medicine issued a report on MMR vaccine and autism concluding that ” the evidence favors rejection of the causal relationship at the population level between MMR vaccine and autistic spectrum disorders” but also stated that “the proposed biological models linking MMR vaccination to autism spectrum disorders, although far from established, are nevertheless not disproved” and urged further research be conducted.

August 2001: Merck temporarily suspended operations in one of its facilities manufacturing MMR and Varicella (chicken pox) vaccines to address issues raised by FDA inspectors during a plant inspection and to make scheduled modifications to its facility. According to the 2002 GAO report, the time it took to make plant modifications and difficulties in meeting FDA manufacturing requirements contributed to shortages of MMR, varicella, DTaP, and Td vaccines between the end of 2001 and summer of 2002.

September 2001: The FDA gave Chiron/Evans a license to manufacture flu vaccine with trace amounts of thimerosal.

September 11, 2001: Terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City. Within weeks, DOD officials suggested terrorists had weaponized smallpox and anthrax that could be used to attack and infect large numbers of Americans. In the name of national security, eventually drug company and government officials persuaded Congress to pass legislation (Homeland Security, MSEHPA, Bioshield, BARDA) giving sweeping new emergency powers to federal and state public health officials while appropriating billions of dollars to develop experimental bioterrorism and pandemic flu vaccines. At the same time, Congress yielded to drug company lobbyists and public health officials seeking liability shields for drug companies and vaccine administrators to absolve them from legal responsibility for vaccine injuries and deaths that occur in the future when the Secretary of Health declares a public health “emergency” and orders mass use of experimental vaccines.

October 2001: The Institute of Medicine issued a report on thimerosal-containing vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders which concluded that the hypothesis, while not proven, is “biologically plausible” and called for further research.

February 2002: GlaxoSmithKline ceased manufacture and distribution of Lyme disease vaccine, citing insufficient market, after adults and children injured by Osp-A Lyme vaccine speak out about their reactions.

2002: American Home Products changed its name to Wyeth.

September 2002: The FDA gave Aventis Pasteur a license to manufacture a thimerosal-free influenza vaccine.

June 2003: The FDA gave a license to MedImmune for the first live virus nasally administered influenza vaccine (FluMist).

October 2003: The CDC recommended that children 6 to 23 months of age receive an annual flu vaccination.

2003-2004: A mini-epidemic of a more severe type of influenza caused by the A/Fujian strain occurred around the world, including the U.S. In spring of 2003, federal health agencies and the pharmaceutical industry knew the genetically mutated type A flu was emerging out of Asia and causing significant complications, including death, but chose not to include it in the 2003/2004 flu vaccine formula after the WHO voted to stay with strains that had been included in the previous year’s formulation (A/Panama, A/Caledonia and B/Hong Kong). Without informing the public that the flu vaccine did not contain the strain of flu causing severe flu that season, the CDC heavily publicized child flu deaths in the fall of 2003 and Americans stood in long lines that fall and winter to get flu vaccine, which caused a vaccine shortage and subsequent CDC-recommended rationing of flu vaccine supplies. The FDA stated that “between October 2003 and early January 2004, the deaths of 93 children younger than 18 had been reported to the CDC, according to preliminary data” and eventually the CDC would state that 152 flu related deaths occurred in children younger than 18 that year.

May 2004: The Institute of Medicine published a report rejecting a causal relationship between thimerosal containing vaccines and autism, concluding that hypotheses generated to date concerning biological mechanisms for vaccine induced autism are theoretical only. The IOM Committee discouraged further scientific research into the vaccine-autism association.

Summer 2004: Influenza vaccine manufactured by the British Chiron Corporation, which provides about half the inactivated influenza vaccine for the U.S., was found to be contaminated with bacteria. There was a flu vaccine shortage in the US during the 2004-2005 season as a result.

2004: Aventis Pasteur merged with Sanofi to become Sanofi-Pasteur and one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies.

October 2004: Two professors from the Harvard School of Public Health published an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, stating “We independently searched reported jury verdicts and judicial decisions for cases involving flu vaccine and found only 10 reported cases in the last 20 years…..overall there is little evidence of significant litigation involving the flu vaccine….by all appearances the situation is not one in which a rational observer would conclude that litigation is a substantial burden on manufacturers.”

October 2004: US District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan issued an injunction blocking DOD from ordering US soldiers receive anthrax vaccine without their informed consent, citing the reactive anthrax vaccine’s “experimental” status because the FDA had never licensed it as effective for use against weaponized inhalation anthrax. [DOD would subsequently get around the injunction by requesting the Secretary of Health and Human Services utilize recently acquired Project Bioshield powers and issue an “Emergency Use” authorization].

December 2004: FDA gave Sanofi Pasteur a license for thimerosal-free influenza vaccine.

January 2005: The FDA gave Sanofi- Pasteur a license for a new meningococcal and diphtheria toxoid conjugate vaccine (Menactra) and in May 2005, the CDC recommended it for all 11-12 year old children.

April 2005: Evidence of Harm by David Kirby was published by St. Martin’s Press, presenting documentation for an association between mercury containing vaccines and autism.

May 2005: The FDA gave GlaxoSmithKline a license for Tdap for use in children 10 to 18 years old and in June gave Sanofi Pasteur a license for Tdap for persons 11 to 64 years old, after which the CDC immediately recommended Tdap be given to all 11-12 year old children.

October 2005: The CDC recommended that all 12 month old infants routinely receive hepatitis A vaccine.

February 2006: The FDA gave Merck a license for a new live rotavirus vaccine (human-cow hybrid virus) and in March 2006 the CDC recommended it for all infants;

March 2006: The FDA gave Merck a license for the first HPV vaccine (GARDASIL) and in June 2006 the CDC recommended it for all 11 year old girls.

April 2006: Novartis acquired Chiron, entering the US flu vaccine market (FluViron)

May 2006: The FDA gave a license to Merck for herpes zoster (shingles) vaccine and in October 2006 the CDC recommended it for use by all Americans aged 60 and older.

By 2007 American children were being told by government health officials and pediatricians to get 48 doses of 14 vaccines by age six and 53-56 doses of 15 or 16 vaccines by age 12. In May 2007, CNN Money reported predictions that vaccine industry sales will more than double by 2010.

Posted in Medical Hazards, Vaccination | No Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »