Books, Documentaries, Reviews: “The Greater Good”–Are Vaccines Safe?

Books, Documentaries, Reviews:  October 21, 2013

“The Greater Good”

Are Vaccines Safe?

Maybe some vaccines are safe.

But, who knows?

No one knows how many people are being hurt by vaccines.  Or, how.

Few scientists are doing research on that question at the cellular/molecular level.  And the research of those who are finding significant problems is being ignored.

Maybe vaccines are effective.

But, no one really knows.

The only studies that call vaccines safe are epidemiological studies that compare large groups of people.  And the industry-created myth that vaccines can provide “herd immunity” has allowed state governments to mandate vaccines for “the greater good” of all.  (See earlier post discussing herd immunity.)

In fact, these epidemiological studies only show correlation, NOT causation, in terms of stopping disease.  So one burning, unanswered question is what has caused some deadly diseases (polio, small pox) to dissipate over time since vaccines came into play only AFTER these diseases were on the wane.

Indeed, there are many unanswered questions about vaccine safety.  But it is quite clear that vaccines are a life-threatening risk for some people.  And, maybe, even, for all people at the level of the inducement of chronic illness.

“The Greater Good” is a documentary film that tries to at least surface many of these worrisome questions.  It is being shown all over the country to general audiences and to medical groups and institutions.  The film contains voices from across the spectrum of this issue of vaccine safety–including that of a major medical spokesman, Dr. Paul Offit, who has said famously that babies can tolerate 10,000 vaccines at once.

So, please, please, please–before you get another vaccine or give one to a child, do not assume that you have a good understanding of the issue of vaccine safety.  Or even the need for vaccines.  Start your research with “The Greater Good” for less than the price of a large pizza.

Documentary, The Greater Good

Here’s what I took away from the film–and I hope it’s enough to spark you to NOT assume that your doctor knows and understands the dangers of vaccines.  That does not mean your doctor is a bad person.  It just means your doctor is caught in the same “kool aid” information bubble that you might be caught in, that most of the US is caught in since the media is not doing its reporting job properly.

First, the film takes a close look at three families whose children have been harmed by vaccines.  Gabi Schrag acquired a terminal illness from the UNTESTED vaccine Gardasil when she was fifteen.  Another family’s baby daughter died after a vaccine around her first birthday.  This child was apparently reacting to earlier vaccines, but her parents and pediatrician did not recognize the trouble signs.  Her two brothers did not die, but in retrospect, the parents recognize that their sons, too, have been harmed.  The third family’s son, now 11,  acquired autism from the mercury in vaccines.  That’s not a theory; the mercury showed up in blood tests.  His body could not detox itself, and the mercury and other components in vaccines permanently injured his brain.

***Barbara Loe Fisher became an activist for vaccine safety when her son was injured permanently.  She notes that in 1980, children received 23 doses of 7 vaccines.  Today, the vaccine schedule calls for 69 doses of 16 vaccines.  That’s TRIPLE the number of vaccines.  That’s an industry at work in my opinion.

Dr. Lawrence Palevsky noted that he did not question vaccine safety until the Hepatitus B vaccine was recommended for newborn babies when, he said, infants are not at risk for Hepatitus B.

Fisher now has the following mantra:  SHOW US THE SCIENCE AND ALLOW US THE CHOICE.  She notes the irresponsibility of any system that takes vaccines off the table when they might be factors or co-factors for the causes of chronic illness or outright injury.  Vaccines need to be shown to be safe and effective, and they have NOT BEEN.

Dr. Palevsky–as do other worried experts in the documentary–notes that reducing the vaccine safety issue to just that of autism has worked to hide the bigger issues.  He notes that today ONE IN SIX children have some form of neural disability.  And he wonders how many other chronic diseases are the result of vaccines.  You read that right:  ONE IN SIX CHILDREN.

Vaccines contain ingredients like mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde, and preservatives–ingredients that are meant to keep them in your body for as long as possible.  Palevsky and Bob Sears, a pediatrician, notes that there has been no safety testing for these ingredients.  (Sears wrote a book that is pro-vaccine, but which, among other things. recommends spreading out vaccine doses.)

Chris Shaw, PhD, is a scientist who studies the origins of neurological diseases.  He says we cannot claim that vaccines are safe as their ingredients were chosen to make them stay in your body.  Injectable aluminum injected into mice in an attempt to replicate the vaccine schedule showed the rapid emergence of symptoms that included cognitive deficits, muscle and motor malfunctions, and behavioral symptoms.  Autopsies showed massive damage to motor neurons–and Shaw posed that this situation was creating the conditions for diseases like MS and Parkinsons twenty to thirty years later.  The FDA ignored these studies and refused to perform additional research.

So, how many children are being sacrificed for “the greater good”?  We don’t know.  Vaccine harm reporting is voluntary.  But the fact that Congress created the Vaccine Compensation Program to pay off parents of harmed children signals that harm is being done.  By the way, you pay into the fund every time you or your children get a vaccine–so here again is how industry is making YOU pay for your own injuries.  Vaccine makers generate about $21.5 billion in annual sales.

Are there truly benefits from vaccines?  If so, what are they?  Do those benefits outweigh the risks?  We don’t know.  By the way, the last measles death in the U.S. was in 2003 and many are saying measles death has a strong correlation to poverty and malnourishment.  Vaccines won’t “cure” that.  (See earlier posts on the “measles outbreak” nonsense.)

What vaccines would you choose to get or give to your child.  hepatitis B is not polio.  And chicken pox is not small pox. And since 99% of the population lives in cities now, how many children are stepping on rusty nails?  We now have good medicines for whooping cough.  There is a big correlation between polio and the use of DDT, and polio was on the wane when the vaccine started.

What vaccines would you get for yourself?  The flu shot?  Do you know that science does not show that it is effective and that many flu shot forms still contain mercury?  Or, other worrisome ingredients.   But if you’re going to the third world, you might want to get appropriate vaccines.  Just understand the risks first.

Did you know that INDUSTRY does the testing on new vaccines?  The FDA accepts their word for the testing.

Did you know that INDUSTRY cannot be sued for vaccine harm?  Thus there is no accountability or responsibility when vaccines harm people.  Which brings me to Gardasil…

GARDASIL

So, let’s look at Merck’s Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil–and let’s note that HPV only MAY–only MAY I repeat–cause cervical cancer.

Merck asked the FDA too “fast track” Gardasil, and FDA agreed.  As a result, whatever testing Merck was doing (on just over 1,200 girls under sixteen) was stopped.  SO, GARDASIL HAS NEVER BEEN TESTED FOR SAFETY.  Really, Gardasil has never been tested on anyone in a trial that was carried to its conclusion.  So industry has no idea of its effectiveness either.  What’s occurring is a giant experiment on young people. 

Today, both young women and young men are being pressured to get this vaccine.  Young men are said to carry HPV in their mouths.  So they can “infect” young women.  Do you really think any vaccine is going to kill HPV virus in someone’s mouth so that they never carry it again?  Really?  Hello…we all carry stuff like this all the time–on us, in us, it’s all around us.

Gardasil was released in 2006, and Merck spent $100 million on advertising targeting young women.  You could be “one less” the ads stated.

Gabi Schrag saw those ads and got the multiple-shot vaccine–which caused her to get central nervous system vasculitis and central nervous system lupus.  She will die.  She is dying.  Meanwhile, her life is a living hell.  She has many symptoms, including seizures, paralysis on her face, partial vision, extreme fatigue, and on and on.  Her family buckled under the medical costs and stress.

Diane Harper, MD, MPH, MS, is one of the world’s leading experts on HPV and was the LEAD RESEARCHER FOR THE GARDASIL TRIALS (before they were cancelled).

Harper notes that the death rate from cervical cancer is 3 per 100,000.  Young people are more at risk from an automobile accident than from cervical cancer.  PLUS, we have a very good system in place to defeat cervical cancer:  PAP smears–which are not risky.  Plus, Harper notes, our daughters are not cancer deaths waiting to happen–which the Merck ads indicate.  In fact, says Harper, while Merck’s ads are not lies, they are false in their overall impressions.

WOLVES IN THE CHICKEN HOUSE:

Now let’s talk about Dr. Paul Offit.

Offit’s credentials are pretty heavy duty.  And his certainty about the safety of vaccines so complete that I decided to poke around a bit.  It didn’t take one minute to surface some real conflicts of interest–ones that are at the heart of what is wrong with medicine today, and why many people like me do not trust it.

Offit is a pediatrician.  He is the Chief of infectious Diseae at the reknowned Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, or CHOP.  He is also a professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school.

Pretty good, huh?  You’d pay attention to someone like this man, wouldn’t you?

Only Offit has strong financial ties to the vaccine industry–as a story of Sharyl Attkisson for CBS News reveals.  He consistently refuses to disclose his industry ties.  But, his research Hillman chair at CHOP is funded by Merck, for $1.5 million.  He co-invented the Rotavirus vaccine and sold it to Merck–his share was somewhere between $29 and $46 million.  He was on the CDC’s Advisory committee on Immunization Practices when his vaccine was put onto the vaccine schedule.  Yet he said in the film that he does not see any wrong doing in the intersections between doctors and the vaccine industry.  (We need to enroll him in a course on ethics and morals immediately.)

In this documentary, Offit says that UNTESTED Gardasil is a “safe and beautiful” vaccine.  Yet, by 2010, there were 85 recorded Gardasil deaths.  And, uncountable injuries as no one is looking for them.

Offit also said the following:  “Are parents really in the best situation to evaluate the data?  I don’t think they often have that expertise.”

Really?   Apparently some of us do a better job of that then people like Offit do.

But, it is this kind of statement that misleads parents into trusting people like Offit–into trusting in his goodness, in his knowledge, and his genuine interest in the health of their children.  To those folks, I say “WAKE UP.”  There’s BIG MONEY involved here, and we live in a system that has thoroughly detached morals and ethics from the business of making money.l

* * * * *

Clearly, the “one size fits all” vaccine schedule is a mistake for too many children.

Clearly, industry is driving the vaccine juggernaut, not science.

Clearly, the states have overstepped their bounds by forcing people to get vaccines they do not want to get in the name of a misuse of the very real scientific concept of “herd immunity”–of which the vaccines cannot ever be part.  Here, again, is where politics is trumping science–as it has in many of the issues about which I research and write.  And when politics makes this move, it does harm.  When it does it by and for industry, it is evil.

Clearly, the vaccine industry needs to be held accountable for the harm it is doing.  They need to answer in our courts of law.

Clearly doctors like Offit need to lose their prestige and power and the positions they are misusing.

Clearly, the media need to do a better job of reporting all sides of the vaccine safety issue.  And of exposing people like Offit and the rigged system that Merck is using for its own gain.

Clearly, parents have got to educate themselves and take responsibility for NOT being driven like fearful sheep into harming their children or themselves.

Clearly, clearly, clearly…

…this film is a “must see” immediately for you, your family, your doctors.

Mainely Tipping Points 48: Is Dr. Russell Blaylock a Quack?

Mainely Tipping Points 48:  July 2, 2013 

 

Is Dr. Russell Blaylock a Quack?

 

 

Wikipedia says Dr. Blaylock is a quack because he does not follow “science based medicine.”

On the basis of a Wiki page, which is anonymously written, a Facebook page on my news feed discussing Dr. Blaylock was removed by a FB friend yesterday without allowing the benign discussion taking place to go forward to its conclusion—which amounts to silencing and censorship, which means a refusal to dig deeper into the issue at hand to see what science actually says, which means a policing of the status quo, which means fear is present.

Science based medicine…

Well, that’s something I’ve been researching and writing about for the past five years or so.  And, living, since my husband fell into the hands of “science-based” medicine practices during a time when the oversight boards for prostate cancer were saying that doing nothing was the best course to take since the treatments did not affect the outcome.  I will go to my grave believing that the treatments did affect the outcome in that they hastened John’s death.  How could they not since they assaulted his body in countless ways.  It never had a chance.

I am sympathetic with our local doctors, most of whom are caring people who wanted to make a difference for John.  The problem is that their tool box did not contain what John needed, so they just recommended the tools they had, regardless of the shift in the science.  These doctors built their careers on these tools—such a shift threatened their ability to support themselves.  That’s a grave place to be in.   

What do we know about Dr. Russell Blaylock?

His own web site details his medical credentials (http://www.russellblaylockmd.com/). I do not doubt them since they would have long since been debunked if he were not telling the truth.  You can go there for the whole list of his medical credentials.

The pertinent information is that Dr. Blaylock is a board certified neurosurgeon who practiced for 25 years before he retired.  He worked with the eminent neurosurgeon Dr. Ludwig Kempe.  Together they developed the transcallosal removal of intraventricular tumors, which he claims is still used today, and the ventriculolymphatic shunt in treatment of hydrocephalus.  Their personal relationship continues to this day.

A turning point for Dr. Blaylock came when he started using “high-intensity nutritional supplementation in craniocerebral trauma patients” which “met with great success.”  Eventually, Blaylock retired in order to spend more time studying and researching nutrition and healing with nutrition. 

In that regard Blaylock is part of the current and growing movement which seeks to understand the connections between foods and human health.  Some stars in this arena are Dr. Mary Enig (fats), Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride (GAPS), Dr. Joseph Mercola (amazing general blog), Dr. Kaayla T. Daniels (soy), Dr. William Davis (WHEAT BELLY), Dr. Chris Masterjohn (vitamins A, D, and K), Michael Pollen, Sally Fallon Morell, all the scientists now working on the integrity of the gut and gut health and its connections to behavior, and so forth.  Blaylock’s work in this arena led to The Weston A. Price Foundation giving him their Integrity in Science Award in 2004.

Blaylock is a member of the International and American Associations of Clinical Nutritionists, the American College of Nutrition, the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, and many other health-related organizations.  (Pottenger did the famous cat studies involving the generational effects of malnutrition.)     

Dr. Blaylock is on the editorial staffs of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons and of the Journal of the American Nutraceutical Association.  He is on the board of Fluoride.  He is, or was if he’s retired from there, a visiting professor in the department of biological sciences at Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi—a conservative Christian college for those of you who think you are dealing with a liberal.

His web site lists his publications and his three books—the first being EXCITOTOXINS:  THE TASTE THAT KILLS.  (Aspartame is an excitotoxin.)  It makes sense to me that Blaylock’s interest in the impact of excitotoxins on the brain lines up with the fact that he was a practicing neurosurgeon.

Is this a “star” resume?

I do not know, medically speaking.  It is the resume of a working neurosurgeon of twenty-five years who got interested in the relationship of healing and food nutrition and acted on it.  It is the resume of someone who went on to study nutrition, to put himself in the nutritional arena with his associations, and to write about nutrition.

So, where does he begin to fall afoul of the Wiki author of his page?  The following list lies at the juncture of where many folks are asking “where’s the science?”—vaccines, aspartame, mercury in dental amalgams, fluoride, and aluminum cookware.

Which takes us back to “science-based” medicine…

Vaccines:  Would it surprise you to know that there have been NO LONG TERM gold-standard studies on the efficacy of vaccines?  That renders all we “know” about vaccines in the correlation camp.  There is not solid cause and effect scientific data in this country.  None.  Period.   

Would it surprise you to know that many scientists are now thinking that smallpox was tamed by sanitation and that polio may have been caused by DDT?

Would it surprise you to know that there is a government organization that pays off parents of children who have been harmed by vaccines?  Or that you can’t sue a vaccine maker if you or your child is harmed?

Recently, two young women died after a Gardasil vaccine.  Researchers examined their brain tissues and discovered that the vaccine had breached the blood-brain barrier, which in turn triggered the fatal autoimmune response that killed the girls—which vaccines are not supposed to do (Pharmaceut Reg Affairs 2012, S12:001).  What if other vaccines are making this leap? Could that account for the undeniable vaccine damage in children?  Leslie Mannookian’s documentary THE GREATER GOOD addresses the lack of science in the vaccine debates.  It is being shown all over the country in many venues, including to medical personnel.  I, for one, am going to see this film, which I think is available online, as soon as possible.

Fluoride:  I wrote three essays on this blog (Tipping Points Essays 34-36) that attempted to summarize the book THE CASE AGAINST FLUORIDE—written by three senior, well-established scientists with impeccable biographies in chemistry, toxicology, medical biophysics, and biological sciences.  There never was any science supporting putting fluoride in the water.  The most recent mandated government-sponsored assessment raised dozens of red flags about fluoride.  It was the first panel that contained nonbiased scientists.  The dose isn’t controllable, and even the American Dental Association warns not to feed infants formula made with fluoridated tap water.  Studies from all over the world show that fluoride is dangerous:  it harms bones and affects IQ in developing infants.  Countries that do not fluoridate do not have worse cavity rates than the U.S. does.  The stronger correlation with healthy teeth is good diet.

Mercury amalgams:  The mercury in your fillings off-gasses for the rest of your life and can make you sick.  Mercury is very, very toxic.  Europe is banning mercury fillings.  In our country dentists are quietly switching to non-mercury fillings.  I and many of my family members have had old mercury fillings removed.  (Be careful doing that and find a dentist who knows the danger of what s/he is doing.)

Aspartame:  Aspartame has, famously, never undergone third-party independent and objective assessment.  Industry supplies the “proof” of safety and the government (with staff assessment by actual scientists saying no about aspartame) allowed its use.  That’s a nasty, nasty story—and I covered it in Tipping Points Essay No. 19 on this blog.  The approval was a political decision, not a scientific one.  If you go to www.snopes to check on claims that aspartame is dangerous, you will see that the story is “false” and you will see a letter written by a government staffer claiming it was tested.  Don’t you believe that because the studies were all industry produced.  That’s the kind of corrupt system our government is running now, and we have got to get the foxes out of the regulatory henhouses and put in some laws with teeth if we want our government to actually protect us. 

Aluminum cookware:  Aluminum is a toxic metal.  If you cook with it or use a lot of aluminum foil, it will reside in your body.  Our bodies have enough environmental burdens without having to cope with aluminum toxicity.  I don’t use it any more—either cookware or foil.  Parchment paper works just as well in most cases. 

So, you decide about Dr. Blaylock. 

He’s not a saint.  He’s got quirks—like most of us he is a complex figure, not a cartoon all bad/all good character.

He’s asking “where’s the science” behind a number of mainstream medical practices and recommendations that he (and I, after researching them) believe are quite dangerous.  He’s looking for ways to effect healing by giving the body the healthy nutrient dense food it requires.

The response from the mainstream—as it almost always is—is to demonize him as a quack.  Devra Davis, a premier scientist, described this industry-driven process brilliantly in THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WAR ON CANCER.  And make no mistake about it, too much of science and medicine today is industry driven, with little relationship to actual science and a huge relationship to profit making. 

With demonization, Blaylock joins any number of folks who have said “where’s the science” and been attacked and smeared in an attempt to erase what he’s asking as it falls into the realm of “an inconvenient truth.”  Dr. Mary Enig, for instance, tried to tell us about the danger of trans fats and about the healthy nature of high-quality saturated fats.  She lost all her research money and was demonized and not published for years.  But, she was right all along.  

Follow the money.  Vaccines, aspartame, and fluoride are big, big money.  Under our economic system, it is entirely logical that industry would fight to continue making that money and that it enslaves us all to its purpose, doctors included.    

Demonization is how a system of cultural power maintains the status quo.  But that status quo is not ultimately healthy for you. Today, one in two people will get cancer.  That’s 50 percent.  That’s a plague.  So, think twice, investigate, learn how to find and read reputable sources, and choose not to participate in practices that will make you sick. 

Ultimately, this issue isn’t about Blaylock personally.  It’s about “where’s the science?”  It’s about your health.