Stripping Rights Away By Hook or By Crook
Secretary of Health Weisman (WA) Dangerously Mislead the Health Committee and the Public Toward Maximum Vaccine Injury
By: James Lyons-Weiler, CEO/Director, The Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge, CHD Contributing Writer
The MMR is a 58-year old vaccine, and it likely has seen the last of its useful days in preventing the transmission of wild-type measles, mumps and rubella. Whether it can play a role in the control of measles infections at all is unclear because in its senescence, the vaccine may be causing more asymptomatic transmission than has been acknowledged. The public health experts in the State of Washington are misleading the public into unwarranted panic based on claims with no scientific support. Here I provide some much-needed fact-checking for CHD on the claims made by the panelists in favor of restricting parent’s options on vaccination in the State of Washington.
Last week, in Olympia Washington, over 2,000 parents of vaccine-injured and injury-susceptible children showed up to protest a bill that would strip away personal exemptions from families who need them to personalize their children’s medical care to fit their unique health needs or to avoid exposing their children to vaccine products with a proven record of risk.
Secretary of Health John Wiesman testified before House Health Care and Wellness Committee that he was concerned about safety for “all children” and he attempted to portray the topic of the removal of personal and philosophical exemptions to the MMR for daycare and school attendance as being about “safe schools and protecting vulnerable children.” There are four major flaws with Wiesman’s stance:
- It fails to acknowledge the inability of the only measles vaccine product on the market, the MMR, to provide lifetime immunity–most fully vaccinated adults are no longer immune and a 3rd dose has been shown to not extend protection for any length of time.
- It fails to acknowledge the danger to the children at risk of vaccine injury.
- It fails to acknowledge that numerous studies have shown people vaccinated against measles can harbor silent infections, meaning no warning-fever or typical rash, and can transmit the virus unknowingly to susceptible individuals and the immunocompromised.
- Wiesman’s position fails to acknowledge that non-immune individuals, if exposed to measles, will develop a fever days before the rash begins and will have a signal telling them to stay home and avoid those who are immunocompromised; as a result, the primary mode of transmission in a highly-vaccinated population is expected to be from the vaccinated individuals infected with the wild-type measles.
“Vaccines are not safe and effective for everyone. This cannot be a one-size-fits-all. Not everyone had the same risk factors. This is not a 1-in-a-million type issue; there can be 10 to 15% of people who are susceptible. This is a liability-free product that is being mandated on children with genetic susceptibility, and the injuries are serious, include death and encephalopathy. If you eliminate these exemptions, you are making a large minority susceptible to very serious risks, including death.” — Dr. Toni Bark
Wiesman said this bill was about unvaccinated children, not about specific communities or ethnic groups, neglecting to tell the Committee that the entire current measles outbreak in WA so far has been confined to a small cultural community who do not vaccinate due to philosophical beliefs.
Bernadette Pajer, co-president of Informed Choice WA, reports that the current cases began with a foreign vaccinated visitor and has been well-controlled within a population that chose to accept the risk of measles—which is negligible in a healthy child–over the risk of MMR, and appropriately stayed home. Referring to the cluster of cases at the time as an “in-break”, she said this is clearly not a threat to public health.
Citing the need for “community immunity”, Wiesman failed to report that the low statewide exemption rates (2.9% for MMR vaccines, inclusive of medical, religious and personal exemptions) was already above the level claimed necessary by health officials to achieve “herd immunity”, a counterpoint raised by expert panelist Mary Holland of NYU Law School. Holland told the committee that because of primary and secondary vaccine failure, the MMR is incapable of preventing outbreaks and that disease control, not removal of the personal right to refuse a medical intervention, is the proper solution. The complexities of “herd immunity” were further touched on by expert panelist Dr. Brian Hooker, who revealed the unintended consequences of mass measles vaccination campaigns with a product unable to provide lifetime immunity. Raising the rates of uptake of the flawed MMR from the current 97.7 to 100%, even if it could be achieved by coercion or force, would not achieve the goals sought by the bill drafters.
Weismann cited concern over Illness and suffering and offered the following rates: of people with measles infections, he claimed that 1/20 will develop pneumonia and that 1/1000 will develop a brain infection. Secretary Weismann then uttered an incredible statistic, claiming that 2/1000 people with measles will die. Clearly these statistics require a reference, but he offered none. A CDC webpage shows this last figure, too (they actually report “1-2 per 1000” but it contradicts the pre-vaccine era data on the rest of the page and does not match estimated death rates from rates on their page.
The CDC page in question report that prior to 1960, there were 495/3,000,000 cases (conservatively), which is 0.165 deaths per 1,000 conservatively, or 1.65 per 10,000. This is ten times less risk than Wiesman’s claim. This would not be the first time that grievous errors have been made and perpetuated based on an inaccurate figure that public health officials merely cite without bothering to verify. Something is clearly incorrect with the CDC webpage, yet this resource is where public health officials go for their data upon which to base public health policy. (See CDC Report, slide 4, 450-500 deaths/year in a population of 80,000,000 prior to the vaccine, same rate cited here).
Additionally, there is a now a globally-known correlation between measles severity and Vitamin A deficiency. According to literature cited by Physicians for Informed Consent, up to 92% of hospitalized cases, even in the US, are low in Vitamin A. Wouldn’t an ethical Secretary of health, concerned about the health of all citizens, convey this important fact?
Secretary Weismann went on to claim that the measles outbreak was having a huge drain on the infrastructure and economic vitality of the State of Washington, citing no data. Is the economy of the State of Washington so frail that 53 cases of measles is going to bring it to its knees?
He then claimed that the MMR vaccine is 97% percent effective after two doses, implying lifetime protection. Merck, the manufacturer of the MMR vaccine, is in court in PA defending itself against accusations of falsifying the efficacy of the mumps portion of the MMR vaccine by adding anti-mumps virus antibodies from rabbits to human samples. It is fair then to wonder if Merck has also possibly falsified the data on the measles component of the MMR. Even if its two doses once were capable of achieving, temporarily, that high effectiveness, MMR is an old vaccine, and is now targeting the wrong virus types. Shouldn’t the secretary of health be relaying to legislators the known flaws of the MMR product, primary and secondary failure? Shouldn’t the secretary of health be concerned about subclinical infections? And report the fact that the “vulnerable population” he is concerned with includes fully-vaccinated adults? Or that newborns are now less protected by vaccinated mothers than they were when everyone got the measles in childhood, were protected by breastfed passive immunity? Shouldn’t public health policies be based on science?
Wiesman claimed that serious adverse events are “very rare”, again, not citing any statistics, but claiming that the benefits outweigh the risks. Apparently Wiesman has not seen the Federal Table of Vaccine Injuries, has not read the CDCs Pink Book section on measles, and has not read the CDC-commissioned White Paper that lists the reported and plausible outcomes to vaccination which, in this regulatory vacuum of irresponsibility, have not ever been studied.
Secretary Weismann claimed that reputable scientific studies showed that MMR does not cause “autism”. Do they? Or do they say the opposite, as Johns Hopkins pediatric neurologist Dr. Kelley testified under oath, when asked if his opinion that vaccination can cause autism in some susceptible children differed from the opinion of the CDC:
“It is contrary to their conclusion. It is not contrary to their data.”
One example: on the CDC web page that shouts “Vaccines Do Not Cause autism” a study is cited that compares vaccinated to vaccinated children and concludes that since autism was found in both groups, that vaccination does not cause autism. Setting aside the serious flaws of the study design, a close read of the paper reveals the authors saying,
“The possibility that immunologic stimulation from vaccines during the first 1-2 years of life could be related to the development of ASD is not well supported by the known neurobiology of ASD, which tends to be genetically determined with origins in prenatal development, although possible effects in early infancy cannot be ruled out completely. It can be argued that ASD with regression, in which children usually lose developmental skills during the second year of life, could be related to exposures in infancy, including vaccines” (emphasis added).
It is worth noting that this study, like all observational studies, fall short of being able to provide a strong test of causality compared to interventional studies, and that CDC’s list of studies is not representative of the full literature.
Claiming that states with tighter exemption laws have less disease and higher immunization rates “PERIOD”, Wiesman offered no statistics supporting the assumption that those states also had less suffering, fewer hospitalizations, and more deaths averted. Indeed, he made these claims out of thin air.
He claimed that those States had teachers and students focused on education. Are they? Or are they focused on special education, with classrooms now crowded with children diagnosed with developmental and learning disorders, like so many other schools in other states?
A key point Secretary Wiesman missed: Vaccination does not equal health. It does not even mean immunity from infection. At best, live-virus vaccination provides temporary resistance to, or symptoms of, a transient infection. At worst, for a minority but growing number of susceptible children, vaccination leads to lifetime chronic health disorders.
No Justification for Collusion to Strip Exemptions
There is a distinct line between educating legislators, compelling legislators to take action, and frightening them into action with misleading information.
Conflicts of Interest Are Known to Impair Judgement
As I waited in the expert panel box, I witnessed Secretary of Health Weisman rudely dismiss concerns of a Washington State parent who said to him, “In a meeting, I asked you point-blank if you support personal and philosophical exemptions, and you said yes, and yet you are here in support of a bill that will strip away parental rights. Why??” His reply was curt and dismissal. “I’m not doing that, I’m just here supporting a piece of legislation. This conversation is over.”
Wiesman may in fact have a number of conflicts of interest. As former Clark County Public Health Director, Wiesman knows that the current Clark County Health officer, Alan Melnick, is a member of an unofficial vaccine “educator” group NACCHO, which is funded by the CDC Foundation, which is turn is funded by over 200 Corporate sponsors, including vaccine makers like Merck, makers of the MMR.
Wiesman also belongs to several groups with direct and indirect financial connections to Pharma and vaccine manufacturers, including the Northwest Center for Public Health Practice, an organization funded by the CDC and the Gate Foundation. Wiesman is also a member of ASTHO, who is embroiled with CDC; specifically, ASTHO holds an office at the CDC Foundation,[1]) – in an entanglement of funding from grants from Merck trickling down to government offices [2].
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. pointed out that Merck has a terrible track record of being found guilty of fraud, a fact backed up by ContractorMisconduct.org.
It is reasonable to question a person who is obviously myopic on adverse events and vaccine-induced asymptomatic transmission when defining “public health”. It is also fair to question whether Wiesman is capable of protecting the entire public’s interest – including realizing that some families need personal exemptions to avoid vaccine injury and re-injury from a liability-free pharmaceutical product.
Fact Checking Wiesman and his Panelists’ Misleading Claims
As part of this assignment for Kennedy News and Views, I was asked to Fact Check statements made at the Hearing and the proceeding Press Conference. The number of incorrect statements is staggering. This is not a complete list:
Claim: Bill primary sponsor Representative Paul Harris: “Literally hundreds of thousands of people in my community have been involved in this issue and have lent support to this bill. They’re very concerned they’re concerned about our community, its immunity and the community safety, we are concerned about the choice of freedom, freedom of choice for all children, for children who have suppressed immune compromised, who really can’t be immunized who are who are locked up in their homes right now, lots of them, we have people who are concerned that they can’t come out in the public who have very small children.”
Fact: The current measles cases have been entirely isolated and contained in a small ethnic group. Secretary Wiesman should have informed Harris and other legislators this. And in situations in which a measles case is contagious for a time in a community setting, everyone can be part of the transmission chain. Since the measles virus, like the mumps and chickenpox virus, and the pertussis bacterium, can be spread by the unvaccinated (symptomatic transmission) and the vaccinated (asymptomatic, or subclinical infection), and both classes spread the virus during the prodromal period, the immunocompromised are at risk due to the existence of transmission chains. Keeping the unvaccinated out of school hides the transmission chain, leaving silent carriers in the classroom. One of Wiesman’s own senior epidemiologists wrote about modified measles in 2014, stating:
“Modified measles is an infrequent but ongoing vaccine-preventable disease surveillance issue. It is likely that many modified cases are never identified at all, or a negative result on a test for immunoglobulin M antibody may lead to a modified case being considered “ruled out”. It is important to promote increased awareness in the public health and healthcare communities about variable clinical manifestations of modified measles, along with appropriate uses of confirmatory laboratory tests, and factors to consider when implementing disease control measures.”
Claim: “. . .over the last ten years Washington has had three large measles outbreaks.”
Fact: Since 1997 there have typically been fewer than five cases reported annually. One outbreak included 33 cases. Both vaccinated and non-vaccinated have been among cases over the years. In a population of over 7 million, that makes the case rate .0005% or less. (Source: DOH.WA.GOV)
Claim: “…one of which included the death of an immunocompromised person exposed to measles in a clinic waiting room.”
Fact: The facts of this purported measles death have never been clear. It is known that the individual who died had been vaccinated, was on immunocompromising drugs and very ill, and it wasn’t until the autopsy that measles was even considered a possible factor in the individual’s death because the individual had no measles-symptoms. As explained elsewhere in this article, even 100% vaccination uptake would not prevent all measles exposures from happening to immunocompromised individuals. In the same ten year time span, there have been two deaths in WA State reported to VAERS involving the MMR vaccine. Less than 1% of all adverse reactions are reported to VAERS. If reported vaccine deaths were investigated with as much time and attention and resources as measles cases, we would have conclusive data on rates of MMR deaths. Instead, we a passive system that public health conveniently dismisses as unreliable. Why is the data unreliable? No resources are being spent investigating.
Claim: “The outbreak we are dealing with right now is larger and infecting people faster than recent history.”
Fact: This claim requires data; the number of individuals infected alone does not tell us the reproductive rate (R0). The rate varies a great deal depending on circumstance. If the R0 is as high as is thought to be typical (R0=12), we should see 660 new cases of measles by the third week of February 2019. It’s been reported that cases are mostly among siblings. It is unclear why Secretary Wiesman did not simply report to the legislators and the media that the measles cases were fully confined in a small community and that no cases were being acquired in public settings so that life could continue on as usual for everyone.
Claim: “measles causes outbreaks like this are a huge drain on our community infrastructure and economic vitality”
Fact: No estimate of the economic impact on the citizens of Clark County or on the State of Washington is available to support this claim.
Claim: “I want to remind you that the MMR vaccine is extremely safe”
Fact: The MMR vaccine has a number of possible serious adverse events beyond swelling at the injection site. Moreover, the science that allegedly established that MMR does not cause neurodevelopmental disorders is observational data, not randomized placebo-controlled prospective clinical trials. Most are underpowered, suffer from p-hacking (repeated rounds of analysis conducted to make associations go away), and some show evidence of fraud.
Claim: “ and (the MMR vaccine is) … ninety seven percent effective in preventing measles after two doses”.
Fact: Merck is in court in PA defending itself against accusations of falsifying the efficacy of the mumps portion of the MMR vaccine by adding anti-mumps virus antibodies from rabbits to human samples. It is a fair question, then, to wonder if Merck has also possibly falsified the data on the measles component of the MMR. The MMR is an old vaccine, targeting the wrong virus types.
Claim: “Serious adverse events are very rare”.
Fact: The actual rates of serious adverse events is unknown because they are tracked using the passive VAERS system. An automated system that CDC paid >$1.2 million to Harvard Pilgrim Health to build revealed that VAERS captures only 1% of adverse events. When this result was reported to CDC, they stopped returning the developers’ phone calls.
Claim: “All reputable scientific studies have found no relationship between (the) MMR vaccine and autism.”
Fact: As mere association studies, none of the studies conducted were capable of testing causality. My objective analysis found them seriously flawed. In 2012, IOM reportedly concluded that the available studies supported the conclusion that vaccines do not cause autism; however, the studies used had previously been determined by IOM to be flawed. My calculations have determined them to be universally low-powered, or lacking control groups. The largest of these studies has independently been determined to be fraudulent by Dr. Brian Hooker and colleagues, Mark Blaxill, and by my own analysis. Of course, CDC Scientist William Thompson has infamously admitted that CDC left out results from a critical study on rates of autism in children who received on-time vs. late MMR vaccination, and that the practice of manipulating data was the status quo on the vaccines/autism question. Take, for example, the stunning revelation from CDC Scientist Dr. William Thompson to Dr. Brian Hooker:
“Well, I would say every study that has ever come out on immunization safety, the people above know. … If there’s a significant finding, they know months in advance of it going into clearance. So, my paper, I put into clearance without them knowing anything about it, and it caught people off guard, and then we went through the process we went through which was a slow, laborious. But I kept pounding away; they kept watering it down. They watered it down. Then we sent it out to the journals. And the journals were just like, “What the f***?” This watering down during clearance confused the reviewers at the journal. Why would the authors of a paper containing a significant finding want to water that finding down during clearance?”— Barry, Kevin. Vaccine Whistleblower. Skyhorse Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Claim: “…measles is not to be taken lightly. There are potential life-threatening complications that result from measles. One in twenty with measles gets pneumonia”
Fact: The 1 in 20 rate is likely much, much lower given it is based on reported cases of measles infection. While there can be serious symptoms, the Secretary of Health wasted an opportunity to broadcast the fact that Vitamin A has repeatedly been shown to reduce the severity of measles infections, and also that if high doses are attempted, they need only last two days and can be balanced by Vitamin D supplementation.
Claim: “…one in a thousand will develop a serious brain infection called encephalitis and two of every one thousand children with measles will die from it”
Fact: Here the relevant statistic is the death-to-case (DTC) ratio. Three important factors influence the DTC ratio. First, they are based on reported and laboratory-confirmed cases of measles infection, but most cases are not laboratory confirmed, and asymptomatic infections among the vaccinated are not counted. And the CDC Pink Book reported (pre-1960):
“Before 1963, approximately 500,000 cases and 500 deaths were reported annually, with epidemic cycles every 2–3 years. However, the actual number of cases was estimated at 3–4 million annually.”
So clearly the DTC ratio is more along the lines of <1 per 10,000 – and this was before the advent of Vitamin A therapy. Claim: “…the benefit of the vaccine outweighs the risks.” Fact: Given the misrepresentation of the risks of both the viral infection and the risks of the MMR vaccine (VAERS under-reporting), the only logical, scientific and ethical position anyone truly interested in public health should be “the relative benefits and risks of the vaccine are unknown”. At the press conference following the hearing, Secretary Wiesman continued his fables:
Claim: “…we have a reporting system in place to make sure that we can monitor vaccines once they are on the market after all of the testing that we’ve gone through.”
Fact: The VAERS system suffers from gross underreporting of the rates of vaccine adverse events by a factor of 100, and the other system that allegedly tracks vaccine adverse events, the VSD, is not available for unfettered analysis by scientists other than those who collaborate with CDC.
Claim: “…these vaccines can be costly and we need companies who are willing to produce the product.”
Fact: Merck is handsomely compensated for the MMR, consistently listing it among their top ten revenue-generating products. There are plenty of companies willing to produce alternatives to the MMR. If Merck is found guilty of defrauding the FDA and the US public, we can expect them to lose the contract and other measles vaccines, including new technologies such as microneedle vaccines, to become available. At the Press Conference, a glimmer of reality came forward. For example, Wiesman’s Chief Science Officer Kathy Lofy stated:
Claim:“There is a national vaccine court that looks at different cases of different kids who have potentially been affected by vaccines and all of the cases do run through that vaccine court so that’s the process that’s been established.”
Fact: The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program only considers cases brought forward by litigants who learn about the Program before the statute of limitations expires. Medical doctors who administer vaccines are required by law to disclose the existence of the NVICP, but rarely do, and instead most often attempt to convince their patients that the symptoms they are experiencing are not due to the vaccine. A reporter, Jim Camden, at the Press Conference asked, “So what would you say to people who contend that more people died from the vaccine than died for measles, are they correct based on those reports?”
Lofy replied:
Claim: “That is not correct there was some information that was mentioned this morning around about four hundred individuals who have died from the vaccine and I believe that information may have come from VAERS, which is the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, and that is a system in which anyone can report an adverse effect into. That doesn’t mean that what has been reported has been found to be associated with the vaccine. They’re just reports that anyone can put in.”
Fact: All medical doctors are required by law to enter all suspected vaccine adverse events, including those they themselves do not consider to be due to the vaccine. However, the Harvard-Pilgrim study demonstrates that VAERS underreporting induces a serious flaw of ascertainment. The other limitations of VAERS cited by Lofy prove that the system is incapable of providing information that can be used to conclude that the MMR is safe.
The Journalist then asked, “So what’s the right number? How many people died from measles verses how many people died from measles vaccine? Which seems to be the point of contention at the hearing.”
Lofy claimed: “. . .so before the vaccine was implemented here in the United States I think around five hundred people died of measles annually and I’m not aware that many, any people die of MMR vaccine every year, in any given year, and I don’t know if anyone else is aware of any data any published data.”
Dr. Rupin Thakkar replied:
Claim: “We do know that about who one to two out of a thousand people who get measles would die before we had the vaccine widely available and that’s still the rate in parts of the world where the vaccine is not widely available and measles is seen more widespread. We really don’t have statistics about who dies from the vaccine, and as Dr. Lofy stated, we have these reports that have been made but we haven’t had reports that have been substantiated or shown that causality is actually, there so we believe the vaccine is incredibly safe.”
Fact: As determined earlier, the DTC ratio is more on the order of 1 in 10,000 – but is likely much lower due to life-saving effects of Vitamin A supplementation.
The Journalist followed up: “It just seems like if people are saying this and they’re wrong you’d have the data to back it up. What you are saying is you don’t know what the number is.”
To which Thakkar replied (in reference to the number of people dying of measles):
Claim: “We really believe the number is close to zero. We have not been able to show that causation at all.”
Reality: You can’t find what you don’t look for. And the post-marketing surveillance studies that are done only measure association—they do not test causality in the first place.
Camden pressed on: “What about the other medical problems that people opposed to removing this medical exemption say, asthma, epileptic seizures, those are actually conditions that can come from this vaccine, correct? Based on CDC reports.”
Related: Camden’s coverage of the events.
Lofy then quietly asked Thakkar if he wanted to talk about common side effects. He stated:
Claim: “Generally the common side effects that we know about are soreness at the injection site, possibly rash at the injection site, possible fever. Those are side effects we know can occur from the vaccine, other side effects that are reported, are again reports that we have not been able to show any causation at all, we believe the vaccine is completely safe, and except for those side effects that I noted, the other side effects we have not been able to draw a link there.” Fact: Again, most of the side effects reported have not been studied, or properly studied. Observational studies do not test causality. Only randomized placebo-controlled clinical trials can be considered to be sufficiently critical tests of causality, and plenty of evidence exists of manipulation of design to destroy positive associations between vaccines and adverse events. The many publications calling out the epidemiological analyses as methodologically flawed or fraudulent do not weigh in on this statement at all.
Wiesman concluded:
Claim: “But really you know the science is really clear on this: the vaccines work. with The Institute of Medicine and other folks have reviewed the data. They’ve not been able to find any of these causations that we were just talking about.”
Fact: The IOM actually concluded that a number of adverse events are likely to be caused by the MMR, including measles inclusion body encephalitis, febrile seizures, transient arthralgia, and anaphylaxis, a potentially life-threatening condition. A WHO Report from 2014 cited the following risk rates for vaccines against measles, mumps and rubella:
- thrombocytopenia 1 in 30,000
- meningitis of 1 to 100 per 100,000 (depending on the strain of mumps)
- febrile seizures of 1 in 2,000 to 3,000
- acute arthritis of 1 in 10 (rubella)
Camden then asked if anything about vaccines had changed over time, because the reports of autoimmune problems have only come up over the past 10 or 15 years, is there a different chemical makeup, something different between now and then.
Dr. April Jaeger replied:
Claim: “If anything the vaccines over time have become safer and the ways in which the vaccines have been made is as you can imagine given the last ten years of increased scrutiny has been scrutinized even more from a manufacturing and safety level the concern”
Fact: This claim is pure fantasy. In reality, when thimerosal was reduced in childhood vaccines after the discovery that doses of mercury exceeded the dose allowed by the EPA, many additional vaccines were added that contained aluminum. About 60% of the vaccines today on the CDC pediatric childhood schedule now contains aluminum, and children who receive flu vaccines have an 80% chance of receiving thimerosal-containing flu injections. In one office visit, a child can receive as many as nine vaccines at once, mixing toxins that have never been tested for dosage safety alone let alone in combination. The studies of thimerosal-containing vaccines (TCVs) compared to non-thimerosal containing vaccines oddly concluded a mysterious ‘health benefit’ because the risk of health consequences from non-TCVs was greater. They did this knowing that non-TCVs were predominantly aluminum-containing vaccines, and they should have concluded that ACVs were more dangerous. Additionally, MMR vaccine is now contaminated with glyphosate, and the fetal DNA fragments in the rubella, after decades of replication, are even more dangerous.
Camden continued: “So what would you say to the people outside that are blaming the vaccine for things that have happened to their children, and saying they shouldn’t have to vaccinate their other children for this, would you tell them ‘well, you’re wrong, that’s not from the vaccine’, how do you bridge this gap?”
Lofy answered (awkwardly):
Claim: “That’s a really difficult question because if you have a child then that’s what you’ve experienced and you’ve seen that what has happened, you know, to your child, you know, we think from the scientific perspective, we think about scientific studies and what these studies tell us about the entire population that’s receiving the vaccine.“
Fact: All science begins with observation. Whole population risk assessment is completely inappropriate if, as Dr. Bernadine Healy suggested, and as many others have now concluded, that a genetic subgroup exists that have increased risk. I call this risk “specific risk”, defined by their genotype, as opposed to the general risk. See “Autism is an Acquired Cellular Detoxification Deficiency Syndrome with Heterogeneous Genetic Predisposition” published in Autism Open Access last year, in which I conclude:
“Much additional published research is consistent with the vaccine/autism hypothesis, which should now be formally adjusted to ‘Vaccines may induce autism in a genetic minority of patients’.”
No studies have been conducted that have tested this hypothesis.
Secretary Wiesman and his medical colleagues who lobbied for the stripping of rights of parents who have seen their child experience serious adverse events are either incompetent, or are showing willful disregard for public safety.
A recent search of VAERS resulted in the following reports:
- Between 1986 and the 2019, after receiving the MMR vaccine, there were 84,973 serious adverse events recorded by VAERS. Correcting for 1% reporting, that number could easily be 8,497,300 serious adverse events.
- There were 31,462 trips to the emergency room; correcting for underreporting, that number could be as high as 3,146,200.
- There were 4,108 hospitalizations; corrected for underreporting, that number could be as many as 410,800.
- There were 1,229 permanent disabilities ( as many as 122,900). The search pointed to 245 deaths, implying potentially as many as 24,500 persons who died following MMR or MMRV vaccination since 1989 (on the order of 844/year)
Anyone capable of protecting public health would consider, in total, the potential life-threatening complications of vaccines objectively, and identify where real knowledge gaps exist. To dismiss VAERS records, the instrument that is alleged to provide post-market “pharmacovigilance”, as not being capable of being attributed to the vaccine is to potentially dismiss all 24,500 possible deaths. This is not the act of a person genuinely concerned about protecting public health.
A Strawman Rules
At the press conference, the sponsor of the bill expressed astonishment that “here we are, talking about whether we should vaccinate our kids”. This specifically highlights that lawmaker and those aiming to strip rights away completely miss the point. No, we are not discussing whether “we” should vaccinate our kids. We are discussing, as a result of you wanting to force-vaccinate kids of other parents who have witnessed bad reactions to vaccines, often denied by doctors as real, completely denied by CDC propaganda, whether to vaccinate ALL kids indiscriminately. That’s a huge distinction, and hopefully readers will help their legislators across the US understand this key point.
Panelists for the Public
The panelists brought by the public to testify to the Health Committee included Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Dr. Toni Bark, MD, Dr. Brian Hooker, PhD, Mary Holland, myself, and Dr. Peter Jarzyna, PhD. My comments, and Peter’s, were cut off.
Robert F. Kennedy challenged the committee, asking:
“Is it this country’s Nuremburg Agreement? Oslo Agreement? Do we want to force parents to risky medical interventions without consent?” he asked. “Will mandating this vaccine cause more harm than good?”
Citing the large number of vaccines children receive today (72) compared to the five he received as a child, Kennedy informed the Committee:
“ADD, ADHD, speech delay, autism, food allergy, autoimmune diseases… prior to 1986, 12% of kids in this country had chronic disease. Today it’s 54%.”
Pointing to the state’s high vaccination coverage (>96%), Mary Holland showed how baseless the logic of removing personal exemptions are by arguing that since the state has already met the percent coverage that is said to be required for herd immunity, there is no reason to push vaccination coverage further. In speaking with Mary after the event, she was genuinely puzzled as to motive for pushing for higher coverage. She pointed to the futility of removal of personal exemptions, stating the reality that before vaccinating their already injured child, parents will go underground.
Dr. Hooker’s reiterated that point, showing the Committee that the total exemption rate for the MMR vaccine in K-12 in Washington State is just 2.9%. The information the WA DOH and Clark County health officials use is based on the flawed and woefully under-reported WA Immunization Information Survey. His numbers were based on the actual rates reported by each school.
Dr. Hooker also informed the Committee that the rate of vaccine injury is high. The Harvard Pilgrim report on the automation of the VAERS database showed a rate of at least 2.6% adverse events from vaccination when tracking just the period 30 days post-vaccination. He said this is NOT one-in-a-million, this is 2.6 in 100, and concluded that the risks far outweigh the benefits.
Both Dr. Bark and Dr. Hooker pointed out that measles is a disease of vaccinated individuals. Both cited Dr. Gregory Poland’s description of the measles paradox in 1994 where measles outbreaks were occurring more frequently in highly vaccinated populations.
Dr. Hooker further informed the committee that mandates do not work. Highlighting California where there has been a large exodus from the public school system (1.2%) as well as from the state. This, he said, is causing financial devastation especially in smaller school districts. He also pointed out that California is nowhere near 100% vaccine compliance in the school districts and administrators are complaining due to their new unwanted role a “vaccine enforcers.”
Robert F. Kennedy informed a crowd at the rally after the hearing that even CDC knows that their adverse event tracking systems do not work. “You could do retrospective testing with the VSD on existing records. The reason they don’t do it is their post-licensing surveillance system, which everybody knows, including the CDC, does not work. It captures fewer than 1% of adverse events.” He went on to explain how Harvard-Pilgrim was funded by CDC to automate vaccine injury detection and cited their report, which found 100-fold vaccine adverse events.
The information provided by my fellow panelists provided solid, factual counterpoints that should be heeded not only by the Health Committee, but also by legislators who wish to allow parents to try to protect their children from vaccine harm.
In my experience, parents who refuse to vaccinate without prior evidence of harm are rare, maybe about 10% of the vaccine risk aware community. By far, most parents who no longer vaccinate do so because they learned for themselves that vaccines are not safe for their child, or children. Dr. Wiesman and his colleagues are out of step with reality; in December, 2018, CDC added a new “should not vaccinate” category to the VISs 4 MMR, MMRV and varicella (chickenpox) vaccines: individuals who have “a parent, brother, or sister with a history of immune system problems (See CHD’s article on this development).
Legislators would do well to look closely at the absence of reliable facts provided by Dr. Wiesman and the woefully inaccurate, unscientific and dangerously misleading claims made by the panelists brought forward by those who do not respect the public’s rights to informed consent for medical procedures, ignore genetic susceptibility, and don’t realize the public is entitled to refuse vaccination under the Code of Federal Regulations related to clinical studies. Those Regulations provide a robust basis by which families, especially those who suspect they have high specific risk of vaccine injury, can continue to refuse to participate in uncontrolled clinical studies.
Citations:
Wiesman belongs to several organizations that have Pharma connections. These corporations were cited by Kennedy as “malefactors of great wealth who will subvert our democracy”.
The NCPHP is also funded by CDC, Gates Foundation etc. https://www.nwcphp.org/about/funding
He belongs to, and is immediate past-president of ASTHO
http://www.astho.org/About/
http://www.astho.org/Directory/Member-Bios/Washington/
[1] ASTHO has an office at the CDC Foundation — which takes Pharma donations. This page talks about Astho and Merck grants and CDC foundation:
http://astho.org/StatePublicHealth/Connecting-Public-Health-and-Philanthropy/09-20-18/
[2]http://astho.org/StatePublicHealth/Key-to-Addressing-Maternal-Mortality-at-the-State-Level/12-12-17/?terms=merck
ASTHO position on Immunization:
http://www.astho.org/Policy-and-Position-Statements/Immunization-Policy-Statement/
Includes:
• “The authority of S/THAs to individually consider vaccine laws and regulations, employing a rigorous, evidence-based decision-making process that seeks input from subject matter experts and the public. This approach allows S/THAs to pursue appropriate policies and legislation, including limiting the adoption of easy-to-attain exemptions for vaccine requirements, which is contrary to efforts to improve vaccine coverage.
• The development of immunization laws and reporting based on the recommendations made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).
• The authority of S/THAs to have the flexibility to tailor the implementation of evidence-based strategies for increasing vaccination uptake and reducing vaccine hesitancy to meet the needs of local and regional populations.
• The authority to exclude unvaccinated and other non-immune persons from high-risk settings during an outbreak situation”
ASTHO also has a policy statement that also includes the following points; there is no evidence that that they are being implemented in the state of Washington:
“• Using federal policies and funding streams to create incentives for the public and private sectors to develop improved tests to diagnose certain existing infectious diseases and reliable and accurate rapid screening field methods.
• Developing incentives that encourage development and research for vaccine efficacy and adverse events, antiviral efficacy and side effects, new antimicrobials, and diagnostic tests for emerging infectious diseases.”
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