Risk & Failure Reports
Vaccines Safe Say Those Who Gave Us Vioxx, Bextra, Baycol, Trovan, Phen-Fen, Xarelto, Raxar, Seldane…
Published February 1, 2017 | Vaccination, Risk & Failure Reports
It is not surprising mainstream scientists are vaccine absolutists
who vilify anti-vaccine activists given that their medical centers,
hospital wings, universities and sometimes personal paychecks are funded
by Pharma. What is surprisingly is that progressive news sites that
challenge government pronouncements on every other level also vilify
anti-vaccine activists as “unscientific.”
Are progressive news sites forgetting Vioxx, Bextra, Baycol, Trovan,
Meridia, Darvon, HRT, Phen-Fen, Raxar, Seldane, Ketek, Avandia and
Xarelto—-all called safe when they were making millions?
Neither mainstream or progressive news sites want to acknowledge the
existence of the federal National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program
(VICP) which, since 1988,
has settled more than 16,000 claims and awarded $3.18 billion in injury
settlements. When I asked a vaccine expert why the court existed if
vaccines are unremittingly safe he told me that vaccines are so basic to
public health yet so non-lucrative (compared to billion dollar pills),
the government does not want vaccine makers bankrupted by lawsuits.
But ignoring the court and the ghastly injuries it settles—I was
told, off the record, about a woman who lost her fingers and toes from
vasculitis caused by a vaccine—mainstream scientists are the ones who
are “unscientific.” The truth is not all vaccines are safe, life-saving
or necessary and conflicts of interest do exist. Consider the case of
Gardasil, a vaccine against the human papillomavirus vaccine types 6,
11, 16, 18.
The Case of Gardasil
A few years ago, Merck aggressively marketed Gardasil, a vaccine
against the HPV virus (which is linked to venereal warts and cervical
cancer)—even in poor countries where cervical cancer is hardly a leading
cause of death compared to malaria or diarrheal diseases. (In developed
countries, a Pap test is as effective as a vaccine in preventing
cervical cancer.)
Last year, judges in India’s Supreme Court demanded answers after
children died during a trial of Gardasil and Cervarix, GlaxoSmithKline’s
counterpart vaccine, a few years earlier.
According to CBS News
there was another cloud over Gardasil. “Merck gave $6,000 to [Texas
Gov. Rick] Perry’s election campaign fund as part of a national lobbying
effort to persuade states that it ought to require Gardasil as one of
the vaccines all kids should have before attending school,” it wrote.
The director of a Merck-funded pro-Gardasil group was also Perry’s
then-chief of staff’s mother-in-law.
Nor did the departure of former CDC director Julie Gerberding to head Merck’s vaccines division look right to many ethics specialists.
Docs Gone Bad
Mainstream scientists have savaged Andrew Wakefield,
a British medical researcher found to have conducted fraudulent
research linking the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR). His corruption is
said to disprove any scientific doubts about vaccine safety.
Yet when researchers in the U.S. have been so corrupt they have gone to jail, mainstream scientists still accept their research. Scott Reuben published fraudulent
research on Lyrica, Effexor, Celebrex and other drugs for Pharma. He
went to prison for six months but the “science” behind the drugs he
promoted stands. Richard Borison, former psychiatry chief at Augusta
Veterans Affairs (VA) medical center and Medical College of Georgia,
went to prison
for 15 years for using clinical trials on veterans of the antipsychotic
Seroquel to line his own pockets. The drug went on to earn billions and
his for-profit “research” still stands.
As a reporter I have interviewed a man whose blindness was caused by a
1976 flu vaccine for which the government compensated him. More
recently I interviewed a parent whose normal toddler was never the same
after a vaccine and is now institutionalized. “He cried hysterically for
24 hours,” the parent, who is a medical practitioner, told me.
Pharma is unwise to cast such parents, of whom there are many, as
“nuts.” The degeneration of their child is not their imagination. Also,
there is no defensible reason for vaccines to be given all at once to a
child, which many say heightens risks. Administering clusters of
vaccines—once not given to children—has been called a major, new profit
center for pediatricians.
But anti-vaccination activists should also not be absolutist.
Vaccines are not a “conspiracy”—they are Pharma business as usual. Many
are life-saving. Would anyone refuse a rabies vaccine after being bitten
by a rabid raccoon? A tetanus shot after a serious wound? Would
responsible parents deny their child a whooping cough or polio vaccine?
Like all drugs aggressively marketed these days, patients and parents
need to do their own research and weigh benefits and risks—never
forgetting Pharma’s spotty safety record.
Note: This article was reprinted with the author’s permission. It was originally published in The Huffington Post, but was subsequently removed. Martha Rosenberg is a nationally recognized investigative health reporter whose food and drug expose, Born with a Junk Food Deficiency, won an American Society of Journalists and Authors honorable mention. Rosenberg has appeared on CSPAN, National Public Radio and lectured at the medical school and university levels.
Note: This article was reprinted with the author’s permission. It was originally published in The Huffington Post, but was subsequently removed. Martha Rosenberg is a nationally recognized investigative health reporter whose food and drug expose, Born with a Junk Food Deficiency, won an American Society of Journalists and Authors honorable mention. Rosenberg has appeared on CSPAN, National Public Radio and lectured at the medical school and university levels.
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