Vaccine Rhetoric vs. Reality—Keeping Vaccination’s Unflattering Track Record Secret
By
Arjun Walia
Arjun Walia
Note: This is Part VI in a series of articles adapted from the second Children’s Health Defense eBook: Conflicts of Interest Undermine Children’s Health. The first eBook, The Sickest Generation: The Facts Behind the Children’s Health Crisis and Why It Needs to End,
described how
children’s health began to worsen dramatically in the
late 1980s following fateful changes in the childhood vaccine schedule.]
A concerted and “heavy-handed” effort is under way to censor information that
contradicts the oversimplified sound bites put forth by public health
agencies and the media about vaccines. However, while brazen,
in-your-face censorship—and attacks on health freedom—have
ratcheted up to an unprecedented degree, officialdom’s wish to keep
vaccination’s unflattering track record out of the public eye is nothing
new.
There is a chasm between vaccine
rhetoric and reality for most if not all vaccines, but four
vaccines—varicella (chickenpox), rotavirus, human papillomavirus (HPV)
and pertussis-containing vaccines—offer especially instructive
before-and-after case studies. Analysis of the U.S. experience with
these vaccines raises important questions. First, why did the Food and
Drug Administration (FDA) race to approve—and why does the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) heavily promote—vaccines such as
varicella and rotavirus when there is little public health justification
for them? Second, why are federal agencies ignoring the many serious
risks that have surfaced in the vaccines’ wake—problems unheard of
before the vaccines’ introduction?
With the rollout of mass varicella vaccination, shingles started cropping up to an unprecedented extent in both children and adults, eliminating boosting for adults and shifting downward the average age at which shingles occurs.
Varicella and rotavirus vaccines
The rationale for the varicella and rotavirus vaccines was dubious from the start. In the U.S. and other wealthy countries, varicella and rotavirus were
nearly universal and mostly benign childhood infections; in those
settings, the pre-vaccine impact of the two conditions was largely measured in
terms of “healthcare costs, missed daycare, and loss of time from work
for parents/guardians” rather than in terms of serious illness or
mortality.
Childhood chickenpox infections served an important purpose for all, conferring lifelong immunity to infected children while boosting adult immunity to the related shingles (herpes zoster) virus. With the rollout of mass varicella vaccination, shingles started cropping up to an unprecedented extent in both children and adults, eliminating boosting for adults and shifting downward the average age at which shingles occurs. Vaccine waning also began increasing young adults’ risk for varicella outbreaks and complications later in life, presenting “perverse public health implications.” Meanwhile, the CDC and its local public health partners worked hard to conceal these unwanted chickenpox vaccine outcomes from the public.
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Rotavirus vaccines have had a similarly
checkered history. Soon after their introduction in the U.S., reports
emerged of a substantially increased risk in infants of an otherwise
rare bowel complication called intussusception. The FDA knew about the
problem during the prelicensing regulatory review process but ignored it.
Although the agency subsequently withdrew its approval for one of the
problematic rotavirus vaccines, it was not until after an estimated
500,000 children received at least one million doses. The FDA never explained the “precise mechanism” by which the discontinued vaccine caused intussusception.
Two rotavirus vaccines that display the same intussusception risks are still on the U.S. market. Both are contaminated with foreign DNA from
porcine viruses capable of causing severe immunodeficiency in pigs. Had
the presence of these “adventitious agents” been discovered prior to
vaccine licensure, the FDA probably would have been forced to shelve the
vaccines, yet they remain on the vaccine schedule to this day.
The speed with which the FDA gave them [HPV vaccines Gardasil and Gardasil-9] the go-ahead—despite obvious red flags regarding their safety—illustrates the insincerity of the agency’s assertions that its vaccine approval process is committed to minimizing risks.
HPV vaccines
The HPV vaccines Gardasil and Gardasil-9 (manufactured by Merck) represent perhaps an even more compelling case study of
risk-laden vaccines that should have attracted strong up-front
regulatory scrutiny—but didn’t. The speed with which the FDA gave them
the go-ahead—despite obvious red flags regarding their
safety—illustrates the insincerity of the agency’s assertions that its
vaccine approval process is committed to minimizing risks.
The FDA not only gave the quadrivalent Gardasil a free pass but has repeatedly reapproved it and the nine-valent Gardasil-9 for
wider use. (Gardasil-9 is a newer formulation that contains more than
twice the amount of neurotoxic aluminum adjuvant as Gardasil.) In 2009,
the FDA also okayed GlaxoSmithKline’s HPV vaccine, Cervarix, but Merck’s
FDA-facilitated stranglehold on
the market prompted the company to withdraw Cervarix from the U.S. in
2016. Merck is now aggressively expanding its Gardasil “franchise” into other countries, generating unprecedentedworldwide demand, while continuing to “rev up” U.S. sales.
Since 2006, the FDA’s Gardasil-related decisions have included:
- 2006: Granting fast-tracked approval for the original quadrivalent Gardasil vaccine (girls and women aged 9 to 26 years)
- 2009: Approving Gardasil’s use in boys and men (ages 9-26)
- 2014: Approving Gardasil-9 (girls ages 9-26, boys ages 9-15)
- 2015: Approving Gardasil-9 for boys ages 16-26
- 2018: Approving Gardasil-9 for older women and men (ages 27-45)
An eight-month investigation by Slate identified
numerous troubling aspects of the clinical trials that encouraged U.S.
and European regulators to approve Gardasil. The Slate reporter
also criticized regulators for allowing “unreliable methods to be used
to test the vaccine’s safety.” These included Merck’s use of “a
convoluted method” that made it difficult to objectively evaluate and
report side effects; its failure to document “symptom severity,
duration, outcome, or overall seriousness”; restriction of adverse event
reporting to just 14 days following each injection; and reliance on the
subjective opinion of clinical trial investigators regarding “whether
or not to report any medical problem as an adverse event.” Not
infrequently, clinical trial participants who shared complaints of
debilitating symptoms with trial investigators were dismissed with the
response, “This is not the kind of side effects we see with this
vaccine.”
The author of the Slate investigation reported:
Experts I talked to were baffled by the way Merck handled safety data in its trials. According to…a professor…who studies side effects, letting investigators judge whether adverse events should be reported is “not a very safe method of doing things, because it allows bias to creep in.” …Of the short follow-up…,“It’s not going to pick up serious long-term issues, which is a pity. Presumably, the regulators believe that the vaccine is so safe that they don’t need to worry beyond 14 days.”
Two years after Gardasil’s initial approval, Judicial Watch pronounced it a “large-scale public health experiment.” Post-licensure studies carried out since then confirm that HPV vaccines have grave risks, including impaired fertility, demyelinating disease, chronic limb pain, circulatory abnormalities and autoimmune illness,
to name just some of the disabilities reported in the aftermath of HPV
vaccines’ introduction. Overall, the “rate of reported serious adverse
reactions (including deaths) from HPV vaccination” is many times higher than the cervical cancer mortality rate.
Recent data suggest that HPV vaccines may be increasing cervical cancer risks.
In a February 2019 letter to
the CDC, Children’s Health Defense Chairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
noted, “During Gardasil’s clinical trials, an extraordinary 49.5% of the
subjects receiving Gardasil reported serious medical conditions within
seven months of the start of the clinical trials. Because Merck did not
use a true placebo in its clinical trials, its researchers were able to
dismiss these injuries as sad coincidences.” A current civil case
brought on behalf of a 24-year-old who has suffered from systemic
autoimmune dysregulation since receiving her third Gardasil vaccine at
age 16 alleges that Merck “committed fraud during
its clinical trials and then failed to warn [vaccine recipients] about
the high risks and meager benefits of the vaccine.” The trial’s legal
team is benefiting from the support of an “A-team” of plaintiffs’ law
firms and attorneys, including Kennedy, Jr.
Recent data suggest that HPV vaccines may be increasing cervical
cancer risks. A 2017 study out of Australia—which has heavily promoted
routine HPV vaccination since 2007—reported an increased risk of
difficult-to-detect malignant cervical lesions among
the HPV-vaccinated. In all countries where HPV vaccination coverage is
high, including Australia, official cancer registries show “an increase in the incidence of invasive cervical cancer” in the vaccinated age groups. In England,
“2016 national statistics showed a worrying and substantial increase in
the rate of cervical cancer…at ages 20-24”—the first HPV-vaccinated
cohort.
The proper decision would be to take HPV
vaccines off the market, but the FDA and CDC continue to look the other
way. Both agencies’ unwavering support for Gardasil has clearly helped
Merck’s commercial bottom line, so much so that the CDC director at the
time of Gardasil’s approval (Julie Gerberding) went on to be appointed
president of Merck’s profitable vaccine division (worth
$5 billion globally) in 2009. The agencies’ willingness to aggressively
promote HPV vaccination despite its readily apparent dangers
illustrates a “public health flimflam”
of the first order. Before the U.S. introduction of HPV vaccination, a
decades-long pattern of declining cervical cancer rates was already well underway, thanks to routine cervical cancer screening. HPV vaccines have never even been proven to
prevent cervical cancer. In 2016, researchers admitted that they would
be unable to ascertain HPV vaccines’ long-term efficacy for “at least
another 15-20 years.”
Officials also seem to have little interest in modern evidence documenting many vaccines’ inability to provide the promised protection, even when vaccine coverage is widespread.
Pertussis-containing vaccines
Alongside their many misplaced claims
about various vaccines’ rationale and safety record, the FDA and CDC—as
echo chambers for the vaccine industry—also have misinformed the public
about vaccine effectiveness. Back in 1899, doctor William Bailey
(vaccination enthusiast and member of the State Board of Health in
Louisville, Kentucky) was more honest, cautioning that “nothing is
gained by claiming too much”
about vaccine-induced immunity and stating that “the degree of immunity
may vary with time and circumstance”—presaging the troublesome modern
phenomena of vaccine failure and waning immunity. In the present day, officials are only too willing to “claim too much,” conveniently ignoring historical evidence that
reductions in infectious disease had little to do with vaccines and far
more to do with improvements in sanitation and nutrition. Officials
also seem to have little interest in modern evidence documenting many vaccines’ inability to provide the promised protection, even when vaccine coverage is widespread.
The acellular version of pertussis
(whooping cough)—a component of U.S. vaccines such as DTaP and Tdap—is
one of the vaccines noted for its abysmal effectiveness. The vaccine is supposed to protect against the respiratory infection caused by Bordetella pertussis. Instead, according to recent studies, pertussis is making a “surprising” comeback;
between 1990 and 2005, pertussis epidemics increased in the U.S. “in
both size and frequency,” and over half of all cases occurred in highly
vaccinated adolescents aged 10 to 20 years old. In fact, not only is
pertussis at its highest level since the mid-1950s, but, according to
CDC researchers, it is showing signs of being vaccine-resistant.
The CDC researchers also note “substantial heterogeneity among vaccine
recipients in terms of the durability of the protection they receive.”
… the researchers concluded in 2017 that all currently available evidence suggests that DTP vaccine may kill more children from other causes than it saves from diphtheria, tetanus or pertussis …
West Africa has used the DTP vaccine
since the 1980s—formulated with a whole-cell pertussis component instead
of acellular pertussis—and it has an even more horrifying safety and
effectiveness record than its acellular counterparts. Research published
in 2017 by a prestigious team of international scientists and led by
vaccinology expert Dr. Peter Aaby found that DTP vaccination had a
negative effect on child survival, with fivefold higher mortality in
young DTP-vaccinated infants (ages three to five months) compared to
as-yet-unvaccinated infants. When the researchers published results in
2018 for slightly older DTP-vaccinated children (ages six months to
three years), they continued to observe more than double the
risk of death as similarly situated unvaccinated children. Explaining
that vaccines can increase susceptibility to other infections, the
researchers concluded in 2017 that “all currently available evidence
suggests that DTP vaccine may kill more children from other causes than
it saves from diphtheria, tetanus or pertussis” and added in 2018 that
“all studies of the introduction of DTP have found increased overall
mortality.”
Learning from history
Efforts to counter the official vaccine
narrative with evidence about negative consequences date back to the
days of smallpox. A doctor practicing in the 1870s observed that
smallpox mortality doubled (from roughly 7% to 15%) after adoption of smallpox vaccination.
During an outbreak in 1871 and 1872, this doctor stated, faith in
vaccination received a “rude…shock” when “[e]very country in Europe was
invaded with a severity greater than had ever been witnessed during the
three preceding centuries.” The doctor also noted that “many vaccinated
persons in almost every place were attacked by small-pox before any
unvaccinated persons took the disease.” In this individual’s estimation,
these facts were “sufficient to overthrow the entire theory of the
protective efficacy of vaccination.”
In the present era, federal agencies
continue to tout difficult-to-justify but money-spinning vaccines as
beneficial, even in the face of substantial evidence to the contrary.
Now, more than ever, it is important to illuminate the risks and
downsides that public health agencies do not want us to know about.
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