What's most interesting, however, is that both sides, as in the vaccine debate (yep, that old chestnut) claim to be upholding the science while accusing the other side of fraud or pseudoscience or plain distortion. Neither side can prove it either way and it usually devolves into ad-hominem slagging matches. Interesting as a sideshow but absolutely pointless in the scheme of the matter.
I'm no scientist - not even close - but there's a much simpler perspective here. The money. Follow the money.
Fundamentally, however - the premise for the debate is usually spurious:
In the first instance, the pro-vaccine lobby make the quantum and erroneous step of assuming that anyone with whom they're debating is anti-vaccine. In many, many instances that simply isn't the case. So the argument for the baseline science surrounding vaccine efficacy is immediately binned. In most cases, it's out of our purview in any event.
Moving on.
I've seen too, with critics of the documentary, VAXXED, many make the same "anti-vaccine propaganda" claim about the film indicating quite emphatically that they cannot have seen it as the film is neither anti-vaccine nor about debunking the efficacy of vaccines. The topic isn't ever part of the discussion. Watch it. You'll agree. It's impossible not to. It's not there.
But the truth is - they don't want you to watch it and it's been labeled a fraudulent misleading film as it's been put together by a fraud anyway, someone who was struck off the British medical register for a) publishing a fraudulent scientific study and b) misleadingly stating there was a causal link between the MMR vaccine and autism, therefore the film has no legitimacy.
The subject of those allegations is Dr Andrew Wakefield.
Yes, it is true that he lost his medical licence in Britain and it is true that he published a paper in Lancet for peer review in 1998, which was subsequently withdrawn by that journal, although given the ultimate outcome of that issue, it should by rights be reinstated as its contents and conclusions still stand. (find the paper here)
But what the Wakefield critics don't tell you is that a) the study was coauthored by 12 other scientists and b) the paper made no such conclusion whatsoever between MMR and autism.
The paper was a study involving a group of children who had presented with gastric complications, the parents of whom had approached Wakefield (the top gastroenterologist in the UK at the time) and his research team to try and assist them with their children's condition, which is exactly what they did. During this investigation 8 of the 12 parents revealed that these symptoms, along with the so-called autistic regression had started coincidentally with the administering of the MMR vaccine and what the scientists discovered was that when they treated the bowel disorders, the neurological and behavioural aberrations were similarly ameliorated. Ergo there seemed to be a link between the gastrointestinal disorder and the neurological symptoms as shown by repeated testing which produced replicable results. This was unarguable. They thus concluded that there should be further study into the MMR vaccine as the claims of the parents had seemingly turned out to be valid.
It was also later recommended by Wakefield that instead of continuing the combined vaccine protocol, the GMC should perhaps revert to the single shot mumps, measles and rubella vaccines until conclusive studies had been undertaken on the combined MMR vaccine.
Where in any of that does it show that Wakefied was making a causal link? It was simply never stated - ever. In fact, Wakefield was advocating vaccine alternatives - he was pro-vaccine but pro SAFE vaccines.
But here's the kicker. Merck, who owned the exclusive licence (and obviously the British monopoly) for the MMR vaccine brooked no debate about withdrawing it for further study and the GMC backed this decision, in fact they actually went as far as to remove the single shot vaccine option altogether which had, up until the time of the Wakefield study, been available. Once this had been published, the single shot vaccines were no longer commercially available in the national vaccine programme.
Coincidence? Perhaps. But unlikely.
Moreover, the two other doctors who were accused of fraud and misrepresentation and who lost their licences along with Wakefield, were exonerated in an appeal wherein the judge ruled that they'd been treated outrageously by the GMC. The balance withdrew their names from the paper under industry pressure.
Wakefield had, as the research principal, no such luck and was being pursued by the GMC and the mainstream media on various other fronts at the time. He wouldn't back down and pursued the study in spite of the GMC and pharma industry pressure. He went from being the top gastroenterologist in the country with over 140 scientific papers published, leading a team of 19 researchers at the Royal Free Hospital in London to becoming an unscrupulous liar with no credibility. Overnight. Yeah, okay then. Sounds legit.
One of the paper's co-authors, who stood accused of the same misconduct as Wakefield, John Walker-Smith won his appeal (here) some 14 years later against the United Kingdom’s General Medical Council regulatory board that had ruled against both him and Andrew Wakefield for their roles in the 1998 Lancet MMR paper. The victory meant that Walker-Smith had been returned to the status of a fully licensed physician in the UK, although he had already retired in 2001 — six years before the GMC trial had even begun.
Justice John Mitting, in Case No: CO/7039/2010 in the Royal Courts of Justice Strand, London, ruled on the appeal by Walker-Smith, saying that the GMC “panel’s determination cannot stand. I therefore quash it.” He said that its conclusions were based on “inadequate and superficial reasoning and, in a number of instances, a wrong conclusion.”
The verdict restored Walker-Smith’s name to the medical register and his reputation to the medical community. This conclusion was unsurprising as the GMC trial had no actual complainants in the first place and more important - no harm came to the children who were studied, and the parents of the children, to a person, had supported Walker-Smith and Wakefield through the trial, reporting that their children had medically benefited from the treatment they received at the Royal Free Hospital. It was the GMC who had thrown the doctors to the wolves.
Another key fact that is never mentioned in the character assassination of Wakefield is that while John Walker-Smith received funding to appeal the GMC decision from his insurance carrier, Andrew Wakefield did not (one can only imagine the magnitude of the costs) — and was therefore unable to mount an appeal in the high court. In 2012 however, Wakefield, who had by then conducted his research in the US, filed a defamation lawsuit against Brian Deer, Fiona Godlee and the British Medical Journal for falsely accusing him of “fraud.” The suit, case number D-1-GN-12-000003, is still currently underway in District Court in Travis County, Texas, where Wakefield now lives. The ruling fully exonerated Walker-Smith and is of enormous significance for Wakefield’s suit against Brian Deer, the reporter on whose reporting the entire GMC hearing was based.
Years after the Lancet debacle - in 2004/2005, one of the top scientists at the CDC, William Thompson (through an intermediary, Brian Hooker) contacted Wakefield to confirm the causal link between the MMR vaccine and autism and that is the story that's told in the film, VAXXED, William Thompson's, not Andrew Wakefield's. But it would seem Dr Wakefield continues to be vindicated as time rolls on.
Follow the money.
And it's a story that everyone should hear and see, free from the media and populist propaganda that's doing the rounds. It's not about Andrew Wakefield at all and if we are to review the facts of the man's discrediting, given the ruling of Justice Mitting in Walker-Smith's case, Wakefield should not have been blacklisted at all - his credentials and goodstanding should be restored alongside his colleague's.Despite all of this, Wakefield refused to be cowed and just kept on keeping on.
When people stand against the system, a very twisted system while being subjected to the most insidious attacks from every quarter, attacks filled with distortions of the facts to try and discredit the whistleblower, I'm more inclined than ever to listen to those the establishment would attempt to silence. In Wakefield's case - there was no issue of whistleblowing - it was a straightforward study subject to no wrongdoing that had been sanctioned both by the GMC and the parents of the affected children themselves and in the long run - it benefited the children substantially. The only threat this paper ever posed was the suggestion in its content that the parents had made the connection between the MMR and the gastrointestinal morbidity that ensued hence their approach to Wakefield et-al. Not all the parents made that claim, however - this too is reported in the document. But nobody is talking about that...hmmmm...
In my humble opinion, Wakefield should be in line for a Nobel humanitarian award - instead he's reviled and the medical industry want you to think that he's a fraud.
He's anything but.
He's as genuine as they come.
Do the real research - not the google "Andrew Wakefield fraud" research but that will dredge up everything the mainstream has thrown at him if that's what you crave to see. Yet he's still standing. Taller than ever.
So to wander across this web of distortion to divert attention from the crux of this matter is absolutely nonsensical but it seems to work for those who don't want to face the horror of this situation.
Just like Andrew Wakefield, I am pro-vaccine too - yes indeed. So let's not debate that.
That isn't what this is about despite the best efforts of the pharmaceutical industry and the pro-vaccine lobbyists to try desperately to make it so. It simply isn't. It never was.
And it's not about the science either. It's about the money.
What is at issue here is that the establishment would have us believe Andrew Wakefield, the guy who put his patients' welfare first (upholding the Hippocratic Oath while his colleagues folded from career pressure all around him) suddenly became a scoundrel overnight and did all of this to try and promote his own vaccine in favour of the MMR, another fabricated fiction to smear the man's name. This is the guy who was advocating the single shot vaccine alternative that had never produced any of the harmful adverse (wow, what a euphemism that is) reactions that had coincidentally albeit anecdotally occurred following the MMR shot. 8 out of 12 may be "coincidental", "anecdotal" and "correlated" to the MMR shot and the scientists will love to tell you that "correlation is not causation" but when coincidence puts the "correlation" rate at approaching 70% and this begins to happen "anecdotally" all over the world where there are all these thousands of anecdotally damaged (let's not call them autistic even though they are) kids who regressed that way following an MMR vaccine then it is not up for debate between you or me or anyone else - it is the JOB of the medical fraternity to investigate that anecdotal correlation and rule it out entirely. But that (despite what spin my have come your way) has not been done.
In fact, in the fifteen years that the CDC was testing vaccines, one of their top scientists (another who apparently went from being super-competent to notoriously unreliable overnight, the label applied to all whistleblowers while their detractors build a cover story) actually confirmed that these MMR vaccines were harming specific groups of children at an unprecedented rate. When the data was confirmed, the CDC didn't come clean about this revelation, they sought to bury it, falsify the damning records and destroy others so that the vaccine programme could continue unimpeded.
Come on, folks - forget the science - follow the money.
All the way back to the manufacturers who have no liability in this gig.
They are legally exempt from any liability by dint of legislation they lobbied to have sanctioned in the 1980's, at which time the Vaccine Injury Compensation Act was passed - funded by the US taxpayer and at which no pharmaceutical drug manufacturer need be present as vaccines are not drugs - they were reclassified as "biological agents" at the industry's behest thereby exonerating the manufacturers even further - they no longer even have to put them through double blind clinical trials to prove their safety never mind their efficacy...
Can one see a pattern beginning to emerge here yet?
To date the Vaccine Injury Compensation fund has paid in excess of $3 billion in compensation to vaccine damaged people, mostly kids.
There is no ambiguity here. The fund would not pay out if the injury had not been the result of a vaccine. Ergo: vaccines can and do inflict harm on those they're designed to protect, much more frequently than the medical establishment and your government would have you believe.
So the only fiction that one might conclude from this is that of the bold throwaway statement that vaccines do not cause autism or even injure people.
They do - guilty on both counts.
The less than "anecdotal" payouts confirm this...
And as someone said recently - imagine your kids are at school and there are 50 of them in the class each having been given an apple. Now it's known that there is a poisoned apple in that batch. The poisoned apple is going to permanently damage the child who gets it - maybe even kill them but the kids are forced to eat their apple anyway.
The state says so and you as parents have no choice in the matter.
And that is the Mandatory Vaccine Programme in a nutshell.
I'm all for giving the kids the apples - sure. But not apples mixed with all sorts of other stuff that don't belong in apples in the first place. Clean apples, pure apples, and apples of my choice for my kids.
And if I don't want them to have an apple - that too should be my choice.
If the vaccines work as claimed, any unvaccinated child poses absolutely zero threat to anyone else.
Handing your child's body over to a state organ that's owned by the pharmaceutical industry that has colluded and lied to us all about their products and the harm they might pose - they are the ones who should be vilified and scrutinised and brought to book - not the parents of the victims of their poisonous concoctions and certainly not Andrew Wakefield who has repeatedly proved to have the welfare of his patients at heart despite the onslaught he's undergone.
Support forced vaccinations at your peril.
And it won't stop with children.
That is already on the cards. They are lobbying for seniors to be compulsorily vaccinated - yet another vulnerable group.
The money - follow the money. Forget the science. We can't argue the science.
Follow the money.
It's going one way and one way alone.
And we may be going right along with it.
Democracy is about the choice of the people not the choice of the state being forced on the people.
Watch VAXXED - it will be here soon. (info here)
