The paper further claimed discovery of a new medical “syndrome” of both brain and bowel disease in the children. All but one, it reported in text and tables, had developmental issues plus “chronic enterocolitis” — inflammation of both the large and small intestine. “It’s a moral issue for me,” Wakefield told his audience, calling for MMR to be suspended in favour of single shots for measles, mumps, and rubella. “I can’t support the continued use of these three vaccines, given in combination, until this issue has been resolved.” The dean equivocated, but the professor backed Wakefield. And so was born an intractable controversy as the paper was leveraged to launch a crusade: first against this vaccine, then later another… and another… all the way to SARS-CoV-2.
“It’s not a vaccine at all,” Wakefield would rail against the latter at the height of the Covid pandemic. “It’s actually genetic engineering.” Back in 1998, his ground had been firmer, even based on a mere dozen patients. Many medical insights begin with short case series. Autism: 11 kids in the Baltimore area, for example. Aids: five men in Los Angeles. That Thursday, it seemed possible the Royal Free had got lucky: maybe catching the first snapshot of a hidden epidemic of catastrophic injuries to kids. Massive studies around the world, however, found nothing to confirm this, leaving a whale of a riddle rotting on the beach. If parents of two-thirds of 12 children with developmental issues blamed the triple shot for the sudden onset of autism, why weren’t vaccine victims everywhere? Wakefield doubled down, claiming they were. But, while the medical establishment sought refuge in authority, urging the public to trust experts, not a lone-voice maverick, an old-school Sunday Times investigation, run by me, would pepper revelations across more than the next decade, revealing what this doctor had done.
Our first report splashed in February 2004, almost exactly six years after the press conference. “Revealed: MMR research scandal,” was the front page, igniting a new media firestorm. We had discovered a monstrous conflict of interest that Wakefield kept hidden, then denied. For two years before his “moral issue” surfaced — and before any of the children set foot in the hospital — he had been payrolled by a small-town solicitor named Richard Barr to help lead an attack on MMR. Unlike expert witnesses, who give advice and opinions, the doctor was delegated to arrange the tests, building pressure for a speculative lawsuit.
“I have mentioned to you before,” Barr wrote to Wakefield, six months before the Royal Free event, “the prime objective is to produce unassailable evidence in court so as to convince a court that these vaccines are dangerous.” Barr filed the lawsuit at the Royal Courts of Justice eight months after the breathless press conference. Wakefield claimed fees of £150 an hour (about £254 an hour at late 2022 values), drawn from the government’s legal aid fund. So, as he recruited the children and wrote the paper, he had a financial incentive not only to trigger a client-grabbing furore, but to keep it going for as long as he could.
Those clients poured in — nearly 1,600 families — as journalists were duped to fuel the scare. And by late 2003, when Barr’s lawsuit collapsed, Wakefield had. been handed £435,643 (about £738,000, or nearly US $900,000, at last year’s values), plus expenses, in taxpayers’ money. But as he gazed into the glare of TV lights, his legal deal was only one of his secrets. As he’d made his call for a switch to single vaccines, he forgot to mention that eight months previously he’d filed a confidential claim at the London Patent Office for his own, supposedly safer, single vaccine.
His shot wouldn’t have worked. When I asked experts about it, they laughed. But four days after the Royal Free event, he put it to the medical school that they start a joint company to raise money for this, and other products he’d imagined, which only stood much chance of enticing investors if confidence in MMR was damaged. Yet this doctor wasn’t shy of shady stuff, even hopelessly suing me for what a High Court judge described as “public-relations purposes”. So I carried on digging for years, on-and-off, exposing secrets and lies by the bucket. “If my son really is Patient 11, then the Lancet article is simply an outright fabrication,” complained the father of a California boy brought to London for the tests, after I found the dad and showed him a copy. “I know that paper is not right and fraudulent,” the mother of another boy, from the north of England, emailed me. “I can see that from what was written about my son.”
Confidential medical records (lawfully checked) confirmed the parents’ right to be angry. Some of the kids said to have symptoms days after MMR, actually had them before or up to nine months later. Some were reported with “autism” without this diagnosis. Tests for bowel disease came back normal. None of Wakefield’s data revealed enterocolitis: the chief gastrointestinal symptom was constipation. Parents blaming the shot, moreover, wasn’t even a “finding” — it was a covert qualification to take part. Records showed that not eight, but 11 of the kids’ families named the vaccine at the hospital (the 12th’s later joined them to file a claim in the lawsuit) — a give-away number, sure to provoke questions, if Wakefield hadn’t airbrushed the figures. The poisonous truth was that all but the American family had links with vaccine activists caught up in Barr’s plans, pointing them to Wakefield’s project. And, surprise, legal aid authorities at the time insisted that, for cases to qualify for public funding, alleged symptoms must follow within days.
Wakefield was finished, but he couldn’t say sorry. And when The Sunday Times ran with “MMR doctor fixed data on autism”, he fought back, denying all error. “The notion that any researcher can cook such data in any fashion that can be slipped past the medical community for his personal benefit is patent nonsense,” he argued, in one of countless lengthy rejoinders. He wasn’t alone in not wishing us well. Much of the medical establishment was aggrieved. “I will now defend the heretic Dr Andrew Wakefield,” sneered, for instance, Bad Science author Dr Ben Goldacre. “The media are fingering the wrong man, and they know who should really take the blame: in MMR, journalists and editors have constructed their greatest hoax.”
But tunes changed abruptly in May 2010, after a hearing longer than the trial of OJ Simpson in which the General Medical Council vindicated what we’d published and scrubbed Wakefield from the doctors’ register. The Lancet, which for 12 years defended the paper, retracted it. And, after opposing the GMC proceedings, the British Medical Journal highlighted the irony. “It has taken the diligent scepticism of one man,” the BMJ said in an editorial, “standing outside medicine and science, to show that the paper was in fact an elaborate fraud”.
Main Edition
US
FR
Is the author suggesting that Covid vaccines are safe and effective because Wakefield says they’re not (‘after he’d moved on to trashing Covid vaccines’) or that we need to question claims that they are (‘who else is doing what in the hospitals and laboratories that we may one day look to for our lives?’)? His final paragraph doesn’t make it clear to this reader.
Yes I think that was clearly the implication. The statement attributed to Wakefield – that the mRNA vaccines aren’t really vaccines, they are genetic engineering – is factually true. That fact alone doesn’t make them dangerous, but neither does the fact that Wakefield said it make it wrong or support claims that the mRNA vaccines are ‘safe and effective’. But sadly its enough for many people.
Jim R, that’s your take but what’s the author’s? I ask because conflating the two drives (MMR and Covid) within the context of showing up ‘The man who launched the vaccine wars’ as a fraud, the author is in fact drawing into question all the doctors, epidemiologists, vaccinologists, scientists and others critical of the Covid vaccine by bracketing them, through association, as ‘anti-vaxxes’. If not then he should make it clear where he stands on this important point.
One thing that always fascinates me is how often the Physicist Richard Feynman could cut through the bull when it comes to ‘The Science’ – So for example,
““Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion.”
I refused the Covid vaccines for a rational reason once they were available. That I believed I’d had Covid in Nov 2019, well before I’d even heard of it. It took some time for anti-body tests to become available but after my very bad flu in Nov 2019 with lingering cough through December, subsequently I remained amazingly healthy – 2 years without anything, cold, flu etc, until my 2nd bout of Covid (oh yes, I forgot to say, I got on an antibody test trial, and was treated with sceptical amusement when asked about my health history prior to the test. The results of the test left me amused. I had had covid, the antibody profile fitted a no vaccine profile. The only question then had to be, did I get asymptomatic covid after Nov 2019. At 68 years old, I doubt that.) My second bout of Covid 2 years to the week after the first, was nothing, I just slept for a few days.
Once I was proven to have antibody resistance, and it still comfortably high after almost 18 months, I then refused any vaccine as my Virologist child followed ‘The Science’ and was horrified by the PCR testing – as far as they were concerned any PCR test at the iterations claimed ,was effectively fraudulent. It was also clear that no matter what the initial claims, the greatest vaccine trials in history were taking place, and after listening to the explanations of why a number of old people in Norway died after the Pfizer mRNA vaccine I decided Feynman was the man to listen to.
“Health authorities in Norway sought to allay safety concerns raised by the death of some elderly patients after they were vaccinated against COVID-19, saying there was no evidence of a direct link.
It comes after 33 people in the country aged 75 and over died following immunisation, according to the agency’s latest figures. All were already seriously ill, it said.
Initial reports raised alarm as the world looks for early signs of potential side effects from the vaccines. Although doctors say it’s possible that vaccine side effects could aggravate underlying illnesses, they were expecting nursing-home residents to die shortly after being vaccinated because deaths are more common among the frailest and sickest elderly patients.
“Clearly, COVID-19 is far more dangerous to most patients than vaccination,” Steinar Madsen, medical director at the Norwegian Medicines Agency, said, adding that a connection between the vaccine and the deaths was difficult to prove. “We are not alarmed.”
“We can’t say that people die from the vaccine. We can say that it may be coincidental. It is difficult to prove that it’s the vaccine which is the direct cause.”
“It is important to remember that about 45 people die every day in nursing homes in Norway, so it is not a given that this represents any excess mortality or that there is a causal connection,” Camilla Stoltenberg, head of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, said at a press conference.
Curiously when it came to dying ‘with’ or ‘of’ Covid, the ‘with’ reasoning never matched the dying ‘due’ as opposed to ‘after’ vaccination reasoning.
When it comes to politics/science, I find a few very simple tests useful.
Any scientist who’s counter argument includes labelling his opponent a “denier” – is almost certainly a fraud.
Anyone attributing “Brexit” support as a reason to discount the views of the supported on anything is likely to be a fraud.
Any use of the words “racist, fascist or appending the ending ‘phobe’ to various word such as homo, trans etc, is equally likely to be a fraud.
Anyone using ‘cis’ in front of the nouns male, man, female, women is a religious bigot or fears being labelled as a ‘phobe’.
My first response to this article is ‘The Scientists’ must be getting worried as everything they sold to us as ‘The Science’ from Lockdown, masks to Vaccines is proving to be increasingly like the sceptics told us at the start. It is looking more likely by the day that the ‘Conspiracy theorists’ had it right after all.
And Lord Jonathan Sumption.KS, KC.from Day 1!
And Lord Jonathan Sumption.KS, KC.from Day 1!
Doctors, scientists and journalists (including Deer) who rely on the pharmaceutical industry for their income cannot be objective about vaccines, mRNA biotechnology or any other pharmaceutical drug they are required to administer/champion. “Disgraced” doctors and scientists like Andrew Wakefield and Denis Rancort can be. It is always essential, when making a choice for yourself, to listen to unbiased voices.
One thing that always fascinates me is how often the Physicist Richard Feynman could cut through the bull when it comes to ‘The Science’ – So for example,
““Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion.”
I refused the Covid vaccines for a rational reason once they were available. That I believed I’d had Covid in Nov 2019, well before I’d even heard of it. It took some time for anti-body tests to become available but after my very bad flu in Nov 2019 with lingering cough through December, subsequently I remained amazingly healthy – 2 years without anything, cold, flu etc, until my 2nd bout of Covid (oh yes, I forgot to say, I got on an antibody test trial, and was treated with sceptical amusement when asked about my health history prior to the test. The results of the test left me amused. I had had covid, the antibody profile fitted a no vaccine profile. The only question then had to be, did I get asymptomatic covid after Nov 2019. At 68 years old, I doubt that.) My second bout of Covid 2 years to the week after the first, was nothing, I just slept for a few days.
Once I was proven to have antibody resistance, and it still comfortably high after almost 18 months, I then refused any vaccine as my Virologist child followed ‘The Science’ and was horrified by the PCR testing – as far as they were concerned any PCR test at the iterations claimed ,was effectively fraudulent. It was also clear that no matter what the initial claims, the greatest vaccine trials in history were taking place, and after listening to the explanations of why a number of old people in Norway died after the Pfizer mRNA vaccine I decided Feynman was the man to listen to.
“Health authorities in Norway sought to allay safety concerns raised by the death of some elderly patients after they were vaccinated against COVID-19, saying there was no evidence of a direct link.
It comes after 33 people in the country aged 75 and over died following immunisation, according to the agency’s latest figures. All were already seriously ill, it said.
Initial reports raised alarm as the world looks for early signs of potential side effects from the vaccines. Although doctors say it’s possible that vaccine side effects could aggravate underlying illnesses, they were expecting nursing-home residents to die shortly after being vaccinated because deaths are more common among the frailest and sickest elderly patients.
“Clearly, COVID-19 is far more dangerous to most patients than vaccination,” Steinar Madsen, medical director at the Norwegian Medicines Agency, said, adding that a connection between the vaccine and the deaths was difficult to prove. “We are not alarmed.”
“We can’t say that people die from the vaccine. We can say that it may be coincidental. It is difficult to prove that it’s the vaccine which is the direct cause.”
“It is important to remember that about 45 people die every day in nursing homes in Norway, so it is not a given that this represents any excess mortality or that there is a causal connection,” Camilla Stoltenberg, head of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, said at a press conference.
Curiously when it came to dying ‘with’ or ‘of’ Covid, the ‘with’ reasoning never matched the dying ‘due’ as opposed to ‘after’ vaccination reasoning.
When it comes to politics/science, I find a few very simple tests useful.
Any scientist who’s counter argument includes labelling his opponent a “denier” – is almost certainly a fraud.
Anyone attributing “Brexit” support as a reason to discount the views of the supported on anything is likely to be a fraud.
Any use of the words “racist, fascist or appending the ending ‘phobe’ to various word such as homo, trans etc, is equally likely to be a fraud.
Anyone using ‘cis’ in front of the nouns male, man, female, women is a religious bigot or fears being labelled as a ‘phobe’.
My first response to this article is ‘The Scientists’ must be getting worried as everything they sold to us as ‘The Science’ from Lockdown, masks to Vaccines is proving to be increasingly like the sceptics told us at the start. It is looking more likely by the day that the ‘Conspiracy theorists’ had it right after all.
Doctors, scientists and journalists (including Deer) who rely on the pharmaceutical industry for their income cannot be objective about vaccines, mRNA biotechnology or any other pharmaceutical drug they are required to administer/champion. “Disgraced” doctors and scientists like Andrew Wakefield and Denis Rancort can be. It is always essential, when making a choice for yourself, to listen to unbiased voices.
The statement attributed to Wakefield – that the mRNA vaccines aren’t really vaccines, they are genetic engineering – is factually true.
Nonsense. mRNA cannot alter human DNA.
Hi Kolya Wolf, I’m afraid you might be wrong. Search for a paper published by Markus Aldén et al titled: ‘Intracellular reverse transcription of Pfizer BioNTech Covid-19 mRNA vaccine BNT162b2 in vitro in human liver cell line’.
‘Intracellular reverse transcription of Pfizer BioNTech Covid-19 mRNA vaccine BNT162b2 in vitro in human liver cell line’.
This is an in vitro study. Sceptical antenna tuned to the max.
For a reasoned critique of this study and an even handed assessment of possible detrimental downstream effects with mRNA vaccines in patients with pre-existing liver problems you would be better off reading :
Comment on Aldén et al. Intracellular Reverse Transcription of Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 In Vitro in Human Liver Cell Line. Curr. Issues Mol. Biol. 2022, 44, 1115–1126https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9164063/
I had a biologist cast a quick eye on that paper. The short conclusion is that it is not fake, and I will not insult the authors by calling them sloppy, but that it leaves far too many stones unturned for the conclusion to be relied on without considerable confirmation elsewhere. A few points:
The most convincing part of the paper was finding DNA corresponding the the RNA in the vaccine. They did not prove that the DNA was incorporated in the genome (rather than free-floating) but with the suspected translation mechanism that is not so big a concern.
The protein doing the incorporation is suggested to be something called LINE1. This is an integral part of the genes in all human cells, and does not come with the vaccine (or with the virus).
LINE1 is thoroughly locked down and disactivated under normal conditions, but is known to be more active under certain conditions, e.g. in cancer. The paper claims to show that LINE1 is activated in their cell culture the presence of mRNA vaccines, but those data are rather less impressive to the eye. They also lack a control, to check whether those lipid droplets stimulate LINE1 when containing a different mRNA, or none at all – it absolutely cannot be the mRNA that does the stimulating, which means that this mechanism is not dependent on this particular vaccine.
Now the cell line that they use for their experiments is a cancerous cell line, which would suggest that LINE1 might be more or more easily activated here than in normal cells.
An interesting sidelight is found in a paper linked to, that purports to show incorporation of viral DNA in cells in COVID patients. As always, you need to compare any potential ill effects of vaccination with the ill effects fo getting the disease. This paper is, however quite controversial, with some people suggesting the results are artefacts of the sequencing method, so again it seems that ‘more research is needed’.
The link that E G-L gives has more and more authoritative comments.
‘Intracellular reverse transcription of Pfizer BioNTech Covid-19 mRNA vaccine BNT162b2 in vitro in human liver cell line’.
This is an in vitro study. Sceptical antenna tuned to the max.
For a reasoned critique of this study and an even handed assessment of possible detrimental downstream effects with mRNA vaccines in patients with pre-existing liver problems you would be better off reading :
Comment on Aldén et al. Intracellular Reverse Transcription of Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 In Vitro in Human Liver Cell Line. Curr. Issues Mol. Biol. 2022, 44, 1115–1126https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9164063/
I had a biologist cast a quick eye on that paper. The short conclusion is that it is not fake, and I will not insult the authors by calling them sloppy, but that it leaves far too many stones unturned for the conclusion to be relied on without considerable confirmation elsewhere. A few points:
The most convincing part of the paper was finding DNA corresponding the the RNA in the vaccine. They did not prove that the DNA was incorporated in the genome (rather than free-floating) but with the suspected translation mechanism that is not so big a concern.
The protein doing the incorporation is suggested to be something called LINE1. This is an integral part of the genes in all human cells, and does not come with the vaccine (or with the virus).
LINE1 is thoroughly locked down and disactivated under normal conditions, but is known to be more active under certain conditions, e.g. in cancer. The paper claims to show that LINE1 is activated in their cell culture the presence of mRNA vaccines, but those data are rather less impressive to the eye. They also lack a control, to check whether those lipid droplets stimulate LINE1 when containing a different mRNA, or none at all – it absolutely cannot be the mRNA that does the stimulating, which means that this mechanism is not dependent on this particular vaccine.
Now the cell line that they use for their experiments is a cancerous cell line, which would suggest that LINE1 might be more or more easily activated here than in normal cells.
An interesting sidelight is found in a paper linked to, that purports to show incorporation of viral DNA in cells in COVID patients. As always, you need to compare any potential ill effects of vaccination with the ill effects fo getting the disease. This paper is, however quite controversial, with some people suggesting the results are artefacts of the sequencing method, so again it seems that ‘more research is needed’.
The link that E G-L gives has more and more authoritative comments.
Just in, Kolya Wolf, is this TrialSite News editorial: ‘Two wrongs don’t make a right — up until recently FDA clearly classified mRNA vaccines as Gene Therapy’
The mRNA ‘vaccine’ is designed to infect human cells, override their genetic coding, and force them to start producing the covid spike protein, producing an immune reaction including the immune system killing the corrupted cells. (That’s also how a virus reproduces itself). What do you call reprogramming a human cell if not genetic engineering? It’s very different from traditional vaccines which inject the weakened virus itself into the body. You are repeating the usual MSM / Faucian straw man argument – no one said the mRNA shot changed all the DNA in all of your cells. Just the relatively small number that get effected, all of which will be then killed by the immune system. And its all quite brilliant except for the fact that the vaccine is not carefully targeted to cells that we can afford to lose – it can travel in the blood stream especially if its injected into a blood vessel, and if it should happen to get into your heart or other vulnerable areas and trigger an immune system attack – well bad things would happen. And indeed, bad things did happen just as many predicted.
I thing they are equivocating on the fact that it was genetically engineered. Sounds much scarier the way they put it.
The SEC filings by Moderna call them gene therapy because the FDA classifies them as such.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1682852/000168285220000017/mrna-20200630.htm
This is a few years old now and things may have changed but it was certainly considered true at one point.
Hi Kolya Wolf, I’m afraid you might be wrong. Search for a paper published by Markus Aldén et al titled: ‘Intracellular reverse transcription of Pfizer BioNTech Covid-19 mRNA vaccine BNT162b2 in vitro in human liver cell line’.
Just in, Kolya Wolf, is this TrialSite News editorial: ‘Two wrongs don’t make a right — up until recently FDA clearly classified mRNA vaccines as Gene Therapy’
The mRNA ‘vaccine’ is designed to infect human cells, override their genetic coding, and force them to start producing the covid spike protein, producing an immune reaction including the immune system killing the corrupted cells. (That’s also how a virus reproduces itself). What do you call reprogramming a human cell if not genetic engineering? It’s very different from traditional vaccines which inject the weakened virus itself into the body. You are repeating the usual MSM / Faucian straw man argument – no one said the mRNA shot changed all the DNA in all of your cells. Just the relatively small number that get effected, all of which will be then killed by the immune system. And its all quite brilliant except for the fact that the vaccine is not carefully targeted to cells that we can afford to lose – it can travel in the blood stream especially if its injected into a blood vessel, and if it should happen to get into your heart or other vulnerable areas and trigger an immune system attack – well bad things would happen. And indeed, bad things did happen just as many predicted.
I thing they are equivocating on the fact that it was genetically engineered. Sounds much scarier the way they put it.
The SEC filings by Moderna call them gene therapy because the FDA classifies them as such.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1682852/000168285220000017/mrna-20200630.htm
This is a few years old now and things may have changed but it was certainly considered true at one point.
Jim R, that’s your take but what’s the author’s? I ask because conflating the two drives (MMR and Covid) within the context of showing up ‘The man who launched the vaccine wars’ as a fraud, the author is in fact drawing into question all the doctors, epidemiologists, vaccinologists, scientists and others critical of the Covid vaccine by bracketing them, through association, as ‘anti-vaxxes’. If not then he should make it clear where he stands on this important point.
The statement attributed to Wakefield – that the mRNA vaccines aren’t really vaccines, they are genetic engineering – is factually true.
Nonsense. mRNA cannot alter human DNA.
This writer is just a Bio-Pharma Industry Shill. Try reading some Bobby Kennedy Jr on vaccines. His book ‘The Real Anthony Fauci’ will tell you the evil that is the pharma industry and is an Amazon best seller
But to see some stories go to his website, Childrenshealthdefence.org.
There is 100% correlation with the INCREDIBLE increase in childhood chronic health issues and the vaccine numbers going from 6 the dozens and dozens which are given today. (which does not prove causation, but….)
The vaccines are implicated in thousands of studies –
try a few topics from the site I mentioned https://childrenshealthdefense.org/?s=mmr+autism&type=defender
Gates and the vaccine industry are evil – (not all vaccines) – but the industry, the same one which gave us ‘The Vax’ are Evil to the very core!
Hi Elliott Bjorn, I do hope not (that he’s a a ‘Bio-Pharma Industry Shill’ ). Apropos, please see my reply to Jim R. Thank you for your reference(s).
Deer worked closely with Medico-Legal Investigations (MLI), which as far as I can tell was entirely funded by the British pharma industry.
Recall that Wakefield’s discovery about how causing microbiome disruption in infants could lead to brain damage (we call some forms of this damage “autism”) threatened the lucrative MMR contract.
Deer was commissioned to write for the Sunday Times, a Murdoch paper, by Paul Nuki. Paul Nuki is the son of Professor George Nuki, who in 1987 sat on the Committee on Safety of Medicines when it licensed the Glaxo company’s Pluserix MMR vaccine (made by Smith Kline & French Laboratories). This was a new name for the vaccine Trivirix, which had been withdrawn in Canada in 1988 because the Urabe measles strain was causing too many adverse events.
The UK officials knew the vaccine was problematic but licensed it anyway (“Vaccine officials knew about MMR risks”, The Telegraph, 2007). The company agreed to supply the vaccine only if the UK government indemnified it from all liability, which the UK government did in secret by using a regional health authority to sign the contract rather than the NHS Procurement Directorate. (Sound familiar? The field of vaccines is one of the most corrupt in existence and it’s been going on for decades.) The full accounting of this scandal that was successfully covered up can be found in Martin Walker’s “The Urabe Farago.”
The UK abruptly pulled Pluserix and Immravax (made by the French company Merieux UK Ltd.) in 1992 when it predictably caused meningitis in UK children—exactly what had happened in Canada. Japan also pulled the vaccine in 1992 because theirs also used the Urabe strain. By 1991, parents were initiating Legal Aid claims due to injury from the vaccine.
The smear campaign against Wakefield moved the attention away from the children who had been damaged by the Urabe strain that should never have been used.
Deer performed a very useful function for the British government and the pharmaceutical industry.
It’s not possible without some sort of court action to learn whether Deer directly accepted pharma money; he certainly obtained some sort of help from them via MLI.
Well said. I used to buy into the whole ‘Wakefield is a fraud’ story, until I took the time to learn the details around it. The case was something of a canary in the coal mine for what we have seen play out over the last few years.
I bought into it at first, too. But he was crucified to warn all other researchers to stay away from implicating vaccines in brain damage or you too will lose everything.
But of course vaccines cause brain damage. They do it to adults regularly and babies’ and infants’ still-developing brains are far more delicate than those of an adult.
I bought into it at first, too. But he was crucified to warn all other researchers to stay away from implicating vaccines in brain damage or you too will lose everything.
But of course vaccines cause brain damage. They do it to adults regularly and babies’ and infants’ still-developing brains are far more delicate than those of an adult.
André Angelantoni, your account and suspicions are deeply concerning because, if true, confirms the fear that the author’s exposé will effectively serve as a bridgehead to attack Covid ‘anti-vaxxes’ while simultaneously handing Big Pharma and regulatory authorities a free pass.
Big Pharma already has a “free pass”.
In a lawsuit brought by a whistleblower in the USA, Pfizer claim they are immune from the lawsuit because their fraud over the trial results was already known by the FDA.
What kind of world is it where a pharma company thinks this is a good idea for a trial defence?
One in which they can operate with impunity having bought the entire federal regulatory structure. (And the same applies in the UK).
Big Pharma already has a “free pass”.
In a lawsuit brought by a whistleblower in the USA, Pfizer claim they are immune from the lawsuit because their fraud over the trial results was already known by the FDA.
What kind of world is it where a pharma company thinks this is a good idea for a trial defence?
One in which they can operate with impunity having bought the entire federal regulatory structure. (And the same applies in the UK).
Regardless of which Nuki was the son of which other Nuki,. it is established that Wakefield tried to discredit a vaccine based on a completely insufficient data set consisting of 12 (!) cherry-picked (!) children. Wakefield is discredited. The rest is whataboutery.
No, that’s not at all correct because you don’t understand the details and I’m quite certain have never read the original paper.
• His report was a case series; the whole point of a case series is to collect patients with similar symptoms because one is putting forward a hypothesis for the common cause. What you are saying is wrong about the paper is exactly the design of this sort of paper. This is a common error people make about the paper because they mistakenly think it had some other purpose, such as establishing cohort risk ratios, or similar. You’re supposed to have a small group of patients with similar symptoms—that’s the whole point of a case series.
• The GMC never charged Wakefield for fraud because there wasn’t sufficient evidence for it. That is Deer who is accusing fraud. But there was no fraud; see my top post comment entitled, “The Thread on Everything Deer Got Wrong and Conveniently Omits.”
I carefully did not use the word ‘fraud’.
I assume we agree that Wakefield tried to discredit the MMR vaccine, quite loudly.
For the rest, it can make sense to have a series of patients that present with certain symptoms, and then look for a common cause. It can also makes sense to have a series of patients that e.g. have all been vaccinated and then look for common (side) effects. But it makes no sense whatsoever to carefully select patients that are known to have autism *and* where the parents claim it happened just after vaccination, and use that to conclude that the two are connected. It would be equivalent to trawling the UK to find a group of red-headed pipefitters, and use it to insinuate that fitting pipes cause you hair to turn red.
Of course it makes sense to do that if the parents all report that their children started to lose language and press their tummies on furniture after vaccination. (Autistic children sometimes lean over furniture on their tummy because their tummies are in pain and pressing on them makes them feel better; most autistic children experience severe GI trouble and many experience explosive diarrhea. This is a clue that their brains are being affected by gut dysbiosis precisely when the brains are delicate and still developing.)
If the common cause was vaccination and the common symptom was GI distress or neurological damage (loss of language), how is one supposed to study this group children? Why isn’t a case series exactly the way one is meant to do it?
He did not claim there was a link. He said there is a correlation that needed more study.
In fact, he even went so far as to write the following:
Most people comment on the paper without having read it, which sounds like the case here given that you are getting key details wrong.
Here is it for your consideration:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673697110960/fulltext
From the OP:
Did he say that, or did he not? He may not have said in so many words in the paper that there was a link, but the implication is quite strong even in the paper. The reaction that the paper got was entirely predictable . For a man who was already cooperating with a lawyer who plans to sue on the basis of these data, do you claim this is a coincidence?
https://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c7452, which you have surely read, claims that 1) it was incorrect that the patients were ‘a consecutive series’ as stated in the paper. Do you deny this? 2) The same reference claims that there were numerous inaccuracies in the data of the article, all going in the direction of suggesting a link between autism and vaccination. Do you deny this?
Finally, the case series. As you know, children get autism and vaccinations in the same years, and just about everybody gets vaccinated. There is bound to be quite a few children who develop autism after vaccination, just by conicidence. If you select specifically those children, as Wakefield did, it is obvious – but meaningless – that your data will show the two phenomena together. Again, if I manage to find twelve red-haired pipefitters in the UK and present them as a case series, is that evidence that pipe-fitting turns your hair red?
Yes, he clearly said at the press conference that the data showed more adverse events in the trivalent shots. Subsequent papers have corroborated that single shots are safer than polyvalent shots and there is a dose-response relationship. After all, one can simply add the individual risks for each vaccine to see that a trivalent shot will be more dangerous than a monovalent shot. Moreover, there will be unwelcome interactions by having three major, simultaneous infections. Simple logic shows that one can expect worse outcomes with polyvalent vaccines.
And recommending away from a trivalent shot was and still is the prudent thing to do given that there was an entirely acceptable alternative. Simply give three single shots. Merck created the trivalent shot for marketing purposes, managed to get exclusive contracts for it and shut out all the other manufacturers from the market for these vaccines. There is no technical reason to give just one trivalent shot. It was a savvy business move and that’s all.
“1) it was incorrect that the patients were ‘a consecutive series’ as stated in the paper. Do you deny this?”
I deny that it represents a problem and so did the High Court on appeal:
Godlee’s interpretation was the panel’s interpretation and the Justice found it was an incorrect interpretation.
People don’t know the full story. They read only what Deer and Godlee wrote and fail to read the rebuttals—in this case by a High Court justice.
“2) The same reference claims that there were numerous inaccuracies in the data of the article, all going in the direction of suggesting a link between autism and vaccination. Do you deny this?”
One has to go through each alleged inaccuracy, as Justice Mitting did, to get to the answer. He found it necessary to quash the sanction and complaint of professional misconduct of Walker-Smith who was the lead clinician of the study and responsible for the results:
I suggest you read Justice Mitting’s response. The GMC’s findings were a mess and Mitting did not uphold the majority of them. In point after point, you will read, “This finding was unjustified,” “its reasoning is inadequate,” and “its findings must also fall.”
Why were there so many alleged discrepancies? In large part, it was because the GMC panel decided that three different studies were the same study.
• the Lancet 12 study
• a study with protocol 172-96, which was never undertaken
• a viral detection study funded by the Legal Aid Board
As a result of not keeping these (intentionally?) clear (which Justice Mitting had to untangle), the Panel deduced the Lancet 12 study had both protocol 172-96 and Legal Aid Board funding, and Wakefield was charged with wrongdoing because the facts didn’t fit. Godlee was similarly confused.
At some point you may realize, as many have, that the GMC determination was set ahead of time: they must find Wakefield and Walker-Smith guilty so as to discredit their study and protect the vaccination program. The panel made an astonishing number of factual errors and incorrect conclusions.
Finally, it’s true that autism appears right around the time of vaccination in many cases. It’s also true that we have other mechanisms for autism that do not involve vaccination.
You further write:
“If you select specifically those children, as Wakefield did, it is obvious – but meaningless – that your data will show the two phenomena together.”
No, it’s not meaningless, that’s the whole point. It’s called studying a susceptible subgroup. They are grouped precisely because they share similar symptoms, including autism and enterocolitis and the symptoms began shortly after vaccination with a live viral vaccine containing a virus with these effects. You are trying to make this paper into something it is not. The purpose of a case series is not to establish prevalence in the population. The purpose of a case series is to gather similar patients and propose a hypothesis.
That is precisely what the paper faithfully did.
For your reference (note where I added emphasis, please):
We are getting into repeating ourselves. So a final answer:
1) My interpretation was the same as that of the GMC – ‘consecutive referrals’ suggest in the average reader that these were routine referrals. If the law – that notoriously has its own particular interpretation of the meaning of words – disagrees, that does not change this fact.
2) The judge’s acquittal of Walker-Smith was based on the point that he could reasonably have believed that the actions taken were justified as beneficial treatment, and that his intent mattered. The criticism of the GMC related to this point. The issue of false data reporting was not addressed by the judge. Nor was the issue of Wakefields’s guilt – and the justification for Walker-Smith was not valid for Wakefield.
Of the three studies, the ‘Lancet 12’ study was a research project without ethics board approval. Bad. Protocol 172-96 had ethical board approval, but was significantly different from what actually was done. At the same time, Wakefield was cited to the Legal Aid Board as capable of providing data that substantiated a claim for damages. If Wakefield was actually carrying out a third, different study I have yet to hear of it.
Wakefield had a massive conflict of interest that he failed to declare, in that he was contracted to find proof of vaccine damages before he even started the project that – lo and behold – could be spun so as to show vaccine damages.
The lancet-12 study was a research project conducted without ethics board approval.
The study did not investigate a ‘susceptible subgroup’. It investigated a group of patients selected (and data manipulated) to have both autism, stomach trouble, and recent vaccination. Of course they found that the patients had post-vaccination autism, since that is how they were selected in the first place. Whatever you call this, you can conclude absolutely nothing from this group of patients – and Wakefield did conclude that vaccination was dangerous – as he was being paid by the law firm to find.
Just for completeness, the MMR vaccine was introduced because having one vaccination instead of three significantly improved the vaccination rate. And the MMR vaccination was not replaced by single vaccines based on Wakefields – unjustified – accusation also because that would have reduced the vaccination rate, and left more children vulnerable to disease and damage. As indeed they were, as a result of Wakefield’s campaign,
Wakefield deliberately and maliciously tried to discredit approved medical procedures, for gain, based on totally inadequate data. Whether he can be found guilty in law or not (and he has *not* been exonerated by anybody) that fact remains.
We are repeating ourselves in part because you aren’t reading closely.
“My interpretation was the same as that of the GMC – ‘consecutive referrals’ suggest in the average reader that these were routine referrals.”
Yes, and the High Court found that your interpretation and the GMC’s interpretation were incorrect. Did you read what Mitting wrote? I included it for your convenience. In fact, the High Court found that many things the GMC determined were incorrect; this was just one of them.
“The issue of false data reporting was not addressed by the judge. Nor was the issue of Wakefields’s guilt – and the justification for Walker-Smith was not valid for Wakefield.”
False data reporting, aka fraud, was not charged by the GMC and if it were true the police would have charged Wakefield, too. Research fraud is prosecuted here in the U.S. and I imagine it’s similar in the UK.
Justice Mitting did not need to address the charge of fraud because there was no charge of fraud—because no fraud occurred. The changes Deer has been saying Wakefield made all these years never happened. It was two sets of grading sheets done by independent graders. If you read his book, you’ll see that he has backed off his previous allegations because people like me have pointed out that he got it wrong.
I have already explained that the alleged competing vaccine could never in a million years replace a population-level, antibody-producing traditional vaccines in other comments on this page. I suggest you search for those comments to understand that Wakefield did not have a competing vaccine.
Moreover, you, too have gotten confused with the studies that were underway. My guess is that you have not read Justice Mitting’s opinion nor have you read Wakefield’s book. Together they disentangle the confusion between the studies that you are making.
Here is the short version: Walker-Smith had blanket ethics approval for the work he did with the children. This was put in place when he arrived at the Royal Free. Given that Mitting determined that the procedures were warranted as part of their treatment (they were getting treated, not just participating in a study), there was no breach of ethics on that charge.
On the charge of misusing funds, the GMC Panel noted that the protocol for the LAB study was very similar to protocol 172-96 and deduced it must actually be the 172-96 study. (See charge 7a.)
Then, as the Panel had decided that the Lancet 12 study was the study described in approval 172-96, they concluded the Lancet 12 study was funded by the LAB.
But that was wrong. The hospital did not make the LAB study money available until 7 months after the last child was investigated and after the paper had been submitted to the Lancet.
So the LAB funding could not have been used for the Lancet 12 study. It was impossible.
Wakefield completed and published a pilot study for the viral detection research in 1999, and its LAB funding was declared on it.
So there was no misuse of funds. There was no breach in ethics. There was no faked histopathology sheets, which Deer seems to have finally dropped as an accusation.
As I mentioned, the GMC Panel got virtually everything wrong.
Finally, to repeat, there was no technical reason to use a trivalent vaccine. You could say there was a public health reason but that’s not technical. Merck initially offered it for marketing reasons and was successful in shutting out its competitors (that’s what happened in the US, at least).
The reason the vaccination rates went down is because the UK government stopped offering single shots a few months after the press conference. This cynical governmental move forced parents to choose between a shot that had legitimate concerns raised about it and no shots at all. It wasn’t Wakefield’s fault that the UK government chose to use coercion with parents. These government workers think they have the right to coerce parents all the time and it’s been like this since the invention of vaccines.
Just look at how they acted with the Covid vaccines. The same thing happened with smallpox, too, until the people fought back after watching too many of their children die from the vaccine.
We are repeating ourselves in part because you aren’t reading closely.
“My interpretation was the same as that of the GMC – ‘consecutive referrals’ suggest in the average reader that these were routine referrals.”
Yes, and the High Court found that your interpretation and the GMC’s interpretation were incorrect. Did you read what Mitting wrote? I included it for your convenience. In fact, the High Court found that many things the GMC determined were incorrect; this was just one of them.
“The issue of false data reporting was not addressed by the judge. Nor was the issue of Wakefields’s guilt – and the justification for Walker-Smith was not valid for Wakefield.”
False data reporting, aka fraud, was not charged by the GMC and if it were true the police would have charged Wakefield, too. Research fraud is prosecuted here in the U.S. and I imagine it’s similar in the UK.
Justice Mitting did not need to address the charge of fraud because there was no charge of fraud—because no fraud occurred. The changes Deer has been saying Wakefield made all these years never happened. It was two sets of grading sheets done by independent graders. If you read his book, you’ll see that he has backed off his previous allegations because people like me have pointed out that he got it wrong.
I have already explained that the alleged competing vaccine could never in a million years replace a population-level, antibody-producing traditional vaccines in other comments on this page. I suggest you search for those comments to understand that Wakefield did not have a competing vaccine.
Moreover, you, too have gotten confused with the studies that were underway. My guess is that you have not read Justice Mitting’s opinion nor have you read Wakefield’s book. Together they disentangle the confusion between the studies that you are making.
Here is the short version: Walker-Smith had blanket ethics approval for the work he did with the children. This was put in place when he arrived at the Royal Free. Given that Mitting determined that the procedures were warranted as part of their treatment (they were getting treated, not just participating in a study), there was no breach of ethics on that charge.
On the charge of misusing funds, the GMC Panel noted that the protocol for the LAB study was very similar to protocol 172-96 and deduced it must actually be the 172-96 study. (See charge 7a.)
Then, as the Panel had decided that the Lancet 12 study was the study described in approval 172-96, they concluded the Lancet 12 study was funded by the LAB.
But that was wrong. The hospital did not make the LAB study money available until 7 months after the last child was investigated and after the paper had been submitted to the Lancet.
So the LAB funding could not have been used for the Lancet 12 study. It was impossible.
Wakefield completed and published a pilot study for the viral detection research in 1999, and its LAB funding was declared on it.
So there was no misuse of funds. There was no breach in ethics. There was no faked histopathology sheets, which Deer seems to have finally dropped as an accusation.
As I mentioned, the GMC Panel got virtually everything wrong.
Finally, to repeat, there was no technical reason to use a trivalent vaccine. You could say there was a public health reason but that’s not technical. Merck initially offered it for marketing reasons and was successful in shutting out its competitors (that’s what happened in the US, at least).
The reason the vaccination rates went down is because the UK government stopped offering single shots a few months after the press conference. This cynical governmental move forced parents to choose between a shot that had legitimate concerns raised about it and no shots at all. It wasn’t Wakefield’s fault that the UK government chose to use coercion with parents. These government workers think they have the right to coerce parents all the time and it’s been like this since the invention of vaccines.
Just look at how they acted with the Covid vaccines. The same thing happened with smallpox, too, until the people fought back after watching too many of their children die from the vaccine.
We are getting into repeating ourselves. So a final answer:
1) My interpretation was the same as that of the GMC – ‘consecutive referrals’ suggest in the average reader that these were routine referrals. If the law – that notoriously has its own particular interpretation of the meaning of words – disagrees, that does not change this fact.
2) The judge’s acquittal of Walker-Smith was based on the point that he could reasonably have believed that the actions taken were justified as beneficial treatment, and that his intent mattered. The criticism of the GMC related to this point. The issue of false data reporting was not addressed by the judge. Nor was the issue of Wakefields’s guilt – and the justification for Walker-Smith was not valid for Wakefield.
Of the three studies, the ‘Lancet 12’ study was a research project without ethics board approval. Bad. Protocol 172-96 had ethical board approval, but was significantly different from what actually was done. At the same time, Wakefield was cited to the Legal Aid Board as capable of providing data that substantiated a claim for damages. If Wakefield was actually carrying out a third, different study I have yet to hear of it.
Wakefield had a massive conflict of interest that he failed to declare, in that he was contracted to find proof of vaccine damages before he even started the project that – lo and behold – could be spun so as to show vaccine damages.
The lancet-12 study was a research project conducted without ethics board approval.
The study did not investigate a ‘susceptible subgroup’. It investigated a group of patients selected (and data manipulated) to have both autism, stomach trouble, and recent vaccination. Of course they found that the patients had post-vaccination autism, since that is how they were selected in the first place. Whatever you call this, you can conclude absolutely nothing from this group of patients – and Wakefield did conclude that vaccination was dangerous – as he was being paid by the law firm to find.
Just for completeness, the MMR vaccine was introduced because having one vaccination instead of three significantly improved the vaccination rate. And the MMR vaccination was not replaced by single vaccines based on Wakefields – unjustified – accusation also because that would have reduced the vaccination rate, and left more children vulnerable to disease and damage. As indeed they were, as a result of Wakefield’s campaign,
Wakefield deliberately and maliciously tried to discredit approved medical procedures, for gain, based on totally inadequate data. Whether he can be found guilty in law or not (and he has *not* been exonerated by anybody) that fact remains.
Yes, he clearly said at the press conference that the data showed more adverse events in the trivalent shots. Subsequent papers have corroborated that single shots are safer than polyvalent shots and there is a dose-response relationship. After all, one can simply add the individual risks for each vaccine to see that a trivalent shot will be more dangerous than a monovalent shot. Moreover, there will be unwelcome interactions by having three major, simultaneous infections. Simple logic shows that one can expect worse outcomes with polyvalent vaccines.
And recommending away from a trivalent shot was and still is the prudent thing to do given that there was an entirely acceptable alternative. Simply give three single shots. Merck created the trivalent shot for marketing purposes, managed to get exclusive contracts for it and shut out all the other manufacturers from the market for these vaccines. There is no technical reason to give just one trivalent shot. It was a savvy business move and that’s all.
“1) it was incorrect that the patients were ‘a consecutive series’ as stated in the paper. Do you deny this?”
I deny that it represents a problem and so did the High Court on appeal:
Godlee’s interpretation was the panel’s interpretation and the Justice found it was an incorrect interpretation.
People don’t know the full story. They read only what Deer and Godlee wrote and fail to read the rebuttals—in this case by a High Court justice.
“2) The same reference claims that there were numerous inaccuracies in the data of the article, all going in the direction of suggesting a link between autism and vaccination. Do you deny this?”
One has to go through each alleged inaccuracy, as Justice Mitting did, to get to the answer. He found it necessary to quash the sanction and complaint of professional misconduct of Walker-Smith who was the lead clinician of the study and responsible for the results:
I suggest you read Justice Mitting’s response. The GMC’s findings were a mess and Mitting did not uphold the majority of them. In point after point, you will read, “This finding was unjustified,” “its reasoning is inadequate,” and “its findings must also fall.”
Why were there so many alleged discrepancies? In large part, it was because the GMC panel decided that three different studies were the same study.
• the Lancet 12 study
• a study with protocol 172-96, which was never undertaken
• a viral detection study funded by the Legal Aid Board
As a result of not keeping these (intentionally?) clear (which Justice Mitting had to untangle), the Panel deduced the Lancet 12 study had both protocol 172-96 and Legal Aid Board funding, and Wakefield was charged with wrongdoing because the facts didn’t fit. Godlee was similarly confused.
At some point you may realize, as many have, that the GMC determination was set ahead of time: they must find Wakefield and Walker-Smith guilty so as to discredit their study and protect the vaccination program. The panel made an astonishing number of factual errors and incorrect conclusions.
Finally, it’s true that autism appears right around the time of vaccination in many cases. It’s also true that we have other mechanisms for autism that do not involve vaccination.
You further write:
“If you select specifically those children, as Wakefield did, it is obvious – but meaningless – that your data will show the two phenomena together.”
No, it’s not meaningless, that’s the whole point. It’s called studying a susceptible subgroup. They are grouped precisely because they share similar symptoms, including autism and enterocolitis and the symptoms began shortly after vaccination with a live viral vaccine containing a virus with these effects. You are trying to make this paper into something it is not. The purpose of a case series is not to establish prevalence in the population. The purpose of a case series is to gather similar patients and propose a hypothesis.
That is precisely what the paper faithfully did.
For your reference (note where I added emphasis, please):
From the OP:
Did he say that, or did he not? He may not have said in so many words in the paper that there was a link, but the implication is quite strong even in the paper. The reaction that the paper got was entirely predictable . For a man who was already cooperating with a lawyer who plans to sue on the basis of these data, do you claim this is a coincidence?
https://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c7452, which you have surely read, claims that 1) it was incorrect that the patients were ‘a consecutive series’ as stated in the paper. Do you deny this? 2) The same reference claims that there were numerous inaccuracies in the data of the article, all going in the direction of suggesting a link between autism and vaccination. Do you deny this?
Finally, the case series. As you know, children get autism and vaccinations in the same years, and just about everybody gets vaccinated. There is bound to be quite a few children who develop autism after vaccination, just by conicidence. If you select specifically those children, as Wakefield did, it is obvious – but meaningless – that your data will show the two phenomena together. Again, if I manage to find twelve red-haired pipefitters in the UK and present them as a case series, is that evidence that pipe-fitting turns your hair red?
Of course it makes sense to do that if the parents all report that their children started to lose language and press their tummies on furniture after vaccination. (Autistic children sometimes lean over furniture on their tummy because their tummies are in pain and pressing on them makes them feel better; most autistic children experience severe GI trouble and many experience explosive diarrhea. This is a clue that their brains are being affected by gut dysbiosis precisely when the brains are delicate and still developing.)
If the common cause was vaccination and the common symptom was GI distress or neurological damage (loss of language), how is one supposed to study this group children? Why isn’t a case series exactly the way one is meant to do it?
He did not claim there was a link. He said there is a correlation that needed more study.
In fact, he even went so far as to write the following:
Most people comment on the paper without having read it, which sounds like the case here given that you are getting key details wrong.
Here is it for your consideration:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673697110960/fulltext
I carefully did not use the word ‘fraud’.
I assume we agree that Wakefield tried to discredit the MMR vaccine, quite loudly.
For the rest, it can make sense to have a series of patients that present with certain symptoms, and then look for a common cause. It can also makes sense to have a series of patients that e.g. have all been vaccinated and then look for common (side) effects. But it makes no sense whatsoever to carefully select patients that are known to have autism *and* where the parents claim it happened just after vaccination, and use that to conclude that the two are connected. It would be equivalent to trawling the UK to find a group of red-headed pipefitters, and use it to insinuate that fitting pipes cause you hair to turn red.
No, that’s not at all correct because you don’t understand the details and I’m quite certain have never read the original paper.
• His report was a case series; the whole point of a case series is to collect patients with similar symptoms because one is putting forward a hypothesis for the common cause. What you are saying is wrong about the paper is exactly the design of this sort of paper. This is a common error people make about the paper because they mistakenly think it had some other purpose, such as establishing cohort risk ratios, or similar. You’re supposed to have a small group of patients with similar symptoms—that’s the whole point of a case series.
• The GMC never charged Wakefield for fraud because there wasn’t sufficient evidence for it. That is Deer who is accusing fraud. But there was no fraud; see my top post comment entitled, “The Thread on Everything Deer Got Wrong and Conveniently Omits.”
Why is it that I learn more from the comments section than from the articles?
There’s something very wrong in our world.
Well said. I used to buy into the whole ‘Wakefield is a fraud’ story, until I took the time to learn the details around it. The case was something of a canary in the coal mine for what we have seen play out over the last few years.
André Angelantoni, your account and suspicions are deeply concerning because, if true, confirms the fear that the author’s exposé will effectively serve as a bridgehead to attack Covid ‘anti-vaxxes’ while simultaneously handing Big Pharma and regulatory authorities a free pass.
Regardless of which Nuki was the son of which other Nuki,. it is established that Wakefield tried to discredit a vaccine based on a completely insufficient data set consisting of 12 (!) cherry-picked (!) children. Wakefield is discredited. The rest is whataboutery.
Why is it that I learn more from the comments section than from the articles?
There’s something very wrong in our world.
It seems a shame that the writer has pursued Dr Wakefield to expose his unethical conduct with such vehemence and dedication and neglected to see the same failings greatly magnified within the pharmaceutical industry.
Whether a shill or seeing Wakefield perhaps as an easy target he appears to have made a bit of an industry from this campaign while being blind to the larger tyarget.
Deer worked closely with Medico-Legal Investigations (MLI), which as far as I can tell was entirely funded by the British pharma industry.
Recall that Wakefield’s discovery about how causing microbiome disruption in infants could lead to brain damage (we call some forms of this damage “autism”) threatened the lucrative MMR contract.
Deer was commissioned to write for the Sunday Times, a Murdoch paper, by Paul Nuki. Paul Nuki is the son of Professor George Nuki, who in 1987 sat on the Committee on Safety of Medicines when it licensed the Glaxo company’s Pluserix MMR vaccine (made by Smith Kline & French Laboratories). This was a new name for the vaccine Trivirix, which had been withdrawn in Canada in 1988 because the Urabe measles strain was causing too many adverse events.
The UK officials knew the vaccine was problematic but licensed it anyway (“Vaccine officials knew about MMR risks”, The Telegraph, 2007). The company agreed to supply the vaccine only if the UK government indemnified it from all liability, which the UK government did in secret by using a regional health authority to sign the contract rather than the NHS Procurement Directorate. (Sound familiar? The field of vaccines is one of the most corrupt in existence and it’s been going on for decades.) The full accounting of this scandal that was successfully covered up can be found in Martin Walker’s “The Urabe Farago.”
The UK abruptly pulled Pluserix and Immravax (made by the French company Merieux UK Ltd.) in 1992 when it predictably caused meningitis in UK children—exactly what had happened in Canada. Japan also pulled the vaccine in 1992 because theirs also used the Urabe strain. By 1991, parents were initiating Legal Aid claims due to injury from the vaccine.
The smear campaign against Wakefield moved the attention away from the children who had been damaged by the Urabe strain that should never have been used.
Deer performed a very useful function for the British government and the pharmaceutical industry.
It’s not possible without some sort of court action to learn whether Deer directly accepted pharma money; he certainly obtained some sort of help from them via MLI.
It seems a shame that the writer has pursued Dr Wakefield to expose his unethical conduct with such vehemence and dedication and neglected to see the same failings greatly magnified within the pharmaceutical industry.
Whether a shill or seeing Wakefield perhaps as an easy target he appears to have made a bit of an industry from this campaign while being blind to the larger tyarget.
Hi Elliott Bjorn, I do hope not (that he’s a a ‘Bio-Pharma Industry Shill’ ). Apropos, please see my reply to Jim R. Thank you for your reference(s).
The final paragraph ? All he is saying is that science is about skepticism, not certainty. What this author does is to trash all vaccine skepticism and this does a huge disservice to the public. Vaccine ? Not a vaccine ? Does this matter ? The point is … if a chemical injected or ingested is designed to MANIPULATE the immune system, there are sure to be unintended consequences IN SOME PEOPLE. We are all the product of our genetics and whether there is genetic engineering happening or some other process, our immune systems are complex and some will be injured, often very seriously. WE ALL HAVE ONE AND NO TWO ARE THE SAME.
So now I will say my piece. I am a highly educated person with medical doctors in the family. I was married to one and vicariously went to medical school with him in my younger days. I also had/have a lot of sick people in my family and some of them have been strange and debilitating illnesses. Many of them autoimmune. Some I attribute to vaccines. I am not an anti vaxxer by any stretch of the imagination but I am a skeptic.
What the article also glaringly fails to express adequately, is the acceptance in the medical community of the reality of vaccine injury. In the US, it comes in the form of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund. The injuries must occur soon after the vaccine and this feature is not necessarily logical because we don’t really know how long it takes for the injury to develop. There is simply a cut off date which, arguably, could be quite arbitrary.
Last year I was unlucky enough to be diagnosed with Giant Cell Arteritis and Polymyalgia Rheumatica. It’s an autoimmune disease known to occur in seniors over age 50, but the incidence has climbed steeply in recent years and it is known to be linked to the Influenza Vaccination. The question is …. how soon must the disease be diagnosed to prove causation ? Three days ? Three weeks ? Three months ? Mine was 4 months after my IV and probably will not be a compensated injury even though it is very likely to shorten my life by many years and perhaps cost me my vision in one or both eyes. As a footnote, I do not recall ever getting a flu shot, which is the more casual and euphemistic label for an Influenza Vaccine. I do not get flu shots. I only got one in 2021 because I had a new grandchild and it was a condition my daughter and son-in-law made in order for me to be in their home. They lack the requisite skepticism to truly form an opinion about science. They cleave to their pediatrician who tows the party line.
There has been a proliferation of vaccines over the last few decades. There are several technologies. I try to keep up with the literature. I also know of a video interview of Dr. Bernadine Healy who was head of the CDC before she died of cancer. In the context of autism, she voiced the perfect level of skepticism and was of the opinion that we should be studying the damaged children.
The objective of medicine is to do the most good to the most people. It’s a cost-benefit analysis. It has merit, however, what IF the long term effect of vaccinating the entire population is not truly meeting this objective ?
Sorry for your troubles. The term vaccine is treated as a ‘holy’ umbrella term for radically different technologies.
Each individual ‘vaccine’ is different, even though they may use similar techniques.
However, our latest ‘vaccine’ is entirely new and it must stand or fall on its own merits. No substance can be treated as sacrosanct purely because it’s been called a ‘vaccine’, particularly when the ‘v’ definition is being rewritten before our eyes.
Gayle Rosenthal, thank you. I resonate with much of what you’re sharing and particularly the force majeure imposed by your daughter and son-in-law. With reference to your fears related to autoimmunity consequential to Covid vaccination I refer you to a recent Peter McCullough substack ‘Antinuclear antibody positive pericarditis after mRNA vaccination’.
Sorry for your troubles. The term vaccine is treated as a ‘holy’ umbrella term for radically different technologies.
Each individual ‘vaccine’ is different, even though they may use similar techniques.
However, our latest ‘vaccine’ is entirely new and it must stand or fall on its own merits. No substance can be treated as sacrosanct purely because it’s been called a ‘vaccine’, particularly when the ‘v’ definition is being rewritten before our eyes.
Gayle Rosenthal, thank you. I resonate with much of what you’re sharing and particularly the force majeure imposed by your daughter and son-in-law. With reference to your fears related to autoimmunity consequential to Covid vaccination I refer you to a recent Peter McCullough substack ‘Antinuclear antibody positive pericarditis after mRNA vaccination’.
Yes I think that was clearly the implication. The statement attributed to Wakefield – that the mRNA vaccines aren’t really vaccines, they are genetic engineering – is factually true. That fact alone doesn’t make them dangerous, but neither does the fact that Wakefield said it make it wrong or support claims that the mRNA vaccines are ‘safe and effective’. But sadly its enough for many people.
This writer is just a Bio-Pharma Industry Shill. Try reading some Bobby Kennedy Jr on vaccines. His book ‘The Real Anthony Fauci’ will tell you the evil that is the pharma industry and is an Amazon best seller
But to see some stories go to his website, Childrenshealthdefence.org.
There is 100% correlation with the INCREDIBLE increase in childhood chronic health issues and the vaccine numbers going from 6 the dozens and dozens which are given today. (which does not prove causation, but….)
The vaccines are implicated in thousands of studies –
try a few topics from the site I mentioned https://childrenshealthdefense.org/?s=mmr+autism&type=defender
Gates and the vaccine industry are evil – (not all vaccines) – but the industry, the same one which gave us ‘The Vax’ are Evil to the very core!
The final paragraph ? All he is saying is that science is about skepticism, not certainty. What this author does is to trash all vaccine skepticism and this does a huge disservice to the public. Vaccine ? Not a vaccine ? Does this matter ? The point is … if a chemical injected or ingested is designed to MANIPULATE the immune system, there are sure to be unintended consequences IN SOME PEOPLE. We are all the product of our genetics and whether there is genetic engineering happening or some other process, our immune systems are complex and some will be injured, often very seriously. WE ALL HAVE ONE AND NO TWO ARE THE SAME.
So now I will say my piece. I am a highly educated person with medical doctors in the family. I was married to one and vicariously went to medical school with him in my younger days. I also had/have a lot of sick people in my family and some of them have been strange and debilitating illnesses. Many of them autoimmune. Some I attribute to vaccines. I am not an anti vaxxer by any stretch of the imagination but I am a skeptic.
What the article also glaringly fails to express adequately, is the acceptance in the medical community of the reality of vaccine injury. In the US, it comes in the form of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund. The injuries must occur soon after the vaccine and this feature is not necessarily logical because we don’t really know how long it takes for the injury to develop. There is simply a cut off date which, arguably, could be quite arbitrary.
Last year I was unlucky enough to be diagnosed with Giant Cell Arteritis and Polymyalgia Rheumatica. It’s an autoimmune disease known to occur in seniors over age 50, but the incidence has climbed steeply in recent years and it is known to be linked to the Influenza Vaccination. The question is …. how soon must the disease be diagnosed to prove causation ? Three days ? Three weeks ? Three months ? Mine was 4 months after my IV and probably will not be a compensated injury even though it is very likely to shorten my life by many years and perhaps cost me my vision in one or both eyes. As a footnote, I do not recall ever getting a flu shot, which is the more casual and euphemistic label for an Influenza Vaccine. I do not get flu shots. I only got one in 2021 because I had a new grandchild and it was a condition my daughter and son-in-law made in order for me to be in their home. They lack the requisite skepticism to truly form an opinion about science. They cleave to their pediatrician who tows the party line.
There has been a proliferation of vaccines over the last few decades. There are several technologies. I try to keep up with the literature. I also know of a video interview of Dr. Bernadine Healy who was head of the CDC before she died of cancer. In the context of autism, she voiced the perfect level of skepticism and was of the opinion that we should be studying the damaged children.
The objective of medicine is to do the most good to the most people. It’s a cost-benefit analysis. It has merit, however, what IF the long term effect of vaccinating the entire population is not truly meeting this objective ?
Is the author suggesting that Covid vaccines are safe and effective because Wakefield says they’re not (‘after he’d moved on to trashing Covid vaccines’) or that we need to question claims that they are (‘who else is doing what in the hospitals and laboratories that we may one day look to for our lives?’)? His final paragraph doesn’t make it clear to this reader.
Timely article – a nice reminder how science can be corrupted to further the financial and personal interests of people and institutions.
I’ve come to despise the phrase; “follow the science.” It’s always uttered by people with an agenda, or those too simple minded or lazy to do the basic research themselves.
Simple minded, lazy or perhaps just ‘not trained’? ‘Basic research’ is not a matter of common sense, a bit of spare time and a laptop – we seem to think that an hour with a search engine will make up for our almost universal ignorance of statistical methods.
The Lancet, unfortunately, has a track record of being very poor at statistics – the Wakefield paper being shockingly bad, but also the Mehra Hydroxychloroquine paper during Covid. Both were spotted by common sense and a laptop by people who knew data and statistical methods. Check RetractionWatch for how armchair research is improving science by spotting fake papers.
Thank you for sharing the retraction watch reference
The Lancet seems more concerned with promoting “woke” political nonsense these days than quality science. They’ve become a sad joke.
“The Lancet, unfortunately, has a track record of being very poor at statistics – the Wakefield paper being shockingly bad”
There were no statistics in the Lancet paper. The paper was a case series of individuals who exhibited common symptoms.
There was no comparison to the background rate of autism or any other cohort. There was no attempt at creating a risk ratio.
A case series is just the beginning of an investigation as it acts as a sort of “heads up” to other researchers to take note of an interesting correlation; much more science is required to characterize what is described and attempt to provide an estimate of population prevalence.
Many people are simply repeating mistaken characterizations that have been written about the paper, as you are doing here.
“Statistics is the art and science of gathering, analyzing, and making inferences from data”. Here’s the abstract https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9500320/ using numbers to make the inferences. The lack of statistical caveats and cautions and tentativeness is part of what makes it so bad.
You clearly haven’t read the paper and you are not reading what I wrote.
It was a case series and case series do not attempt to establish risk ratios or any other sort of prevalence numbers.
Your comment is very common but it is simply you repeating what you have read elsewhere.
Please show me exactly how the statistics should be have been handled in a paper that had precisely one statistic in it (the mean age of the children)?
As a bonus, this is your opportunity to actually read the paper.
Here is another link to it:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673697110960/fulltext
“Intestinal and behavioural pathologies may have occurred together by chance, reflecting a selection bias in a self-referred group; however, the uniformity of the intestinal pathological changes and the fact that previous studies have found intestinal dysfunction in children with autistic-spectrum disorders, suggests that the connection is real and reflects a unique disease process.”
This is a statistical claim – “suggests the connection is real”. They had 12 hand selected cases, 8 where parents or the child’s doctor (not investigators) linked the case to MMR. Bad sample. Too small. Self-selected. No control. Self-reported events. No attempt at representativeness. All at best anecdotal which may be OK for case histories, but most likely cherry picking. With the presence of later-discovered researcher bias. Tons and tons of caveats needed. Instead we had the researcher off doing a press-tour and calling for the end of MMR – on the basis of 12 – just 12 – self-selecting cases. Bad. Very very bad.
No, you are still not understanding that this is a case series. There are no controls in a case series. You are trying to make this paper into some other type of paper.
Case series are supposed to select the patients. The entire point is to study one patient (then it’s called a case study) or collect a group of them (then it’s called a case series) that has an interesting set of (common) symptoms and put forward a hypothesis. It is not in any way “proof” but the clinician is permitted to speculate on the common cause of the symptoms if the data suggest one.
I suggest that you study the different kinds of papers out there. I’ll start you off:
Download the PDF of the Wakefield paper and look at the upper-left corner of the first page. You will see the small tag “Early Report” in a frame.
If you somehow don’t understand that this is a case series from reading the actual paper, this should tip you off.
If that is how you do a case series, then it is obvious (as Saul D says) that you cannot conclude anything at all from it. It is little better than an anecdote. That does not mean it cannot be useful, as a way to notice rare phenomena and generate food for thought. But the problem is that Wakefield does conclude from it. He concludes that it is not justified to continue with the MMR vaccine and tells the press as much.Now you cannot have it both ways. If that paper is supposed to justify any conclusion, it is totally substandard. If it not supposed to allow you to conclude anything, then Wakefield is irresponsible to base his conclusions on it.
Well, perhaps we’re finally getting somewhere. It seems that you and Saul now understand the purpose of a case series.
As for your opinion that he should not have warned the world about vaccine-induced autism, that’s just your opinion.
In my opinion, Wakefield had an ethical obligation to share what he thought to be true about the danger of the MMR and early brain damage.
As I have explained in other comments, we know a great deal more know about how gut dysbiosis can lead to brain damage. He saw it first. He was framed by the UK Government and Big Pharma to protect their vaccine programs and their profits and since then the problem with vaccine-induced autism has grown into an epidemic that is destroying millions of lives around the planet. The US is producing about 100,000 autistic kids every year currently and about 1/3 of them are non-verbal and many are violent and can’t live at home. The autistic kids have no life, the siblings have no life and the parents absolutely have no life.
The dam will break. The science showing that gut dysbiosis (which vaccines cause) can lead to early brain damage will become common knowledge in due time. This piece is from 2021:
The reality is that people who discover uncomfortable facts first are often crucified because the discovery disturbs the prevailing narrative. They are taken out of the game with trumped-up charges, just as Wakefield was.
Except that he isn’t giving up—because these drugs are causing enormous harm.
Well, perhaps we’re finally getting somewhere. It seems that you and Saul now understand the purpose of a case series.
As for your opinion that he should not have warned the world about vaccine-induced autism, that’s just your opinion.
In my opinion, Wakefield had an ethical obligation to share what he thought to be true about the danger of the MMR and early brain damage.
As I have explained in other comments, we know a great deal more know about how gut dysbiosis can lead to brain damage. He saw it first. He was framed by the UK Government and Big Pharma to protect their vaccine programs and their profits and since then the problem with vaccine-induced autism has grown into an epidemic that is destroying millions of lives around the planet. The US is producing about 100,000 autistic kids every year currently and about 1/3 of them are non-verbal and many are violent and can’t live at home. The autistic kids have no life, the siblings have no life and the parents absolutely have no life.
The dam will break. The science showing that gut dysbiosis (which vaccines cause) can lead to early brain damage will become common knowledge in due time. This piece is from 2021:
The reality is that people who discover uncomfortable facts first are often crucified because the discovery disturbs the prevailing narrative. They are taken out of the game with trumped-up charges, just as Wakefield was.
Except that he isn’t giving up—because these drugs are causing enormous harm.
If that is how you do a case series, then it is obvious (as Saul D says) that you cannot conclude anything at all from it. It is little better than an anecdote. That does not mean it cannot be useful, as a way to notice rare phenomena and generate food for thought. But the problem is that Wakefield does conclude from it. He concludes that it is not justified to continue with the MMR vaccine and tells the press as much.Now you cannot have it both ways. If that paper is supposed to justify any conclusion, it is totally substandard. If it not supposed to allow you to conclude anything, then Wakefield is irresponsible to base his conclusions on it.
No, you are still not understanding that this is a case series. There are no controls in a case series. You are trying to make this paper into some other type of paper.
Case series are supposed to select the patients. The entire point is to study one patient (then it’s called a case study) or collect a group of them (then it’s called a case series) that has an interesting set of (common) symptoms and put forward a hypothesis. It is not in any way “proof” but the clinician is permitted to speculate on the common cause of the symptoms if the data suggest one.
I suggest that you study the different kinds of papers out there. I’ll start you off:
Download the PDF of the Wakefield paper and look at the upper-left corner of the first page. You will see the small tag “Early Report” in a frame.
If you somehow don’t understand that this is a case series from reading the actual paper, this should tip you off.
“Intestinal and behavioural pathologies may have occurred together by chance, reflecting a selection bias in a self-referred group; however, the uniformity of the intestinal pathological changes and the fact that previous studies have found intestinal dysfunction in children with autistic-spectrum disorders, suggests that the connection is real and reflects a unique disease process.”
This is a statistical claim – “suggests the connection is real”. They had 12 hand selected cases, 8 where parents or the child’s doctor (not investigators) linked the case to MMR. Bad sample. Too small. Self-selected. No control. Self-reported events. No attempt at representativeness. All at best anecdotal which may be OK for case histories, but most likely cherry picking. With the presence of later-discovered researcher bias. Tons and tons of caveats needed. Instead we had the researcher off doing a press-tour and calling for the end of MMR – on the basis of 12 – just 12 – self-selecting cases. Bad. Very very bad.
You clearly haven’t read the paper and you are not reading what I wrote.
It was a case series and case series do not attempt to establish risk ratios or any other sort of prevalence numbers.
Your comment is very common but it is simply you repeating what you have read elsewhere.
Please show me exactly how the statistics should be have been handled in a paper that had precisely one statistic in it (the mean age of the children)?
As a bonus, this is your opportunity to actually read the paper.
Here is another link to it:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673697110960/fulltext
“Statistics is the art and science of gathering, analyzing, and making inferences from data”. Here’s the abstract https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9500320/ using numbers to make the inferences. The lack of statistical caveats and cautions and tentativeness is part of what makes it so bad.
Thank you for sharing the retraction watch reference
The Lancet seems more concerned with promoting “woke” political nonsense these days than quality science. They’ve become a sad joke.
“The Lancet, unfortunately, has a track record of being very poor at statistics – the Wakefield paper being shockingly bad”
There were no statistics in the Lancet paper. The paper was a case series of individuals who exhibited common symptoms.
There was no comparison to the background rate of autism or any other cohort. There was no attempt at creating a risk ratio.
A case series is just the beginning of an investigation as it acts as a sort of “heads up” to other researchers to take note of an interesting correlation; much more science is required to characterize what is described and attempt to provide an estimate of population prevalence.
Many people are simply repeating mistaken characterizations that have been written about the paper, as you are doing here.
That’s why most scientific research has to be peer reviewed and confirmed by others. This unfortunately takes time. The current controversy surrounding the treatment of teens who present with gender dysphoria is a good example. It took years for the medical establishment in Europe to doubt and discredit the Dutch protocol and in the U.S., it is taking even longer.
The problem isn’t science it is the gullible press and public that latch on to junk science and won’t let go.
And the peer review process itself can also be a corrupting influence. Much of woke sociological research is essentially idea laundering.
Peer review has its own flaws.
”That’s why most scientific research has to be peer reviewed and confirmed”
Well all research labs and University departments are ultimately funded by the bio-pharma-medical Industry – thus all the active scientists in the field are 100% dependent on research funding and wages by making the industry happy. They say the right thing or their work is Over!
It is 100% Corrupt to its core!
One of the biggest areas of corruption is psychiatry. Is there any other field where a majority of patients seeking treatment do not first receive an MRI and bloodwork to rule out organic illness ?
In addition, autoimmune psychosis is now documented. In Canada assisted suicide of a depressed 22 year old was recently allowed. In California there is a bill pending to allow assisted suicide. Wherever there is socialized medicine, you will see more acceptance of assisted suicide because the care for the terminally and mentally ill is so costly.
Assisted suicide is an indication of an evolved and humane society. Wish fervently it existed in my country.
Assisted suicide is an indication of an evolved and humane society. Wish fervently it existed in my country.
Indeed, and many scientific papers will conclude with the phrase ‘further research required’. In other words, please fund my income for the next few years!
Well, 100% is hyperbole. But there is indeed corruption.
One of the biggest areas of corruption is psychiatry. Is there any other field where a majority of patients seeking treatment do not first receive an MRI and bloodwork to rule out organic illness ?
In addition, autoimmune psychosis is now documented. In Canada assisted suicide of a depressed 22 year old was recently allowed. In California there is a bill pending to allow assisted suicide. Wherever there is socialized medicine, you will see more acceptance of assisted suicide because the care for the terminally and mentally ill is so costly.
Indeed, and many scientific papers will conclude with the phrase ‘further research required’. In other words, please fund my income for the next few years!
Well, 100% is hyperbole. But there is indeed corruption.
That’s true enough. But I also think we should be careful about the ‘citizen scientists’ drenching social media with amateur ‘research’ that gets repeated or reposted without query until sheer force of repetition gives it a spurious sheen of respectability. On either side of the argument. Alas.
And the peer review process itself can also be a corrupting influence. Much of woke sociological research is essentially idea laundering.
Peer review has its own flaws.
”That’s why most scientific research has to be peer reviewed and confirmed”
Well all research labs and University departments are ultimately funded by the bio-pharma-medical Industry – thus all the active scientists in the field are 100% dependent on research funding and wages by making the industry happy. They say the right thing or their work is Over!
It is 100% Corrupt to its core!
That’s true enough. But I also think we should be careful about the ‘citizen scientists’ drenching social media with amateur ‘research’ that gets repeated or reposted without query until sheer force of repetition gives it a spurious sheen of respectability. On either side of the argument. Alas.
The most accomplished and talented are not making it into academia these days due to DEI hiring policies. It’s only going to get worse.
Many of them arent even making it into good colleges now that they’re eliminating merit-based admissions.
Many of them arent even making it into good colleges now that they’re eliminating merit-based admissions.
The problem with your objection here is that it can form the basis for any amount of arguments from authority. The non-expert is still capable of poking holes in complex scientific arguments simply by reference to empirical observation, in much the same way that a graduate in the humanities without a scintilla of technical understanding can nonetheless decide whether an Android or an Iphone is the better choice for themselves, or a street sweeper with no understanding of higher politics can nonetheless make a rational choice about who to vote for in an election.
We see this with the climate change controversy, where sceptics need to know nothing at all about geology, atmospheric physics, oceanography etc in order to point at the historic graph of temperature projections vs the historic graph of temperature observations and assert that the difference is large enough to falsify the claims made about the danger of human CO2 emissions. Those who believe in dangerous climate change can decry the lack of qualifications amongst sceptics all they want, but that cannot make the two graphs compatible.
The Lancet, unfortunately, has a track record of being very poor at statistics – the Wakefield paper being shockingly bad, but also the Mehra Hydroxychloroquine paper during Covid. Both were spotted by common sense and a laptop by people who knew data and statistical methods. Check RetractionWatch for how armchair research is improving science by spotting fake papers.
That’s why most scientific research has to be peer reviewed and confirmed by others. This unfortunately takes time. The current controversy surrounding the treatment of teens who present with gender dysphoria is a good example. It took years for the medical establishment in Europe to doubt and discredit the Dutch protocol and in the U.S., it is taking even longer.
The problem isn’t science it is the gullible press and public that latch on to junk science and won’t let go.
The most accomplished and talented are not making it into academia these days due to DEI hiring policies. It’s only going to get worse.
The problem with your objection here is that it can form the basis for any amount of arguments from authority. The non-expert is still capable of poking holes in complex scientific arguments simply by reference to empirical observation, in much the same way that a graduate in the humanities without a scintilla of technical understanding can nonetheless decide whether an Android or an Iphone is the better choice for themselves, or a street sweeper with no understanding of higher politics can nonetheless make a rational choice about who to vote for in an election.
We see this with the climate change controversy, where sceptics need to know nothing at all about geology, atmospheric physics, oceanography etc in order to point at the historic graph of temperature projections vs the historic graph of temperature observations and assert that the difference is large enough to falsify the claims made about the danger of human CO2 emissions. Those who believe in dangerous climate change can decry the lack of qualifications amongst sceptics all they want, but that cannot make the two graphs compatible.
I highly recommend The Bad Food Bible by Aaron Carrol. It discusses the changes medicine/science has gone through in its dietary recommendations based upon „scientific“ study. Such studies remarkably parallel the topic here. The author includes a simple reminder of what science actually is: a conclusion based upon a quantity of facts (which can always change) or based upon the scientific method of trial & error. He explains how to evaluate the validity of „studies“, and he includes commonsense advice in making personal decisions. If we all just went back to basics…all of us.
What are these “basics” you mention? Surely you’re referring merely to truths you regard as somehow established in ways not necessarily true of more modern discoveries? The problem is, though, that all truths are conditional, there is no special status for any claim.
What are these “basics” you mention? Surely you’re referring merely to truths you regard as somehow established in ways not necessarily true of more modern discoveries? The problem is, though, that all truths are conditional, there is no special status for any claim.
Now here’s somebody who has not appeared to have actually read Wakefield paper. The response to it is virtual proof of the corruption in the industry.
The ONLY way this is a timely article is how it is part of the Pharma Industry trying to divert attention to the Vast injuries its deadly mRNA ”vaccine” is causing.
”Look! A squirrel!”
ps, the link to chronic children’s health issues and the vast number of untested vaccines is virtually proven – read on it – but first realize 99% of all anti vaccine reporting is blocked by google, twitter, youtube, facebook, and the MSM! And WIKI is 100% corrupted on anything involving this issue.
And try to find Der. Bernadine Healy’s interview regarding autism and vaccines while she was head of the CDC. Gone ! Vanished ! Disappeared !
I trust you see the irony in the statement “virtually proven”. Laughable.
And try to find Der. Bernadine Healy’s interview regarding autism and vaccines while she was head of the CDC. Gone ! Vanished ! Disappeared !
I trust you see the irony in the statement “virtually proven”. Laughable.
“Follow the science” is the modern-day equivalent of “have Faith!”
Not only can it be corrupted, it is very often incomplete – not the last word. In 1981 I learned that I was marrying into a family with Fragile X which had just been identified. Today there is much research on this sex-linked inherited mental disability and it is now known that the parents and grandparents can be afflicted with physiological conditions due to permutations. I’m lucky that the answers were definitive in the case of this affliction. A true scientist will say “we don’t know” when that is actually the case.
Simple minded, lazy or perhaps just ‘not trained’? ‘Basic research’ is not a matter of common sense, a bit of spare time and a laptop – we seem to think that an hour with a search engine will make up for our almost universal ignorance of statistical methods.
I highly recommend The Bad Food Bible by Aaron Carrol. It discusses the changes medicine/science has gone through in its dietary recommendations based upon „scientific“ study. Such studies remarkably parallel the topic here. The author includes a simple reminder of what science actually is: a conclusion based upon a quantity of facts (which can always change) or based upon the scientific method of trial & error. He explains how to evaluate the validity of „studies“, and he includes commonsense advice in making personal decisions. If we all just went back to basics…all of us.
Now here’s somebody who has not appeared to have actually read Wakefield paper. The response to it is virtual proof of the corruption in the industry.
The ONLY way this is a timely article is how it is part of the Pharma Industry trying to divert attention to the Vast injuries its deadly mRNA ”vaccine” is causing.
”Look! A squirrel!”
ps, the link to chronic children’s health issues and the vast number of untested vaccines is virtually proven – read on it – but first realize 99% of all anti vaccine reporting is blocked by google, twitter, youtube, facebook, and the MSM! And WIKI is 100% corrupted on anything involving this issue.
“Follow the science” is the modern-day equivalent of “have Faith!”
Not only can it be corrupted, it is very often incomplete – not the last word. In 1981 I learned that I was marrying into a family with Fragile X which had just been identified. Today there is much research on this sex-linked inherited mental disability and it is now known that the parents and grandparents can be afflicted with physiological conditions due to permutations. I’m lucky that the answers were definitive in the case of this affliction. A true scientist will say “we don’t know” when that is actually the case.
Timely article – a nice reminder how science can be corrupted to further the financial and personal interests of people and institutions.
I’ve come to despise the phrase; “follow the science.” It’s always uttered by people with an agenda, or those too simple minded or lazy to do the basic research themselves.
Well I am not sure what this article proves or disproves, but science is based mainly on pharmaceutical intervention to treat symptoms not the root cause, so it most cases it’s failed before it’s started. Big industry is the biggest issue we face. I am sure a lot of drugs do a lot of harm, and some medications do wonders. But there is no independent science, and the push on the latest Vaccines did not to alleviate concerns, to be hounded to take an Unproven and poorly tested drug, which now has been totally discredited by the people who pushed it the most, “it’s not broad, it doesn’t stop transmission, and doesn’t prevent infection” but if you can make billions and the sheeple will follow I suppose it’s fine.
Science is NOT based on pharmaceutical intervention, that is medical treatment. Science is based on formulating testable hypotheses and trying to refute them through rigorous experimentation.
Science used to be that, but now it’s based on identifying the most profitable ventures for lining the pockets of industry and individuals, and retro fitting the ‘science’ to that end, enabled by complicit governments and media, and gullible populations fooled by the likes of Brian Deer and his corrupt boss, Rupert Murdoch.
Yes, and clinical medicine and applied science always lags behind research. It’s natural. But the profit motive can sometimes accelerate the testing and marketing prematurely.
Science used to be that, but now it’s based on identifying the most profitable ventures for lining the pockets of industry and individuals, and retro fitting the ‘science’ to that end, enabled by complicit governments and media, and gullible populations fooled by the likes of Brian Deer and his corrupt boss, Rupert Murdoch.
Yes, and clinical medicine and applied science always lags behind research. It’s natural. But the profit motive can sometimes accelerate the testing and marketing prematurely.
Absolutely nothing, other than the author favours mainstream narratives
Industry probably has too much independence as they have so much economic clout. Yet as individuals, we have lost a lot of autonomy.
Science is NOT based on pharmaceutical intervention, that is medical treatment. Science is based on formulating testable hypotheses and trying to refute them through rigorous experimentation.
Absolutely nothing, other than the author favours mainstream narratives
Industry probably has too much independence as they have so much economic clout. Yet as individuals, we have lost a lot of autonomy.
Well I am not sure what this article proves or disproves, but science is based mainly on pharmaceutical intervention to treat symptoms not the root cause, so it most cases it’s failed before it’s started. Big industry is the biggest issue we face. I am sure a lot of drugs do a lot of harm, and some medications do wonders. But there is no independent science, and the push on the latest Vaccines did not to alleviate concerns, to be hounded to take an Unproven and poorly tested drug, which now has been totally discredited by the people who pushed it the most, “it’s not broad, it doesn’t stop transmission, and doesn’t prevent infection” but if you can make billions and the sheeple will follow I suppose it’s fine.
““It’s not a vaccine at all,” Wakefield would rail against the latter at the height of the Covid pandemic. “It’s actually genetic engineering”.
I don’t know if Wakefield’s MMR report is bogus but he is clearly right about the Covid gene therapy.
Also I believe that real vaccines, even if they do work as promised, are a ‘bad’ thing, societally at least. They attempt to stop deaths from real world sickness but the consequences will be an increasingly susceptible population as the ‘unfit’ survive and people’s immune systems get under developed and exposed to an agent which does not match what is actually ‘out there’.
Irrespective of what one might think about Wakefield, MMR and autism, he is correct that the mRNA and DNA-based adenovirus vector vaccines for COVID really do represent genetic engineering. Indeed the CDC even changed the definition of a vaccine to accommodate the RNA/DNA “vaccines”.
As for MMR and autism, the situation I think is complex, especially in light of what has been happening in terms of the complete denial (until forced) of the various serious adverse events following COVID vaccination. i.e. there are huge financial interests at stake to ensure that any link or claim of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism is regarded as bogus and attributable to cranks and conspiracy theorists. But in fact, given the rarity of autism it would be very difficult to prove such a link. Nevertheless, if one sees one case of autism immediately following MMR vaccination of a previously completely normal child, one could always attribute this to chance; but the probability of seeing a second or a third cases temporally linked to the MMR shot would be so rare that it is highly unlikely that there wasn’t a link. Unfortunately we’ll never know since the vested interests will do everything in their power that this remain unknown.
It’s worth bearing in mind that the first signs of autism appear around the same age that the MMR is given to children. This may create a correlation in timing but certainly doesn’t reveal a causation.
Interestingly, the reduction in uptake of the MMR in favour of single immunisations didn’t result in any reduction in rates of autism which, had Wakefield’s paper had any truth to it, one might have expected.
If the basis for the autism problem were a feature common to many different vaccinations (i.e. a common adjuvant like mercury or aluminium), then reduction in one vaccination might not have so much effect if all the other jabs were normally administered.
Lots of people know that mercury was withdrawn from MMR vaccines, but fewer know that aluminium is a neurotoxin but is to be found in a large number of different vaccine formulations.
You are indeed correct. That’s why a link is so difficult to prove. And that’s why one has to look so carefully at the temporal relationship between onset of autism and time of vaccination.
I agree; but autism, with its onset around the same age as the MMR is routinely given, predated the MMR vaccine’s introduction. There are certainly confounding factors, not least the increase in understanding of autism features leading to more children being formally diagnosed with autism, and the understanding that autism exists on a wide spectrum.
However, notwithstanding these, it is pretty clear that prior to MMR, autism or autistic- like behaviour existed in a similar order of magnitude as post MMR, and that its age of symptom onset coincided with that subsequently chosen for the MMR jab to be given.
What is also clear is that the number of unvaccinated children with irreversible brain-damage caused by by measles has dwarfed the number diagnosed with autism who, were Wakefield’s theory correct, might not have become autistic.
So, his theory hasn’t been borne out by cohort studies from pre and post MMR, and the consequences of its credulous backing by the Lancet and amplification by the press have been very damaging.
I agree; but autism, with its onset around the same age as the MMR is routinely given, predated the MMR vaccine’s introduction. There are certainly confounding factors, not least the increase in understanding of autism features leading to more children being formally diagnosed with autism, and the understanding that autism exists on a wide spectrum.
However, notwithstanding these, it is pretty clear that prior to MMR, autism or autistic- like behaviour existed in a similar order of magnitude as post MMR, and that its age of symptom onset coincided with that subsequently chosen for the MMR jab to be given.
What is also clear is that the number of unvaccinated children with irreversible brain-damage caused by by measles has dwarfed the number diagnosed with autism who, were Wakefield’s theory correct, might not have become autistic.
So, his theory hasn’t been borne out by cohort studies from pre and post MMR, and the consequences of its credulous backing by the Lancet and amplification by the press have been very damaging.
If the basis for the autism problem were a feature common to many different vaccinations (i.e. a common adjuvant like mercury or aluminium), then reduction in one vaccination might not have so much effect if all the other jabs were normally administered.
Lots of people know that mercury was withdrawn from MMR vaccines, but fewer know that aluminium is a neurotoxin but is to be found in a large number of different vaccine formulations.
You are indeed correct. That’s why a link is so difficult to prove. And that’s why one has to look so carefully at the temporal relationship between onset of autism and time of vaccination.
You are right over the definitive role of vested interests.
Yes, and for me the big plus of the article is that the author shows how vested interests can be pursued by people who seemingly are going against “the establishment”, which might appeal to those sceptical of said establishment.
However, such people just pursue their, purely financial interests, using the “I-am-against-the-establishment” market niche.
To clarify: I firmly believe that we need to be sceptical of the powers that be, including “the science” TM, and demand that they should be fully accountable. But we also need to be aware of the fact that there are grifters on the opposite side. Unfortunately, this is also true.
Yes, and for me the big plus of the article is that the author shows how vested interests can be pursued by people who seemingly are going against “the establishment”, which might appeal to those sceptical of said establishment.
However, such people just pursue their, purely financial interests, using the “I-am-against-the-establishment” market niche.
To clarify: I firmly believe that we need to be sceptical of the powers that be, including “the science” TM, and demand that they should be fully accountable. But we also need to be aware of the fact that there are grifters on the opposite side. Unfortunately, this is also true.
The most obvious way to link MMR vaccination to regressive autism is actually to try and find cohorts of teenagers who weren’t vaccinated at the normal time (i.e. as toddlers) but were jabbed in teenage years and had progressed normally up to then. If you got regressive autism in teenagers after an MMR vaccination programme, that would really be a smoking gun.
As things stand at the moment, it’s hard to distinguish between a developmental abnormality occurring in the first few years of life due to genetics, due to exposure to other environmental agents or due to vaccination.
Things are more complex where autism is concerned because the genetics is complex; because more than one trigger can produce the same outcome; and because changes in neurodevelopment can happen in utero and after birth.
Perhaps but one might also argue that by the time one gets to be a teenager, the risk is basically zero, as all sorts of things have now matured (e.g. immune system, etc. etc.)
Perhaps but one might also argue that by the time one gets to be a teenager, the risk is basically zero, as all sorts of things have now matured (e.g. immune system, etc. etc.)
That’s the problem with unqualified journalists – they say if one tiny thing turned out wrong, then any future criticism is a conspiracy theory.
Science evolves through a lot of people being partly right, partly wrong, often because there were legitimately many possible ways that the data could be explained initially but ultimately, only one of those ways would prove to be the right one.
Science as it evolves is often very, very messy and the obsession with the media at highlighting very early stage research in immature fields is an extremely damaging phenomenon. The tabloid press needs absolute assertions every day of the week, because it does not sell papers or acquire click bait if you say: ‘a fairly obscure boffin in Nottingham thinks he might prove in 5-7 years time that XXX does YYY, which would be different to what another boffin in the University of Far Away from DC, USA happens to think is the case’.
If you look at the prevalance of cocaine snorting in the media from 1980 to 2020, you’d conclude that they were not fit and proper people in the main to make judicious judgements on matters of significant societal importance.
But we dont’ get a relentless barrage of ‘XXX is a cokehead’ all over the media, do we? Got to protect the cocaine snorters in the media, after all……..
Any more than the media self-regulates its sports reporters by banning anyone over 20 stone from being a sports journalist…..
But this journalist found much more than one tiny thing wrong! He found most of it wrong and financial interests for the researcher to make these claims. I will be very skeptical of anything Andrew Wakefield is involved with after reading this.
One of the most damaging aspects of the Wakefield fakery is that it gave skeptics a very bad name.
One of the most damaging aspects of the Wakefield fakery is that it gave skeptics a very bad name.
But this journalist found much more than one tiny thing wrong! He found most of it wrong and financial interests for the researcher to make these claims. I will be very skeptical of anything Andrew Wakefield is involved with after reading this.
In my opinion these incidences are due to the familial genetics of the immune systems. I have a large number of autoimmune illnesses in my family. If you manipulate the immune system, eventually there will be unintended and damaging manipulations.
I also know little about the validity of his MMR claims, except what we heard on TV.
Being (perhaps unduly) generous to Wakefield, given the underhanded tactics we’ve been subjected to recently from all the players in his downfall, it is plausible he was ‘cancelled’ for his heresy.
My trust in these institutions was destroyed over the last few years, so I’m far less inclined to discard that notion.
It’s worth bearing in mind that the first signs of autism appear around the same age that the MMR is given to children. This may create a correlation in timing but certainly doesn’t reveal a causation.
Interestingly, the reduction in uptake of the MMR in favour of single immunisations didn’t result in any reduction in rates of autism which, had Wakefield’s paper had any truth to it, one might have expected.
You are right over the definitive role of vested interests.
The most obvious way to link MMR vaccination to regressive autism is actually to try and find cohorts of teenagers who weren’t vaccinated at the normal time (i.e. as toddlers) but were jabbed in teenage years and had progressed normally up to then. If you got regressive autism in teenagers after an MMR vaccination programme, that would really be a smoking gun.
As things stand at the moment, it’s hard to distinguish between a developmental abnormality occurring in the first few years of life due to genetics, due to exposure to other environmental agents or due to vaccination.
Things are more complex where autism is concerned because the genetics is complex; because more than one trigger can produce the same outcome; and because changes in neurodevelopment can happen in utero and after birth.
That’s the problem with unqualified journalists – they say if one tiny thing turned out wrong, then any future criticism is a conspiracy theory.
Science evolves through a lot of people being partly right, partly wrong, often because there were legitimately many possible ways that the data could be explained initially but ultimately, only one of those ways would prove to be the right one.
Science as it evolves is often very, very messy and the obsession with the media at highlighting very early stage research in immature fields is an extremely damaging phenomenon. The tabloid press needs absolute assertions every day of the week, because it does not sell papers or acquire click bait if you say: ‘a fairly obscure boffin in Nottingham thinks he might prove in 5-7 years time that XXX does YYY, which would be different to what another boffin in the University of Far Away from DC, USA happens to think is the case’.
If you look at the prevalance of cocaine snorting in the media from 1980 to 2020, you’d conclude that they were not fit and proper people in the main to make judicious judgements on matters of significant societal importance.
But we dont’ get a relentless barrage of ‘XXX is a cokehead’ all over the media, do we? Got to protect the cocaine snorters in the media, after all……..
Any more than the media self-regulates its sports reporters by banning anyone over 20 stone from being a sports journalist…..
In my opinion these incidences are due to the familial genetics of the immune systems. I have a large number of autoimmune illnesses in my family. If you manipulate the immune system, eventually there will be unintended and damaging manipulations.
I also know little about the validity of his MMR claims, except what we heard on TV.
Being (perhaps unduly) generous to Wakefield, given the underhanded tactics we’ve been subjected to recently from all the players in his downfall, it is plausible he was ‘cancelled’ for his heresy.
My trust in these institutions was destroyed over the last few years, so I’m far less inclined to discard that notion.
Whoah! Malthus, move over!
I’m sure that the many, many thousands of children not in iron lungs because of polio, or women not dying in middle age from cervical cancer, or children blinded by measles, will be 100% with you about vaccines being bad. What softies they are!
Polio is one thing, cervical cancer is another. The HPV vaccine is not without issues with a significant frequency of severe adverse events including death, and it isn’t even obvious that it protects against cervical cancer. (I very much doubt that a properly carried out RCT was ever done to prove that the HPV vaccine protects against cervical cancer because, in general, cervical cancer develops late in life (i.e. let’s say late 30s and up) while vaccination is carried out on teenagers. Moreover, the HPV vaccine only covers a limited number of HPV strains. Probably smarter and safer to just have an annual PAP smear.
Measles is a bit of an intermediate case because it clearly is nowhere near as severe as polio, although relatively rare sequelae, such as blindness, can occur.
Chicken pox is an interesting case because in the US the chicken pox vaccine is on the childhood vaccination list and routinely given, whereas I believe (and correct me if I’m wrong) that the chicken pox vaccine is not given in the UK. What is the result. In the UK, almost everybody gets chicken pox, a rather mild disease, and then when they have children who get chicken pox, they, in effect, get a natural booster from the real deal (i.e. their infected child). The result is that the frequency of shingles in later life is much lower than in the US.
My youngest son, now 29, was injured by the chickenpox vaccine – herpes zoster. He lost eye contact, had delayed speech, ataxia, blurred and double vision, loss of depth perception, vomiting, hearing loss, and a lot of school time over his childhood. Thankfully we found a neurootologist who diagnosed him with endolymphatic hydrops (viral infection of the inner ear) and treated him with short term prednisone and long term antivirals. My son would have definitely been better off just getting chicken pox, like his 3 older siblings who did not have the chickenpox vaccine and spent a few days with fever and a bottle of calamine lotion and Q-tips.
By the way ….. Endolymphatic hydrops is now considered an autoimmune illness in some cases. What did I say about manipulating the immune system ?
I’m so sorry that you had to go through that. However this is what is known as anecdotal evidence – do you know the statistics on the overall efficacy of the chicken pox vaccine? I have no idea and I certainly have sympathy with your view, but I got chicken pox aged 37 when my children got it and was very ill indeed, which indicates that it might be a bad thing to get it – who knows not me.
I’m so sorry that you had to go through that. However this is what is known as anecdotal evidence – do you know the statistics on the overall efficacy of the chicken pox vaccine? I have no idea and I certainly have sympathy with your view, but I got chicken pox aged 37 when my children got it and was very ill indeed, which indicates that it might be a bad thing to get it – who knows not me.
Perhaps you could go through the long list of diseases controlled by vaccination with your views on their seriousness and the efficacy of the vaccines. At the end of that you could give your opinion – vaccines good or bad? My grandmother died of diphtheria when my mother was 4 – was that good, or is it good that diphtheria is now almost unheard of in the UK because vaccination effectively stamped it out?
You realize that diptheria is quite easily treated with anti-toxin and erythromycin. That’s not to say that diptheria is not a serious illness, and that vaccination against diptheria is obviously a good idea, especially as the diptheria vaccine is safe.
Effective treatment will still leave people at mortal risk; eradication of a disease is best, which was achieved with Diphtheria by vaccination, ie it has saved lives. You seem to forget that we started this by my reply to a comment which said that “I believe that real vaccines, even if they do work as promised, are a ‘bad’ thing”. They are self-evidently a good thing, as even you agree with.
Diphtheria has not been eradicated. Only smallpox has ever been eradicated (and rinderpest).
Diphtheria has not been eradicated. Only smallpox has ever been eradicated (and rinderpest).
Effective treatment will still leave people at mortal risk; eradication of a disease is best, which was achieved with Diphtheria by vaccination, ie it has saved lives. You seem to forget that we started this by my reply to a comment which said that “I believe that real vaccines, even if they do work as promised, are a ‘bad’ thing”. They are self-evidently a good thing, as even you agree with.
You realize that diptheria is quite easily treated with anti-toxin and erythromycin. That’s not to say that diptheria is not a serious illness, and that vaccination against diptheria is obviously a good idea, especially as the diptheria vaccine is safe.
My youngest son, now 29, was injured by the chickenpox vaccine – herpes zoster. He lost eye contact, had delayed speech, ataxia, blurred and double vision, loss of depth perception, vomiting, hearing loss, and a lot of school time over his childhood. Thankfully we found a neurootologist who diagnosed him with endolymphatic hydrops (viral infection of the inner ear) and treated him with short term prednisone and long term antivirals. My son would have definitely been better off just getting chicken pox, like his 3 older siblings who did not have the chickenpox vaccine and spent a few days with fever and a bottle of calamine lotion and Q-tips.
By the way ….. Endolymphatic hydrops is now considered an autoimmune illness in some cases. What did I say about manipulating the immune system ?
Perhaps you could go through the long list of diseases controlled by vaccination with your views on their seriousness and the efficacy of the vaccines. At the end of that you could give your opinion – vaccines good or bad? My grandmother died of diphtheria when my mother was 4 – was that good, or is it good that diphtheria is now almost unheard of in the UK because vaccination effectively stamped it out?
Vaccine is an umbrella term covering myriad different substances. The definition has been significantly redefined over the last few years.
To make a sweeping statement ‘all vaccines are wonderful’ is incredibly naive. Some may be good, some not. It’s not an automatic association. They aren’t holy artefacts.
The mRNA tech is BRAND NEW, and it’s not true mRNA either. So lumping this under the abovementioned faulty assertion, is even more foolish.
The assertion Tony is making is along the lines of ‘because the Diphtheria vaccine worked and was safe, therefore all vaccines work and are safe’
This is a logic al fallacy equivalent to:
Some mammals have the power of speech. A dog is a mammal, therefore dogs can talk.
I said no such thing, and asserted no such thing, but I broadly accept that the public health system in the UK (and no doubt elsewhere) seems to be as good as it can get in testing the efficacy and safety of vaccines. I have seen no reputable source which alleges otherwise. I take serious objection to statements such as “I believe that real vaccines, even if they do work as promised, are a ‘bad’ thing”.
I said no such thing, and asserted no such thing, but I broadly accept that the public health system in the UK (and no doubt elsewhere) seems to be as good as it can get in testing the efficacy and safety of vaccines. I have seen no reputable source which alleges otherwise. I take serious objection to statements such as “I believe that real vaccines, even if they do work as promised, are a ‘bad’ thing”.
Nothing in this post is untrue. No need for down vote
The assertion Tony is making is along the lines of ‘because the Diphtheria vaccine worked and was safe, therefore all vaccines work and are safe’
This is a logic al fallacy equivalent to:
Some mammals have the power of speech. A dog is a mammal, therefore dogs can talk.
Nothing in this post is untrue. No need for down vote
Polio is one thing, cervical cancer is another. The HPV vaccine is not without issues with a significant frequency of severe adverse events including death, and it isn’t even obvious that it protects against cervical cancer. (I very much doubt that a properly carried out RCT was ever done to prove that the HPV vaccine protects against cervical cancer because, in general, cervical cancer develops late in life (i.e. let’s say late 30s and up) while vaccination is carried out on teenagers. Moreover, the HPV vaccine only covers a limited number of HPV strains. Probably smarter and safer to just have an annual PAP smear.
Measles is a bit of an intermediate case because it clearly is nowhere near as severe as polio, although relatively rare sequelae, such as blindness, can occur.
Chicken pox is an interesting case because in the US the chicken pox vaccine is on the childhood vaccination list and routinely given, whereas I believe (and correct me if I’m wrong) that the chicken pox vaccine is not given in the UK. What is the result. In the UK, almost everybody gets chicken pox, a rather mild disease, and then when they have children who get chicken pox, they, in effect, get a natural booster from the real deal (i.e. their infected child). The result is that the frequency of shingles in later life is much lower than in the US.
Vaccine is an umbrella term covering myriad different substances. The definition has been significantly redefined over the last few years.
To make a sweeping statement ‘all vaccines are wonderful’ is incredibly naive. Some may be good, some not. It’s not an automatic association. They aren’t holy artefacts.
The mRNA tech is BRAND NEW, and it’s not true mRNA either. So lumping this under the abovementioned faulty assertion, is even more foolish.
May as well just dump medical intervention then & do the job properly. After all, weak hearts or genetic predispositions to cancers aren’t good for the species health either.
Easy to say until a young man with polio crab like lurches across a college quad, absurdly uncoordinated, with an eager smile as he anticipates meeting you.
It seems heroic, but he is in part used to it now, the necessary torture of being forced to deal with it or remain immobile until death having taken place as soon as he could crawl. This part i have observed and i can reassure you it is evidently agonising.
Irrespective of what one might think about Wakefield, MMR and autism, he is correct that the mRNA and DNA-based adenovirus vector vaccines for COVID really do represent genetic engineering. Indeed the CDC even changed the definition of a vaccine to accommodate the RNA/DNA “vaccines”.
As for MMR and autism, the situation I think is complex, especially in light of what has been happening in terms of the complete denial (until forced) of the various serious adverse events following COVID vaccination. i.e. there are huge financial interests at stake to ensure that any link or claim of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism is regarded as bogus and attributable to cranks and conspiracy theorists. But in fact, given the rarity of autism it would be very difficult to prove such a link. Nevertheless, if one sees one case of autism immediately following MMR vaccination of a previously completely normal child, one could always attribute this to chance; but the probability of seeing a second or a third cases temporally linked to the MMR shot would be so rare that it is highly unlikely that there wasn’t a link. Unfortunately we’ll never know since the vested interests will do everything in their power that this remain unknown.
Whoah! Malthus, move over!
I’m sure that the many, many thousands of children not in iron lungs because of polio, or women not dying in middle age from cervical cancer, or children blinded by measles, will be 100% with you about vaccines being bad. What softies they are!
May as well just dump medical intervention then & do the job properly. After all, weak hearts or genetic predispositions to cancers aren’t good for the species health either.
Easy to say until a young man with polio crab like lurches across a college quad, absurdly uncoordinated, with an eager smile as he anticipates meeting you.
It seems heroic, but he is in part used to it now, the necessary torture of being forced to deal with it or remain immobile until death having taken place as soon as he could crawl. This part i have observed and i can reassure you it is evidently agonising.
““It’s not a vaccine at all,” Wakefield would rail against the latter at the height of the Covid pandemic. “It’s actually genetic engineering”.
I don’t know if Wakefield’s MMR report is bogus but he is clearly right about the Covid gene therapy.
Also I believe that real vaccines, even if they do work as promised, are a ‘bad’ thing, societally at least. They attempt to stop deaths from real world sickness but the consequences will be an increasingly susceptible population as the ‘unfit’ survive and people’s immune systems get under developed and exposed to an agent which does not match what is actually ‘out there’.
Good to be reminded that fraud does happen more than we often think. But maybe I can explain some of the points here raised.
The convention in science is that you trust people’s sincerity; talk about fraud is not done until one has proof. So there would be a strong reaction against fraud accusations, until properly substantiated. Everybody knows that there are a lot of bad and unreliable results out there, but the main reasons are sloppy work, mistakes, and bad luck. Everybody does sloppy work some of the time, and some do sloppy work all the time. And if you do small studies of complex problems – as you have to do when a big study is too costly to do for just exploration – you will get often wrong results by simple coincidence, maybe with a bit of over-egging on top. If you start talking fraud every time there is a dubious result, you would increase the risks (and the work required to publish) enormously. (Dis)proving fraud requires what amounts to a police investigation, which you generally cannot do; if you have to routinely assume that scientific authors might be dishonest, you could not make use of the literature. Science could not work that way.
On the other hand, people who know about research know that a lot of results are wrong. Therefore no knowledgable person would believe a paper like Wakefield’s before it had been tested, reproduced, and compared with other evidence. All such a paper can do is to promote the point to ‘interesting question, worth investigating further’. This is where ‘the science’ comes in. Before you act on anything, you wait till there is a general consensus that it is true; that filters out most of the wrong results, the charlatans, and the mistakes. It also slows down acceptance of new truths, of course, but it is necessary as a way of determining what is actually worth believing.
No matter which extreme viewpoint you have, you can always find a couple of scientists or a couple of publications that seem to back you up. If you decide to disbelieve ‘the establiishment’, ‘big pharma’, of ‘the MSM’ on principle and put your faith in some small rebel band of contrarians of your own choosing with their own separate truth, you are effectively bypassing science altogether and replacing it with faith and prejudice.
I thought Peer Review was a critical process akin to the Devils Advocate process when considering beatification.
If the stance of such review isn’t to stress test the paper, what’s the point? Checking the grammar?
I’ve done a few peer reviews. As a person with supposed expert knowledge in the field you spend a few hours reading it (that is the time you have). You can check whether there are any warning signs, whether the claims make sense, whether the data justify the conclusions, whether this is within the standards of experiment and calculation of the field, whether there is all the information that would be required, sometimes even whether further experiments are needed. But you cannot redo their calculations, let alone their experiments, double-check their data, or sum up the literature to discuss in detail what counter-evidence there might be. You certainly cannot check for fraud.
That last sentence is absolutely incorrect. In those cases of fraud involving gel images, for example, it is very obvious on a careful look at the images that something is amiss. And while those escaped peer review they did not escape careful readers, especially those trying to reproduce the data.
Well, if you try to reproduce a result and fail repeatedly, that is a good reason to be suspicious. But we cannot and do not require reviewers to reproduce the paper. And, yes, a long and suspicious study of a paper could (fortunately) often turn up some alarm bells. Yes, it is not impossible. But that level of study is more than we do – or can reasonably – expect of unpaid, busy reviewers. I submit that, like a lot of things, it is only ‘very obvious’ after you have found it.
I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about images that a careful look immediately tells one that it’s fraud. For example, identical looking bands to the nearest detail in different lanes. So no need to repeat – one just has to look carefully. This was the case recently with the 2017 paper on amyloid Ab56 and its implications in the etiology of amyloid beta in Alzheimers, published in Science. When you look at the relevant figure, it’s really obvious that it’s been cut and pasted and bands duplicated.
I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about images that a careful look immediately tells one that it’s fraud. For example, identical looking bands to the nearest detail in different lanes. So no need to repeat – one just has to look carefully. This was the case recently with the 2017 paper on amyloid Ab56 and its implications in the etiology of amyloid beta in Alzheimers, published in Science. When you look at the relevant figure, it’s really obvious that it’s been cut and pasted and bands duplicated.
Well, if you try to reproduce a result and fail repeatedly, that is a good reason to be suspicious. But we cannot and do not require reviewers to reproduce the paper. And, yes, a long and suspicious study of a paper could (fortunately) often turn up some alarm bells. Yes, it is not impossible. But that level of study is more than we do – or can reasonably – expect of unpaid, busy reviewers. I submit that, like a lot of things, it is only ‘very obvious’ after you have found it.
Interesting. It sounds like it really isn’t quite the endorsement it’s sometimes made out to be, really more like grammar check-plus than Devils Advocate-light.
A short piece here by a peer reviewer on how he does peer review :
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1477061206380843017.html
The vast majority of peer reviewers are unpaid.
During Covid in particular, some journal editors were having problems sourcing enough decent peer reviewers to do the necessary work (a partial explanation for the huge number of pre prints that appeared on platforms like medRxiv).
There are now a number of tools that reviewers can use to check some types of data and the quality of studies (the Cochrane Handbook, ROBINS-I, Benford’s Law) and Elizabeth Bik is renowned for the sort of checking JS mentions – faked and manipulated images. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Bik
So, it is not as if researchers and journal editors aren’t aware of these problems and are attempting to mitigate their effects. Since the whole system is currently run by susceptible and unconsciously biased human beings it will be flawed.
As ever, the system will rely on certain ever vigilant whistleblowers like Elizabeth Bik and Retraction Watch to blow the trumpets.
A short piece here by a peer reviewer on how he does peer review :
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1477061206380843017.html
The vast majority of peer reviewers are unpaid.
During Covid in particular, some journal editors were having problems sourcing enough decent peer reviewers to do the necessary work (a partial explanation for the huge number of pre prints that appeared on platforms like medRxiv).
There are now a number of tools that reviewers can use to check some types of data and the quality of studies (the Cochrane Handbook, ROBINS-I, Benford’s Law) and Elizabeth Bik is renowned for the sort of checking JS mentions – faked and manipulated images. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Bik
So, it is not as if researchers and journal editors aren’t aware of these problems and are attempting to mitigate their effects. Since the whole system is currently run by susceptible and unconsciously biased human beings it will be flawed.
As ever, the system will rely on certain ever vigilant whistleblowers like Elizabeth Bik and Retraction Watch to blow the trumpets.
That last sentence is absolutely incorrect. In those cases of fraud involving gel images, for example, it is very obvious on a careful look at the images that something is amiss. And while those escaped peer review they did not escape careful readers, especially those trying to reproduce the data.
Interesting. It sounds like it really isn’t quite the endorsement it’s sometimes made out to be, really more like grammar check-plus than Devils Advocate-light.
Real peer review happens after publication when there can be wide scrutiny from many good minds.
The journal gatekeeping “peer review” used by many publications is a caricature of peer review, where sometimes as few as two anonymous reviewers look at a paper. It is a system rife with politics and strategic reporting. That said, many reviewers are very diligent – my own papers have benefitted.
Gatekeeping “peer review” is relatively new. None of Einstein’s annus mirabilis (1905) papers had such gatekeeping. Indeed, given their revolutionary nature, they might well not have made it to publication under 21st century “peer review”.
As I said, real peer review happens after publication.
No one I’ve known in the scientific field I worked in or in academia would agree with your definition of peer review. Its pre-publication. What you’re describing is criticism.
Jeff Cunningham said. “No one I’ve known in the scientific field I worked in or in academia would agree with your definition of peer review. Its pre-publication. What you’re describing is criticism.”
Maybe they are too young to have any historical perspective and have been socialised to the short hand of calling pre-publication review by anonymous reviewers, “peer review”.
I am using the plain meaning of words. Post publication criticism by peers is peer review. Q&A at conferences is peer review. Discussions over coffee is peer review. The dialogue of peer review is the most valuable kind – far more valuable than the pre-publication kind which is very narrow,
Jeff Cunningham said. “No one I’ve known in the scientific field I worked in or in academia would agree with your definition of peer review. Its pre-publication. What you’re describing is criticism.”
Maybe they are too young to have any historical perspective and have been socialised to the short hand of calling pre-publication review by anonymous reviewers, “peer review”.
I am using the plain meaning of words. Post publication criticism by peers is peer review. Q&A at conferences is peer review. Discussions over coffee is peer review. The dialogue of peer review is the most valuable kind – far more valuable than the pre-publication kind which is very narrow,
No one I’ve known in the scientific field I worked in or in academia would agree with your definition of peer review. Its pre-publication. What you’re describing is criticism.
Peer review depends on peers being sufficiently sceptical to search for incongruities. That depends on a lack of blind groupthink.
When there is groupthink, this scepticism is attenuated. Then, Quis costodiet custos ipsos?
That’s why research challenging (for example) the popular science of anthropogenic global warming never gets published.
Because, apparently, “the science is settled” and there can be nothing contrary to add.
People who declare “the science is settled” are not scientists anymore. They’re priests.
I’ve done a few peer reviews. As a person with supposed expert knowledge in the field you spend a few hours reading it (that is the time you have). You can check whether there are any warning signs, whether the claims make sense, whether the data justify the conclusions, whether this is within the standards of experiment and calculation of the field, whether there is all the information that would be required, sometimes even whether further experiments are needed. But you cannot redo their calculations, let alone their experiments, double-check their data, or sum up the literature to discuss in detail what counter-evidence there might be. You certainly cannot check for fraud.
Real peer review happens after publication when there can be wide scrutiny from many good minds.
The journal gatekeeping “peer review” used by many publications is a caricature of peer review, where sometimes as few as two anonymous reviewers look at a paper. It is a system rife with politics and strategic reporting. That said, many reviewers are very diligent – my own papers have benefitted.
Gatekeeping “peer review” is relatively new. None of Einstein’s annus mirabilis (1905) papers had such gatekeeping. Indeed, given their revolutionary nature, they might well not have made it to publication under 21st century “peer review”.
As I said, real peer review happens after publication.
Peer review depends on peers being sufficiently sceptical to search for incongruities. That depends on a lack of blind groupthink.
When there is groupthink, this scepticism is attenuated. Then, Quis costodiet custos ipsos?
That’s why research challenging (for example) the popular science of anthropogenic global warming never gets published.
Because, apparently, “the science is settled” and there can be nothing contrary to add.
People who declare “the science is settled” are not scientists anymore. They’re priests.
A helpful comment.
It also helps to distingish between hard and soft science. In hard science there is a finegrained causal explanation fully accounting for the actions of the components involved. In a soft science the causal explanation is scant or absent. There is a growing hard science on the detail of protein interactions, key to the functioning of a cell, but understanding everything they cause and where, throughout the body, is very patchy indeed.
Trust in the sincerity of scientists has been shaken up in the past two decades. This is due in part to politicization and advocacy in areas like climate science, the psychological reproduction crisis, p-hacking but also due to the intense pressure to publish, paper-mills and the precariousness of non-tenured academics. The internet has also allowed for many more non-specialists digging into source material, often with good degrees, but from outside the narrow field. As a result there are a lot more papers produced, most of little value, but also more potential external scrutiny, even if some of it is for political point-scoring.
The loss in trust is also likely to be going to get worse. ChatGPS and AI makes it much easier to write credible sounding papers particularly in the arts and humanities, but also in the social sciences, possibly in the hard sciences. I doubt the ‘trust-the-sincerity’ approach of peer-review will be able to withstand the wave of ‘AI-assisted’ papers that are going to come. I can see third-party replication becoming a necessary part of academic life, with all the extra cost and time that involves, and a need to be open to much more external criticism, not just from peers.
You could well be right.
You could well be right.
Your post provides a welcome counterbalance to those that go beyond healthy skepticism into radical suspicion, where (just about) anything with mainstream or establishment acceptance is held to be erroneous, if not malicious.
Thank you for this informed and specific reminder of human fallibility, even among scientists. Our errors need not arise from sinister or conspiratorial designs, and most don’t (no hard data just my casual observation).
At first I was a little dismayed at the claim that everyone does sloppy work or research some of the time, even in a laboratory. But that seems credible and true-to-human-nature too. We can recognize that lab results almost never capture final or incontrovertible truths, and resist dogmatic scientism without surrendering to a paranoid worldview.
I thought Peer Review was a critical process akin to the Devils Advocate process when considering beatification.
If the stance of such review isn’t to stress test the paper, what’s the point? Checking the grammar?
A helpful comment.
It also helps to distingish between hard and soft science. In hard science there is a finegrained causal explanation fully accounting for the actions of the components involved. In a soft science the causal explanation is scant or absent. There is a growing hard science on the detail of protein interactions, key to the functioning of a cell, but understanding everything they cause and where, throughout the body, is very patchy indeed.
Trust in the sincerity of scientists has been shaken up in the past two decades. This is due in part to politicization and advocacy in areas like climate science, the psychological reproduction crisis, p-hacking but also due to the intense pressure to publish, paper-mills and the precariousness of non-tenured academics. The internet has also allowed for many more non-specialists digging into source material, often with good degrees, but from outside the narrow field. As a result there are a lot more papers produced, most of little value, but also more potential external scrutiny, even if some of it is for political point-scoring.
The loss in trust is also likely to be going to get worse. ChatGPS and AI makes it much easier to write credible sounding papers particularly in the arts and humanities, but also in the social sciences, possibly in the hard sciences. I doubt the ‘trust-the-sincerity’ approach of peer-review will be able to withstand the wave of ‘AI-assisted’ papers that are going to come. I can see third-party replication becoming a necessary part of academic life, with all the extra cost and time that involves, and a need to be open to much more external criticism, not just from peers.
Your post provides a welcome counterbalance to those that go beyond healthy skepticism into radical suspicion, where (just about) anything with mainstream or establishment acceptance is held to be erroneous, if not malicious.
Thank you for this informed and specific reminder of human fallibility, even among scientists. Our errors need not arise from sinister or conspiratorial designs, and most don’t (no hard data just my casual observation).
At first I was a little dismayed at the claim that everyone does sloppy work or research some of the time, even in a laboratory. But that seems credible and true-to-human-nature too. We can recognize that lab results almost never capture final or incontrovertible truths, and resist dogmatic scientism without surrendering to a paranoid worldview.
Good to be reminded that fraud does happen more than we often think. But maybe I can explain some of the points here raised.
The convention in science is that you trust people’s sincerity; talk about fraud is not done until one has proof. So there would be a strong reaction against fraud accusations, until properly substantiated. Everybody knows that there are a lot of bad and unreliable results out there, but the main reasons are sloppy work, mistakes, and bad luck. Everybody does sloppy work some of the time, and some do sloppy work all the time. And if you do small studies of complex problems – as you have to do when a big study is too costly to do for just exploration – you will get often wrong results by simple coincidence, maybe with a bit of over-egging on top. If you start talking fraud every time there is a dubious result, you would increase the risks (and the work required to publish) enormously. (Dis)proving fraud requires what amounts to a police investigation, which you generally cannot do; if you have to routinely assume that scientific authors might be dishonest, you could not make use of the literature. Science could not work that way.
On the other hand, people who know about research know that a lot of results are wrong. Therefore no knowledgable person would believe a paper like Wakefield’s before it had been tested, reproduced, and compared with other evidence. All such a paper can do is to promote the point to ‘interesting question, worth investigating further’. This is where ‘the science’ comes in. Before you act on anything, you wait till there is a general consensus that it is true; that filters out most of the wrong results, the charlatans, and the mistakes. It also slows down acceptance of new truths, of course, but it is necessary as a way of determining what is actually worth believing.
No matter which extreme viewpoint you have, you can always find a couple of scientists or a couple of publications that seem to back you up. If you decide to disbelieve ‘the establiishment’, ‘big pharma’, of ‘the MSM’ on principle and put your faith in some small rebel band of contrarians of your own choosing with their own separate truth, you are effectively bypassing science altogether and replacing it with faith and prejudice.
Very sad to see Unherd publish this article by this extraordinarily unpleasant man whose true agenda – beyond self promotion – soiling Covid “vaccine” skeptics is plain to see and whose dedication to the MMR story suspiciously went way beyond the usual effort of a freelance investigative reporter. I hope Andrew Wakefield will be offered the chance to reply. Meanwhile I invite anyone interested in this complex affair to look at Deer’s site and find Wakefield’s rejoinders (I apologize for not having the time to dig it out again now, I went through all this a few years ago). This was Big Pharma in hellish action.
Why put the word vaccine in “scare quotes”? You’ve gone beyond skepticism into anti-vaccine zealotry. Why would a discredited, documented self-promoter like Wakefield be allowed to further propagate his misinformation here? Should an article drawing on established geology be accompanied by the “balancing” view of a flat-earther?
Wakefield has been listened to plenty already, and those addicted to what they hear from him can seek out his responses on their own.
Because Vaccine is for Life!
You do not undo it later – it is in and it is for life.
The testing is almost zero. Gates and his killing and maiming African Children shows the evil industry
The CDC and Merriam-Webster dictionary among other entities/sources changed their definitions of vaccine in order to accommodate the Covid shots – which don’t immunize and are genetic treatments rather than based on micro organisms
Because Vaccine is for Life!
You do not undo it later – it is in and it is for life.
The testing is almost zero. Gates and his killing and maiming African Children shows the evil industry
The CDC and Merriam-Webster dictionary among other entities/sources changed their definitions of vaccine in order to accommodate the Covid shots – which don’t immunize and are genetic treatments rather than based on micro organisms
Unherd – –
”I hope Andrew Wakefield will be offered the chance to reply.”
Andrew Wakefield MUST be offered the chance to reply.
Yes! UnHerd, please offer Wakefield a chance to reply. Anyone critical of what happened during Covid should not dismiss Wakefield. What was done to him is the playbook for the censorship we saw during Covid.
Why put the word vaccine in “scare quotes”? You’ve gone beyond skepticism into anti-vaccine zealotry. Why would a discredited, documented self-promoter like Wakefield be allowed to further propagate his misinformation here? Should an article drawing on established geology be accompanied by the “balancing” view of a flat-earther?
Wakefield has been listened to plenty already, and those addicted to what they hear from him can seek out his responses on their own.
Unherd – –
”I hope Andrew Wakefield will be offered the chance to reply.”
Andrew Wakefield MUST be offered the chance to reply.
Yes! UnHerd, please offer Wakefield a chance to reply. Anyone critical of what happened during Covid should not dismiss Wakefield. What was done to him is the playbook for the censorship we saw during Covid.
Very sad to see Unherd publish this article by this extraordinarily unpleasant man whose true agenda – beyond self promotion – soiling Covid “vaccine” skeptics is plain to see and whose dedication to the MMR story suspiciously went way beyond the usual effort of a freelance investigative reporter. I hope Andrew Wakefield will be offered the chance to reply. Meanwhile I invite anyone interested in this complex affair to look at Deer’s site and find Wakefield’s rejoinders (I apologize for not having the time to dig it out again now, I went through all this a few years ago). This was Big Pharma in hellish action.
I hope the author will one day understand that every attempt to discredit people who doubt the approved line just creates another doubter. The industry of gate-keeping is breaking down. People increasingly want to make up their own minds and take their own decisions, and as the catastrophic consequences of mass ‘vaccination’ become apparent that trend will only accelerate.
Isn’t that rather the fault of those, such as Wakefield, who’ve resorted to deceit in order to further their careers / line their pockets, rather than the author?
Has “Don’t shoot the messenger” ever been more apt?
Exactly.
To the radical skeptic or anti-establishment thinker, saying nothing against misinformation may have the same effect as countering it. That doesn’t mean the gates have all disappeared in some “epistemological free-for-all (y’all)” where everyone can get credible answers from Lord Google or sell their self-radicalizations as red-pill insights.
Exactly.
To the radical skeptic or anti-establishment thinker, saying nothing against misinformation may have the same effect as countering it. That doesn’t mean the gates have all disappeared in some “epistemological free-for-all (y’all)” where everyone can get credible answers from Lord Google or sell their self-radicalizations as red-pill insights.
What evidence of “catastrophic consequences”, or are we still waiting for them to become apparent? This deadly catastrophe landed far more heavily on those who refused the vaccine or got sick too early to get it.
I think the length and severity of some lockdown measures will prove regrettable, especially with more room for hindsight, but not mass vaccination. Have the smallpox and polio vaccines proven catastrophic?
I think you might want to differentiate between the smallpox/polio/classic vaccines and the mRNA Covid jabs which are not precisely vaccines. The jury will be out for some time on the Covid experiment and how much good, if any, vs. how much harm, and what varieties.
And yet there are very many people here asserting *as fact* that Covid vaccines are harmful. When it is too early to have any such certainty.
Even if they were not harmful, they are bloody pathetic at doing what they are supposed to do.
Ask Maddie de Garay. Conveniently shuffled off the Pfizer trial when she became ill, then gaslit and told it’s all in her mind. Never mentioned.
Pfizer set the test then marked their own homework, and the regulators applauded. The trial design was also very flawed. Unblinding the control-group, pah! Fraud? Perhaps.
This was greed. I’d be less angry if the jabs hadn’t been mandated.
Even if they were not harmful, they are bloody pathetic at doing what they are supposed to do.
Ask Maddie de Garay. Conveniently shuffled off the Pfizer trial when she became ill, then gaslit and told it’s all in her mind. Never mentioned.
Pfizer set the test then marked their own homework, and the regulators applauded. The trial design was also very flawed. Unblinding the control-group, pah! Fraud? Perhaps.
This was greed. I’d be less angry if the jabs hadn’t been mandated.
Ok, fair enough. Jury still out for sure. But to the extent the verdict is in already, the evidence is decidedly in favor of those who’ve consented to vaccination, as very few of that group have died or suffered severe long-term consequences.
And yet there are very many people here asserting *as fact* that Covid vaccines are harmful. When it is too early to have any such certainty.
Ok, fair enough. Jury still out for sure. But to the extent the verdict is in already, the evidence is decidedly in favor of those who’ve consented to vaccination, as very few of that group have died or suffered severe long-term consequences.
God oh mighty, I can not believe people are still brining up smallpox and polio vaccines as if the covid jabs are synonymous with those proper vaccines. Maybe you won’t understand this: I had smallpox and polio vaccines over 50 years ago. I have never had polio or smallpox. I had 3 forced covid jabs
In about a year and I got covid two weeks after my third forced shot. Do no say the next stupid thing of, ‘If you were not vaccinated you might be dead ” They didn’t work. My smallpox and polio vaccines did. Get the difference yet? Sorry for being a little agitated, but you must have been told this many times.
I don’t think they are to draw any equivalence between them. I think they’re trying to keep the baby from being thrown out with the bathwater. There’s at least one critic above arguing against diphtheria vaccines which have saved many tens of thousands of children’s lives.
The DTP is currently killing children in high-disease pressure areas when it is the last vaccine given in a series. This became visible only because of a quirk in how the vaccines were given in their project in Guinea-Bissau that allowed this analysis to be performed. It is protective when a live viral vaccine is given after the DTP.
This is fully explained by Dr. Stabell-Benn in her TED talk, “How vaccines train the immune system in ways no one expected | Christine Stabell Benn | TEDxAarhus.”
The video is available online:
https://www.ted.com/talks/christine_stabell_benn_how_vaccines_train_the_immune_system_in_ways_no_one_expected
The DTP is currently killing children in high-disease pressure areas when it is the last vaccine given in a series. This became visible only because of a quirk in how the vaccines were given in their project in Guinea-Bissau that allowed this analysis to be performed. It is protective when a live viral vaccine is given after the DTP.
This is fully explained by Dr. Stabell-Benn in her TED talk, “How vaccines train the immune system in ways no one expected | Christine Stabell Benn | TEDxAarhus.”
The video is available online:
https://www.ted.com/talks/christine_stabell_benn_how_vaccines_train_the_immune_system_in_ways_no_one_expected
How is reduced morality and reduced severity of infection a trivial result? That is itself a stupid thing to state or imply. I understand your point concerning the relative weakness of these SHOTS (let’s not trigger anyone further with the v-word) but when I got covid after 2 shots I was very happy I wasn’t un-jabbed. No one was truly forced in the US (though for emoyment or educational purposes, many in effect were) so I don’t share your sense of outrage as much as I otherwise MIGHT. But I don’t understand why you seem to harbor such personal outrage. (I am judging by your tone and self-admitted agitiation).
Do you deny that the shots have reduced the overall death toll? Do you think they were maliciously administered?
I don’t think they are to draw any equivalence between them. I think they’re trying to keep the baby from being thrown out with the bathwater. There’s at least one critic above arguing against diphtheria vaccines which have saved many tens of thousands of children’s lives.
How is reduced morality and reduced severity of infection a trivial result? That is itself a stupid thing to state or imply. I understand your point concerning the relative weakness of these SHOTS (let’s not trigger anyone further with the v-word) but when I got covid after 2 shots I was very happy I wasn’t un-jabbed. No one was truly forced in the US (though for emoyment or educational purposes, many in effect were) so I don’t share your sense of outrage as much as I otherwise MIGHT. But I don’t understand why you seem to harbor such personal outrage. (I am judging by your tone and self-admitted agitiation).
Do you deny that the shots have reduced the overall death toll? Do you think they were maliciously administered?
I think you might want to differentiate between the smallpox/polio/classic vaccines and the mRNA Covid jabs which are not precisely vaccines. The jury will be out for some time on the Covid experiment and how much good, if any, vs. how much harm, and what varieties.
God oh mighty, I can not believe people are still brining up smallpox and polio vaccines as if the covid jabs are synonymous with those proper vaccines. Maybe you won’t understand this: I had smallpox and polio vaccines over 50 years ago. I have never had polio or smallpox. I had 3 forced covid jabs
In about a year and I got covid two weeks after my third forced shot. Do no say the next stupid thing of, ‘If you were not vaccinated you might be dead ” They didn’t work. My smallpox and polio vaccines did. Get the difference yet? Sorry for being a little agitated, but you must have been told this many times.
Isn’t that rather the fault of those, such as Wakefield, who’ve resorted to deceit in order to further their careers / line their pockets, rather than the author?
Has “Don’t shoot the messenger” ever been more apt?
What evidence of “catastrophic consequences”, or are we still waiting for them to become apparent? This deadly catastrophe landed far more heavily on those who refused the vaccine or got sick too early to get it.
I think the length and severity of some lockdown measures will prove regrettable, especially with more room for hindsight, but not mass vaccination. Have the smallpox and polio vaccines proven catastrophic?
I hope the author will one day understand that every attempt to discredit people who doubt the approved line just creates another doubter. The industry of gate-keeping is breaking down. People increasingly want to make up their own minds and take their own decisions, and as the catastrophic consequences of mass ‘vaccination’ become apparent that trend will only accelerate.
Unrelated to the article’s point, which I agree is a little murky at the end but…about those vaccines. My youngest, adopted as an infant from Central America, developed febrile seizures as a direct result of his vaccinations, and had to be taken to emergency where they told us to dose him with ibuprofen and Tylenol before any more immunizations. Since he had already received at least one dose before coming here it is likely he had experienced seizures before. He grew up with a severe expressive and receptive speech disorder which is a known side effect of febrile seizures in infancy.
in America there is a fund for damages caused by vaccines and we had a big emergency room bill. The problem is no doctor will say the seizures are caused by the vaccines even though it is well known that the vaccines can cause fever, which can cause seizures, which can cause my son’s disorder. This fund is never used because to accept any responsibility would be to accept all. I am not a vaccine denier, and the rare damages are certainly acceptable compared to deaths, but the whole system is built on lies.
If pharma ran someone over with a car, their lawyers would say the harm done was going to happen anyway, as the pedestrian was about to fall over at that exact moment anyway, by coincidence. The falling over gene being genetic and not the fault of pharma’s speeding car.
They would say running him over was worth it – because accidents happen and so many lives are saved by vaccine scientists driving to work on their life saving mission that the odd death is justifiable.
That they run over more than are saved they will say is mere details….
They would say running him over was worth it – because accidents happen and so many lives are saved by vaccine scientists driving to work on their life saving mission that the odd death is justifiable.
That they run over more than are saved they will say is mere details….
If pharma ran someone over with a car, their lawyers would say the harm done was going to happen anyway, as the pedestrian was about to fall over at that exact moment anyway, by coincidence. The falling over gene being genetic and not the fault of pharma’s speeding car.
Unrelated to the article’s point, which I agree is a little murky at the end but…about those vaccines. My youngest, adopted as an infant from Central America, developed febrile seizures as a direct result of his vaccinations, and had to be taken to emergency where they told us to dose him with ibuprofen and Tylenol before any more immunizations. Since he had already received at least one dose before coming here it is likely he had experienced seizures before. He grew up with a severe expressive and receptive speech disorder which is a known side effect of febrile seizures in infancy.
in America there is a fund for damages caused by vaccines and we had a big emergency room bill. The problem is no doctor will say the seizures are caused by the vaccines even though it is well known that the vaccines can cause fever, which can cause seizures, which can cause my son’s disorder. This fund is never used because to accept any responsibility would be to accept all. I am not a vaccine denier, and the rare damages are certainly acceptable compared to deaths, but the whole system is built on lies.
So you are saying that sometimes Wakefield is correct? Perhaps you should have lead with that rather than ended 😉
So you are saying that sometimes Wakefield is correct? Perhaps you should have lead with that rather than ended 😉
Ah, Andrew Strawman Wakefield! A fine example of twisting his article so the result proves your point.
A sound investment by his enemies though – his engineered downfall has been the main argument in favour of vaccines for decades. The irony being that Wakefield is PRO-vax!
The article shows what an obsession Brian Deer still has and which I don’t really understand, unless it’s supposed to bolster up the pro-covid narrative – in which case it has most certainly backfired.
idée fixe
Exactly!
Exactly!
idée fixe
Ah, Andrew Strawman Wakefield! A fine example of twisting his article so the result proves your point.
A sound investment by his enemies though – his engineered downfall has been the main argument in favour of vaccines for decades. The irony being that Wakefield is PRO-vax!
The article shows what an obsession Brian Deer still has and which I don’t really understand, unless it’s supposed to bolster up the pro-covid narrative – in which case it has most certainly backfired.
The author lost all his authority for me when he dismissed out of hand any question mark over the Covid injections. An investigative journalist might want to do a bit of research. It won’t be this bloke though .
The author lost all his authority for me when he dismissed out of hand any question mark over the Covid injections. An investigative journalist might want to do a bit of research. It won’t be this bloke though .
== The Thread on Everything Deer Got Wrong and Conveniently Omits ==
I’ve studied the Wakefield affair extensively and am currently writing the definitive rebuttal. Let’s collect here all the things Deer got wrong as he accused Wakefield of a fraud he did not commit. Eventually, Wakefield will be vindicated; he already has been in the eyes of many around the world. I will keep responding until UnHerd deletes this thread (don’t know if they do that; everyone else does on this topic) or closes commenting.
Allegation: Wakefield did not actually find a problem and invented the whole thing.
Reality: The gut-brain axis is well known now but wasn’t 25 years ago. Wakefield was one of the first people to see that disrupting the microbiome of a baby or infant could cause gut dysbiosis and affect the proper development of the brain. A great deal of research has now linked neurological damage to disrupted microbiota, from Parkinson’s to Multiple Sclerosis. Teams in the US and China have even shown through Fecal Microbiota Therapy that correcting the gut of autism patients improves brain function. They do this by taking fecal matter from healthy children and inserting it into the gut of autistic children. Wakefield was first to see that the measles virus from the vaccine could embed itself in the guts of children in a sub-clinical way and cause this disruption.
Allegation: Wakefield engineered this alleged fraud because he wanted to offer an alternative to the MMR.
Reality: Wakefield did register a patent on behalf of his hospital for a single-shot “vaccine.” But when I asked Deer on Twitter three times if he asked an immunologist whether the shot was an acceptable replacement for the MMR, he failed to acknowledge that he had. This is sloppy investigation—and very convenient for his narrative.
I asked Deer that because I already knew the answer and was sure he didn’t: the single-shot “vaccine” was actually for a transfer factor, one of many molecules in the immune system that are not antibodies. The new therapy was intended for children who could not receive the MMR because they had already shown susceptibility to it. The profits from the sale of this new prophylactic were to be used to pay for further research into the mechanism he discovered.
So the problem with the theory that Wakefield engineered all this to “corner the market” is two-fold:
First, the market was limited to a very small group of children who couldn’t receive the MMR.
Second, and more importantly, a transfer factor is not antibody-generating and could never replace a population-level prophylactic such as a traditional vaccine. It would have to be given too often and—to top it all off—it wasn’t even proven to work yet; it was simply a patent. Moving an idea from a patent to a workable product is a multi-year process that fails more often than it succeeds.
There was no “vaccine” ready to “corner the market,” as Deer alleges in his various writings. Besides, Wakefield was advocating single shots to replace the MMR so there was already a perfectly adequate replacement (until the British government removed the single shots from the market to prop-up the MMR program).
For the first time, he says here that he checked with immunologists regarding whether this would work “and they laughed.” He does not say this in his book or anywhere else that I have read. He failed to mention this when I directly asked him on Twitter:
Dec 2, 2022
Me: Which expert in virology did you confer with who told you that a transfer factor could compete with a live viral vaccine for population-wide immunity?
Deer: Read what I wrote, you clown. The conflict is Andrew Wakefield’s ludicrous get-rich single vaccine scheme needed confidence in MMR to be damaged. He had a financial motive. Why do you think he spent money on patents? He didn’t care that transfer factors failed in the 1970s.
Me: No, you have it wrong because you don’t understand the science.
Again, which virologist or immunologist did you confer with who told you that a transfer factor could compete with the MMR?
Second time asking.
Deer: Wakefield states it himself in his patent, you t**t.
——————
He did not ask anyone. (If this is wrong Deer, feel free to share who you checked with. You didn’t respond on Twitter but maybe your fingers got tired.)
I believe he added this comment that he checked the viability of the “vaccine” (actually a transfer factor) to cover his tracks because I caught him. He has changed his story so many times it’s hard to keep track of everything he says.
Keep in mind that Deer wrote this about himself:
This is the “investigative journalist” people are trusting to get the story correct and free of bias?
Allegation: The General Medical Council (GMC) found Wakefield committed fraud.
Reality: Fraud is nowhere in the charges by the GMC. That’s because the evidence isn’t there for it or it would have been included. Fraud is an accusation leveled first by Deer and then, like the game of telephone, it has been repeated blindly. The histopathology sheets were not changed; it was a completely new assessment made by the pathologists via a rigorous process in the tertiary referral center (the Royal Free Hospital). The more-senior pathologists at the Royal Free were not even allowed to see the initial gradings.
Allegation: The investigations were cruel and unwarranted.
Reality: On appeal, the High Court ruled that the investigations were warranted. This helped Dr. Walker-Smith to be exonerated by the court. (The insurance company would not pay for Wakefield’s defense so he could not join the appeal, unfortunately.)
There is much more but I’m sure to be hitting the maximum comment size about now.
Please ask more questions and I’ll happily respond.
Thank you for this – you’re facing an uphill struggle, but the facts are the facts.
About the gut-brain link? Let’s have a beer (or two) and discuss it…
“About the gut-brain link? Let’s have a beer (or two) and discuss it…”
Haha, yes, indeed.
Deer is having his day in the sun now but people like me will continue to point out his errors. Eventually, it will become widely known that the science exonerating vaccines from damaging brains is highly flawed. Children’s Health Defence (Bobby Kennedy) and the book “Turtles All the Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth” (Amazon) are going a long way to breaking the belief. In the book, the authors show the various tricks that have been used to convince the world that the data do not show a link when actually they do show a link.
The need to hide this link is enormous given that these drugs have been mandated by governments around the world. The damage awards will be enormous (trillions?) once it’s clear that the immune system is highly entwined with the brain and that it’s not safe to modulate a baby’s immune system in the way we are. The brains of some children will be damaged.
Some researchers see this problem already:
But it is safe to modulate the baby’s immune system (and risk severe damage) by letting the baby carch measles, mumps or rubella??
These were mild diseases for most children when I was growing up.
It’s much easier to be healthy and avoid serious illness than to risk possible brain damage from mostly unnecessary vaccines.
That’s actually an excellent and natural question to ask.
Here are some points to consider:
• in developed countries, measles had stopped being a killer disease by the time the vaccine has been invented and the case for adding a mumps and rubella vaccine was not actually strong, either. (See “Turtles All the Way Down”)
• the strain of measles has gotten weaker over time as almost all population-wide infections do. We are seeing this with SARS-CoV-2. Hence, the danger was lessening over time.
• Although it was very common, not all children got the measles—but virtually every child is getting the vaccine. So the math may work out that we are damaging more children with a faulty vaccine than if they had gotten the natural infection.
• Because vaccines are injected into the muscle they bypass the typical way the natural infections are introduced to the body via eyes, mouth, nose etc. The body mounts an incomplete immune response because the mucosal layers are completely missed. An incomplete immune response may mean that the antigen from a live viral vaccine may never get fully cleared. It may, in fact, settle into the GI tract and start causing mischief that leads to gut dysbiosis and eventually brain damage. Again, that’s why Fecal Transplants are providing symptom relief to many children (some begin speaking again!).
• the body would almost never have to deal with three simultaneous infections. The line the pharmaceutical industry says is, “The vaccines present a weaker form of the virus than the wild virus.” True enough (though note the problematic way they are introduced (bypassing mucosal layers), above) but three of them? What are the interactions between the three? Wakefield saw fewer cases of brain damage when each infection was introduced separately. And there are two papers now that show there are more adverse events in multivalent shots. It might be convenient for doctors and parents to introduce multiple infections simultaneously because the parent doesn’t have to drag the child back to the doctor’s office but it is less safe and is harming children needlessly.
• significant immune activations cause microglial activation in the brain. I calculated that a child is now receiving about two dozen SIAs due to the vaccine program (in the US; I’m less familiar with the UK schedule). Some are from live viral vaccines such as the MMR but many are coming from aluminum-adjuvanted vaccines. Significant immune activations in pregnant mouse dams and primates have already been proven to damage the fetus (a large source of children born with autism). The work first appears in Vargas et. al. 2006 but there are now dozens of papers on Maternal Immune Activation.
There is absolutely no doubt that Maternal Immune Activation (MIA) damages delicate brains in utero.
So why are we doing the same thing to babies who are just a few months older once born?
We must stop repeatedly activating the immune systems of these not-yet-developed brains; it is damaging them.
It seems to me that almost all your points contain the word ‘may’. Yes, this may all be possible. But is it happening? Who knows? How can you conclude from all those maybes to the certainty that ‘it is damaging them’?
“Wakefield saw fewer cases of brain damage when each infection was introduced separately“. Wakefield has been proved to be biased, reckless, and totally unreliable (whether what he did was ‘fraud’ or not). That does not prove that he is wrong in every case, but it makes it completely irrelevant what he says he ‘saw’.
“the strain of measles has gotten weaker over time as almost all population-wide infections do.” That is not generally true, and it can absolutely not be said of COVID. If COVID has gotten weaker it is a fortunate coincidence – though it is of course a handy explanation for those who prefer to do nothing against the virus and trust in (divine?) providence to solve the problem. Evolution means that disease forms that are better at spreading will tend to dominate. That means that variants that kill the victim fast or confine him to a sick bed will lose out to variants that keep the patient alive and moving about – in the long run. COVID is neither lethal nor debilitating enough for this effect to work, so if the faster-spreading variants also happen to be less virulent that is, as I said, a fortunate coincidence.
I say “may” simply because it does not happen to every child. There is biological variation and great variation between doses in the amount of antigen, the quality of the antigen, the number of contaminants, the number of other vaccines given on or near the same day, the health condition of the child (vaccines are not supposed to be given when a child is sick but the past few decades doctors are not adhering as much to this common sense rule) and so on.
Wakefield was not biased or reckless, as the High Court determined. The interventions were completely warranted as part of the treatment given to them at the Royal Free. Read High Court Justice Mitting’s decision yourself.
Yes, this is generally true though not absolutely true. We are seeing exactly this with SARS-CoV-2 in which there is voluminous data showing the Omnicron strain is weaker than prior strains and especially the alpha strain.
“COVID is neither lethal nor debilitating enough for this effect to work”
Of course it is. It’s pretty easy to find these data, have you looked?
We saw exactly this play out with smallpox. Variola major was very deadly and is attributed with a case fatality rate of up to 30%. However, as the early 1900s wore on, variola major was replaced by variola minor. That strain was so much weaker than the prior strain that some doctors were mistaking it for chicken pox until it was laboratory confirmed.
There is no adequate proof that these vaccinations cause damage, so speculation about what might happen if they did is out of place.
Wakefield was biased, in that he was clearly convinced that vaccination was dangerous before he had even carried out the study, and reckless in that he sowed distrust about an important medical procedure based on wholly insufficient evidence.
The procedures done on those children were done without appropriate ethics committee approval, and were too onerous to do for a research project on children. They could not be justified as research – but they might be justified as treatment, where you do not need ethics committee approval, and where one assumes a benefit for the individual patient. The judgement you link to all hangs on whether Prof. Walker-Smith (*not* Wakefield, who was clearly in this for research purposes, and who is not even evaluated in the judgement) could have believed that the procedures he did were for treatment rather than research, and whether the GMC had proved the contrary to a legal standard. This may be important for Prof. Walker-Smith, but it is irrelevant to whether Wakefield’s results were reliable, or the research and paper carried out correctly, or whether Wakefields presentation of his results in the press were irresponsible. Indeed one notes that Wakefields co-authors deplored and contradicted Wakefields claims that the MMR vaccine was dangerous.
I have no reason to dispute that omicron is less fatal than delta or that smallpox became less virulent over time. The question is when, how, and why this can happen. Since dead or bedridden people are not good at spreading disease, a disease variant that quickly kills or incapacitates the sick will clearly spread less well than a variant that keeps sufferers alive and mobile. This is the mechanism that supposedly has made many diseases less virulent over time, but it hangs entirely on the disease being incapacitating or deadly. This COVID is *not*. COVID does not kill enough people for it to be a major hindrance for transmission. If omicron is less virulent than delta this is purely a fortunate coincidence, and claiming that ‘diseases get less virulent over time’ as a general truth is wrong and misleading. The next COVID (or flu) variant might well be a lot worse than what we have now.
Many things you are writing are incorrect.:
• Wakefield was very pro-vaccine at the time. He even encouraged parents to use the single shots.
• There is lots of proof that these vaccines damage in the scientific literature. What’s happening is that everyone says, “Injury only happens one in a million shots.” Remember “Covid shots are safe and effective?” Both of these are lies designed to fool you into taking vaccines.
First, “one in a million shots” is not true at all. Many of these injuries are down in the 1 in the hundreds and autism is down around 1 in 39 (depending on the study). Second, cumulatively, we are damaging A LOT of people when you add up each adverse event. Third, there are literally hundreds of adverse effects from otitis media to allergies that aren’t yet attributed to the shots because they weaken our immune systems. The data is out there but it isn’t widely known yet.
• “The procedures done on those children were done without appropriate ethics committee approval”
I answered this elsewhere. The procedures were covered under the blanket ethics approval granted to Walker-Smith when he arrived at the hospital (Justice Mitting agreed that all procedures were warranted in his High Court ruling because the children were being treated for their GI conditions). If you could please just read Justice Mitting’s ruling, this would go much faster. You keep thinking the GMC Panel got things correct when their determination in almost every aspect was reversed on appeal.
• As for you not knowing that wild infections lose their virulence over time is commonly known in the field of infectious disease, all I can do is suggest that you read more on the topic (it’s a “general rule”). When the infection is introduced to a naive herd, the weak and old die first but this also takes the most powerful of the pathogen with them. Eventually an equilibrium is reached: just enough to spread but not enough to kill.
This is a general truth but, as I have mentioned, it’s not absolute. You are correct that another strain may yet come that is more virulent—but that will be because we are using a non-neutralizing vaccine. That will be our fault. We are causing an evolutionary pressure exactly as we are doing with antibiotics and bacteria.
In the meantime, in the case of measles, smallpox and SARS-CoV-2, it happens to be true and the data bear this out.
Am of the opinion that vaccines are immoral and ought to be made illegal.
Vaccines are tested for lmited effect and disingenuously tested too briefly and too narrowly for “safety”.
Just because you bought some sugar doesn’t mean you are ready to make a cake.
Just because a vaccine can stimulate production of antibodies doesn’t make it a good replacement for natural immunity.
The immune sytem is very complicated with numeorus chemical cascades, feed back loops, and stop-gap measures.
Like us, our immune systems are living/ learning systems that function harmoniously with our other body systems and uniquely with our personal genetics and enviornment to maintain homeostasis over the life span.
Immune functions are not only responsible for protecting us from infections caused by pathogens. Other immune system roles include managing toxins plus surveillance and elimination of cancers.
Immunity then is a person’s learned immune responses that permit adaption to their natural environment.
Using vaccines to leverage a slight advantage over a handful of pathogens has caused great harms. Failure to apprehend the many harms caused by vaccination is the greatest scourge and scienctific abuse of our time.
Various mechanisms by which vaccines inflict injury to my comprehension include:
-metals poisoning with varieties of metals that biopersist and bioaccumulate causing both acute and chronic brain inflammation leading to neurodevelopmental, neuropsychiatric, and neurodegenerative diseases
-genetic injuries via insertional mutagenesis, genotoxicity, and interference with epigenetic functions
-iatrogenic induction of a vast array of autoimmune conditions via molecular mimicry and allergic conditions via standby activation
-Injection of pathogenic contaminants leading to infections and cancers: examples include RSV (formerly known as chimpanzee coryza virus), SV40, HERV-K, XMRV, pestivirus, etc.
-increased morbidity & mortality from pathogens that are not vaccine targeted as a result of immunocompromise caused by vaccination for pathogens that are vaccine targeted.
There are many other mechanisms by which vaccines cause injury including damage to one’s microbiome, inflammasome, mitochondria, etc.
The mechanisms I listed above are just the ones I can personally best organize and describe.
These are all known consequences of vaccination yet vaccine safety testing is designed to fail to properly assess the rate at which these latent pathologic conditions in response to vaccination occur.
Ill-designed safety testing then, gives a false illusion of safety. Without properly designed tests and properly collected data, no appropriate risk/ benefit analysis can be made or communicated to persons presented with the choice to avail themselves of “vaccine protection”.
Medical professionals know little more about vaccines than the average man on the street. Unfortunately medical professionals are trained to advocate for vaccines even though their ignorance of vaccine products and resulting harms compromises all codes of medical ethics. Medical professionals can’t advocate for patient safety when they don’t properly understand vaccine pseudo-science.
Almost all diseases that are vaccine targeted have a greater than 99% natural survival rate. When infections are resolved naturally, the results include more comprehensive and lasting immunity that is healthier for individuals and populations alike.
Examples of this include natural protection afforded to infants nursed by their (unvaccinated) mothers and decreased rates of a variety of cancers afforded to persons who have survived natural infections.
No vaccine provides the comprehensive and enduring protection that natural immunity does.
Anyone that dies from an infectious disease dies a sad but natural death. Nature is to blame when science cannot help a person’s natural survival.
Anyone that dies from vaccination was unnaturally put to death. Science is to blame when persons cannot naturally overcome the effects of vaccination.
ONLY ONE OF THESE DEATHS IS 100% PREVENTABLE.
There is no morality in counting vaccine preventable deaths whilst ignoring all the harms caused by vaccine products, including deaths.
When it comes right down to it- vaccines are a human sacrifice program. Pretending that vaccines might only harm “1 in a million” is an admission that vaccines cause harm. “Death” is an injury listed on the HHS table of injuries eligible for vaccine “compensation”. The system is set up so that almost no one will be able to lay claim to death by vaccination, but in the rare event someone could, purportedly they could be “awarded” $25,000.
Immunology is the study of how the immune system works natrally.
Healthy immune functions happen naturally.
Vaccinology is what then?
It’s the dishonest and incomplete study of immune system corruption.
Anytime the immune system is forced to function unnaturally=> immunopathology.
Direct alterations of immune functions, such as happens with vaccination, will ALWAYS interfere with homeostasis and optimum health. It is NOT possible to make the immune system “extra” good at fighting a handful of pathogens without forcing it to be less good at something else.
Falsely pretening vaccines are harmless by falsely ascertaining their safety and efficacy is one of the most abhorrent criminal enterprises of all time.
I have shared my opinion to the best of my ability but all the details of immune function and good health are far more complicated than what I can personally master. It’s my understanding that the scope of human immunity is not fully understood by science. It’s likely that other measures, like adequate nourishment, could be deployed with much less harms and much greater benefit to improve infectious diease ourcomes and public health in general.
Sadly commercial nutrition scienceTM is as corrupt as commercial immune science.
Long time follower of Andre Angelantoni and huge fan of Dr. Andrew Wakefield.
It’s unlikely I will every bother to follow up on this article or your remarks but it seems to me that you don’t accurately represent the sequence of events regarding the case report that Dr. Wakefield participated in and in doing so, you wrongly malign his integrity. Nor will I further research or argue the details because what really matters is that our world faces shattering epidemics of neurological disease, scientific corruption, and political facism. If you can’t abandon the false vaccine paradigm, so be it.
I really like this new vaccine critical voice: A Midwestern Doctor
This anonymous author covers vaccines in great detail. Topics of include how vaccines can cause sudden death, medical gaslighting, and this article: “Why Do Vaccines Consistently Fail to Prevent Diesase Transmission?”
https://amidwesterndoctor.substack.com/p/why-do-vaccines-consistently-fail
Excellent!
Many thanks for that well thought out and comprehensive comment – which I agree with entirely.
Excellent!
Many thanks for that well thought out and comprehensive comment – which I agree with entirely.
Many things you are writing are incorrect.:
• Wakefield was very pro-vaccine at the time. He even encouraged parents to use the single shots.
• There is lots of proof that these vaccines damage in the scientific literature. What’s happening is that everyone says, “Injury only happens one in a million shots.” Remember “Covid shots are safe and effective?” Both of these are lies designed to fool you into taking vaccines.
First, “one in a million shots” is not true at all. Many of these injuries are down in the 1 in the hundreds and autism is down around 1 in 39 (depending on the study). Second, cumulatively, we are damaging A LOT of people when you add up each adverse event. Third, there are literally hundreds of adverse effects from otitis media to allergies that aren’t yet attributed to the shots because they weaken our immune systems. The data is out there but it isn’t widely known yet.
• “The procedures done on those children were done without appropriate ethics committee approval”
I answered this elsewhere. The procedures were covered under the blanket ethics approval granted to Walker-Smith when he arrived at the hospital (Justice Mitting agreed that all procedures were warranted in his High Court ruling because the children were being treated for their GI conditions). If you could please just read Justice Mitting’s ruling, this would go much faster. You keep thinking the GMC Panel got things correct when their determination in almost every aspect was reversed on appeal.
• As for you not knowing that wild infections lose their virulence over time is commonly known in the field of infectious disease, all I can do is suggest that you read more on the topic (it’s a “general rule”). When the infection is introduced to a naive herd, the weak and old die first but this also takes the most powerful of the pathogen with them. Eventually an equilibrium is reached: just enough to spread but not enough to kill.
This is a general truth but, as I have mentioned, it’s not absolute. You are correct that another strain may yet come that is more virulent—but that will be because we are using a non-neutralizing vaccine. That will be our fault. We are causing an evolutionary pressure exactly as we are doing with antibiotics and bacteria.
In the meantime, in the case of measles, smallpox and SARS-CoV-2, it happens to be true and the data bear this out.
Am of the opinion that vaccines are immoral and ought to be made illegal.
Vaccines are tested for lmited effect and disingenuously tested too briefly and too narrowly for “safety”.
Just because you bought some sugar doesn’t mean you are ready to make a cake.
Just because a vaccine can stimulate production of antibodies doesn’t make it a good replacement for natural immunity.
The immune sytem is very complicated with numeorus chemical cascades, feed back loops, and stop-gap measures.
Like us, our immune systems are living/ learning systems that function harmoniously with our other body systems and uniquely with our personal genetics and enviornment to maintain homeostasis over the life span.
Immune functions are not only responsible for protecting us from infections caused by pathogens. Other immune system roles include managing toxins plus surveillance and elimination of cancers.
Immunity then is a person’s learned immune responses that permit adaption to their natural environment.
Using vaccines to leverage a slight advantage over a handful of pathogens has caused great harms. Failure to apprehend the many harms caused by vaccination is the greatest scourge and scienctific abuse of our time.
Various mechanisms by which vaccines inflict injury to my comprehension include:
-metals poisoning with varieties of metals that biopersist and bioaccumulate causing both acute and chronic brain inflammation leading to neurodevelopmental, neuropsychiatric, and neurodegenerative diseases
-genetic injuries via insertional mutagenesis, genotoxicity, and interference with epigenetic functions
-iatrogenic induction of a vast array of autoimmune conditions via molecular mimicry and allergic conditions via standby activation
-Injection of pathogenic contaminants leading to infections and cancers: examples include RSV (formerly known as chimpanzee coryza virus), SV40, HERV-K, XMRV, pestivirus, etc.
-increased morbidity & mortality from pathogens that are not vaccine targeted as a result of immunocompromise caused by vaccination for pathogens that are vaccine targeted.
There are many other mechanisms by which vaccines cause injury including damage to one’s microbiome, inflammasome, mitochondria, etc.
The mechanisms I listed above are just the ones I can personally best organize and describe.
These are all known consequences of vaccination yet vaccine safety testing is designed to fail to properly assess the rate at which these latent pathologic conditions in response to vaccination occur.
Ill-designed safety testing then, gives a false illusion of safety. Without properly designed tests and properly collected data, no appropriate risk/ benefit analysis can be made or communicated to persons presented with the choice to avail themselves of “vaccine protection”.
Medical professionals know little more about vaccines than the average man on the street. Unfortunately medical professionals are trained to advocate for vaccines even though their ignorance of vaccine products and resulting harms compromises all codes of medical ethics. Medical professionals can’t advocate for patient safety when they don’t properly understand vaccine pseudo-science.
Almost all diseases that are vaccine targeted have a greater than 99% natural survival rate. When infections are resolved naturally, the results include more comprehensive and lasting immunity that is healthier for individuals and populations alike.
Examples of this include natural protection afforded to infants nursed by their (unvaccinated) mothers and decreased rates of a variety of cancers afforded to persons who have survived natural infections.
No vaccine provides the comprehensive and enduring protection that natural immunity does.
Anyone that dies from an infectious disease dies a sad but natural death. Nature is to blame when science cannot help a person’s natural survival.
Anyone that dies from vaccination was unnaturally put to death. Science is to blame when persons cannot naturally overcome the effects of vaccination.
ONLY ONE OF THESE DEATHS IS 100% PREVENTABLE.
There is no morality in counting vaccine preventable deaths whilst ignoring all the harms caused by vaccine products, including deaths.
When it comes right down to it- vaccines are a human sacrifice program. Pretending that vaccines might only harm “1 in a million” is an admission that vaccines cause harm. “Death” is an injury listed on the HHS table of injuries eligible for vaccine “compensation”. The system is set up so that almost no one will be able to lay claim to death by vaccination, but in the rare event someone could, purportedly they could be “awarded” $25,000.
Immunology is the study of how the immune system works natrally.
Healthy immune functions happen naturally.
Vaccinology is what then?
It’s the dishonest and incomplete study of immune system corruption.
Anytime the immune system is forced to function unnaturally=> immunopathology.
Direct alterations of immune functions, such as happens with vaccination, will ALWAYS interfere with homeostasis and optimum health. It is NOT possible to make the immune system “extra” good at fighting a handful of pathogens without forcing it to be less good at something else.
Falsely pretening vaccines are harmless by falsely ascertaining their safety and efficacy is one of the most abhorrent criminal enterprises of all time.
I have shared my opinion to the best of my ability but all the details of immune function and good health are far more complicated than what I can personally master. It’s my understanding that the scope of human immunity is not fully understood by science. It’s likely that other measures, like adequate nourishment, could be deployed with much less harms and much greater benefit to improve infectious diease ourcomes and public health in general.
Sadly commercial nutrition scienceTM is as corrupt as commercial immune science.
Long time follower of Andre Angelantoni and huge fan of Dr. Andrew Wakefield.
It’s unlikely I will every bother to follow up on this article or your remarks but it seems to me that you don’t accurately represent the sequence of events regarding the case report that Dr. Wakefield participated in and in doing so, you wrongly malign his integrity. Nor will I further research or argue the details because what really matters is that our world faces shattering epidemics of neurological disease, scientific corruption, and political facism. If you can’t abandon the false vaccine paradigm, so be it.
I really like this new vaccine critical voice: A Midwestern Doctor
This anonymous author covers vaccines in great detail. Topics of include how vaccines can cause sudden death, medical gaslighting, and this article: “Why Do Vaccines Consistently Fail to Prevent Diesase Transmission?”
https://amidwesterndoctor.substack.com/p/why-do-vaccines-consistently-fail
There is no adequate proof that these vaccinations cause damage, so speculation about what might happen if they did is out of place.
Wakefield was biased, in that he was clearly convinced that vaccination was dangerous before he had even carried out the study, and reckless in that he sowed distrust about an important medical procedure based on wholly insufficient evidence.
The procedures done on those children were done without appropriate ethics committee approval, and were too onerous to do for a research project on children. They could not be justified as research – but they might be justified as treatment, where you do not need ethics committee approval, and where one assumes a benefit for the individual patient. The judgement you link to all hangs on whether Prof. Walker-Smith (*not* Wakefield, who was clearly in this for research purposes, and who is not even evaluated in the judgement) could have believed that the procedures he did were for treatment rather than research, and whether the GMC had proved the contrary to a legal standard. This may be important for Prof. Walker-Smith, but it is irrelevant to whether Wakefield’s results were reliable, or the research and paper carried out correctly, or whether Wakefields presentation of his results in the press were irresponsible. Indeed one notes that Wakefields co-authors deplored and contradicted Wakefields claims that the MMR vaccine was dangerous.
I have no reason to dispute that omicron is less fatal than delta or that smallpox became less virulent over time. The question is when, how, and why this can happen. Since dead or bedridden people are not good at spreading disease, a disease variant that quickly kills or incapacitates the sick will clearly spread less well than a variant that keeps sufferers alive and mobile. This is the mechanism that supposedly has made many diseases less virulent over time, but it hangs entirely on the disease being incapacitating or deadly. This COVID is *not*. COVID does not kill enough people for it to be a major hindrance for transmission. If omicron is less virulent than delta this is purely a fortunate coincidence, and claiming that ‘diseases get less virulent over time’ as a general truth is wrong and misleading. The next COVID (or flu) variant might well be a lot worse than what we have now.
I say “may” simply because it does not happen to every child. There is biological variation and great variation between doses in the amount of antigen, the quality of the antigen, the number of contaminants, the number of other vaccines given on or near the same day, the health condition of the child (vaccines are not supposed to be given when a child is sick but the past few decades doctors are not adhering as much to this common sense rule) and so on.
Wakefield was not biased or reckless, as the High Court determined. The interventions were completely warranted as part of the treatment given to them at the Royal Free. Read High Court Justice Mitting’s decision yourself.
Yes, this is generally true though not absolutely true. We are seeing exactly this with SARS-CoV-2 in which there is voluminous data showing the Omnicron strain is weaker than prior strains and especially the alpha strain.
“COVID is neither lethal nor debilitating enough for this effect to work”
Of course it is. It’s pretty easy to find these data, have you looked?
We saw exactly this play out with smallpox. Variola major was very deadly and is attributed with a case fatality rate of up to 30%. However, as the early 1900s wore on, variola major was replaced by variola minor. That strain was so much weaker than the prior strain that some doctors were mistaking it for chicken pox until it was laboratory confirmed.
It seems to me that almost all your points contain the word ‘may’. Yes, this may all be possible. But is it happening? Who knows? How can you conclude from all those maybes to the certainty that ‘it is damaging them’?
“Wakefield saw fewer cases of brain damage when each infection was introduced separately“. Wakefield has been proved to be biased, reckless, and totally unreliable (whether what he did was ‘fraud’ or not). That does not prove that he is wrong in every case, but it makes it completely irrelevant what he says he ‘saw’.
“the strain of measles has gotten weaker over time as almost all population-wide infections do.” That is not generally true, and it can absolutely not be said of COVID. If COVID has gotten weaker it is a fortunate coincidence – though it is of course a handy explanation for those who prefer to do nothing against the virus and trust in (divine?) providence to solve the problem. Evolution means that disease forms that are better at spreading will tend to dominate. That means that variants that kill the victim fast or confine him to a sick bed will lose out to variants that keep the patient alive and moving about – in the long run. COVID is neither lethal nor debilitating enough for this effect to work, so if the faster-spreading variants also happen to be less virulent that is, as I said, a fortunate coincidence.
These were mild diseases for most children when I was growing up.
It’s much easier to be healthy and avoid serious illness than to risk possible brain damage from mostly unnecessary vaccines.
That’s actually an excellent and natural question to ask.
Here are some points to consider:
• in developed countries, measles had stopped being a killer disease by the time the vaccine has been invented and the case for adding a mumps and rubella vaccine was not actually strong, either. (See “Turtles All the Way Down”)
• the strain of measles has gotten weaker over time as almost all population-wide infections do. We are seeing this with SARS-CoV-2. Hence, the danger was lessening over time.
• Although it was very common, not all children got the measles—but virtually every child is getting the vaccine. So the math may work out that we are damaging more children with a faulty vaccine than if they had gotten the natural infection.
• Because vaccines are injected into the muscle they bypass the typical way the natural infections are introduced to the body via eyes, mouth, nose etc. The body mounts an incomplete immune response because the mucosal layers are completely missed. An incomplete immune response may mean that the antigen from a live viral vaccine may never get fully cleared. It may, in fact, settle into the GI tract and start causing mischief that leads to gut dysbiosis and eventually brain damage. Again, that’s why Fecal Transplants are providing symptom relief to many children (some begin speaking again!).
• the body would almost never have to deal with three simultaneous infections. The line the pharmaceutical industry says is, “The vaccines present a weaker form of the virus than the wild virus.” True enough (though note the problematic way they are introduced (bypassing mucosal layers), above) but three of them? What are the interactions between the three? Wakefield saw fewer cases of brain damage when each infection was introduced separately. And there are two papers now that show there are more adverse events in multivalent shots. It might be convenient for doctors and parents to introduce multiple infections simultaneously because the parent doesn’t have to drag the child back to the doctor’s office but it is less safe and is harming children needlessly.
• significant immune activations cause microglial activation in the brain. I calculated that a child is now receiving about two dozen SIAs due to the vaccine program (in the US; I’m less familiar with the UK schedule). Some are from live viral vaccines such as the MMR but many are coming from aluminum-adjuvanted vaccines. Significant immune activations in pregnant mouse dams and primates have already been proven to damage the fetus (a large source of children born with autism). The work first appears in Vargas et. al. 2006 but there are now dozens of papers on Maternal Immune Activation.
There is absolutely no doubt that Maternal Immune Activation (MIA) damages delicate brains in utero.
So why are we doing the same thing to babies who are just a few months older once born?
We must stop repeatedly activating the immune systems of these not-yet-developed brains; it is damaging them.
Why do you spread disinformation and refer to the article of a controversial person in Poland, Dr. Dorota Sienkieicz? In 2018, her anti-vaccine activities raised serious doubts. The Medical University of Bialystok (her employer) issued a statement that her public statements are her private opinions. They have nothing to do with the university’s position on vaccines. In 2022, she was deprived of the right to practice medicine for a year. The judgment was issued by the District Medical Court in Biaystok. The credibility of Dorota Sienkiewicz’s articles has been undermined by scientists. First of all, this woman has not done any research on vaccinations. Her article is a review paper. The sources of this article are highly dubious. In 2014, one of the main Polish weekly magazines, Polityka, wrote about this case.
Rubella in pregnancy, especially in the first trimester, is very dangerous for the development of the fetus and threatens many birth defects in the child. This is the main reason for the rubella vaccination. Let us add that currently in Poland it is not possible to perform an abortion due to fetal defects. Women are forced to give birth to such children, I think that every responsible mother in Poland should vaccinate her daughter, because it will simply protect her from a tragedy in the future. I remember very well from my childhood many elderly people disabled because of polio. There was no vaccination in their time.
Certainly, the pharmaceutical industry makes money on vaccinations, but a thinking man and a history buff knows perfectly well that when there was no vaccination, many children died very early. He also understands that the argument: No need to vaccinate against X because disease X can be treated with antibiotic Y is complete nonsense because firstly, contracting a disease with serious complications is risky, secondly, antibiotics are also harmful and have many side effects. Despite this, we use antibiotics because we want to live than die thinking with joy that we have saved the intestinal flora by giving up the antibiotic.
Yes, I am aware that the establishment did that to Dr. Sienkieicz but it is not disinformation any more than all the warnings about the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are disinformation. Information critical of vaccines is what the medical establishment and media like to call disinformation. If you see the word “disinformation,” odds are better than even that they are attempting to hide something you should know about.
Unfortunately, it is very common now for doctors to lose their licenses when they question vaccines. We are seeing doctors all over the US being stripped of titles and having to defend their licenses because they have been explaining exactly how dangerous the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are and how there are cheap treatments for this respiratory virus.
But the doctors are correct and the medical boards are wrong. Excess deaths are up in highly vaccinated countries all over the world often by about 20%. Excess deaths should be down not up if the vaccines work. See the book by Edward Dowd, “Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 & 2022”
But vaccines injure and kill often. (And the deaths continue to increase in 2023 especially by cancer.)
Regarding the polio vaccine, that was another undeserved “epidemic” blown up by hysteria that forms around viral outbreaks with the help of the media.
Oshinsky explains in his 2006 Pulitzer-prize winning book on polio:
“In truth, polio was never the raging epidemic portrayed in the media, not even at its height in the 1940s and 1950s. Ten times as many children would be killed in accidents in these years, and three times as many would die of cancer. Polio’s special status was due, in large part, to the efforts of a remarkable group, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which employed the latest techniques in advertising, fund raising, and motivational research to turn a horrific but relatively uncommon disease into the most feared affliction of its time.”
Polio: An American Story, Oshinsky, Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 4
https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/polio-9780195307146
If you read the book you learn that people working with other diseases were frustrated that polio was hogging all the attention when it was so rare.
In fact, it was so rare that it took the largest field trials ever done by humanity in order to detect whether the vaccine worked—over a million children were involved. You simply don’t need trials that large for truly dangerous diseases.
Paul Meier was the lead statistician on that effort. He was also the man who pushed for the use of randomization during trials and several other advances in medical statistics.
Paul Meier A Man Behind the Method
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3477951
It’s also important to distinguish between the catch-all term polio, aka “infantile paralysis,” and poliomyelitis, the virus. There were several other causes of paralysis that were incorrectly blamed on the virus as part of the hysteria.
Part of what has given vaccines their undeserved reputation is that they allegedly worked for the polio outbreak.
What actually happened is that in the middle of the “epidemic” several other diseases were renamed that used to be called polio. The “polio” rate went down and it looked like it was the vaccine that did it when it really was reclassification.
This was even seen at the time and reported (1961):
“The definition of polio also has changed in the last six or seven years. Several diseases which were often diagnosed as polio are now classified as aseptic meningitis or illnesses caused by one of the Coxsackie or Echo viruses. The number of polio cases in 1961 cannot accurately be compared with those in, say 1952, because the criteria for diagnosis have changed.”
The Truth about Polio Vaccines http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1961/03/05/page/62/article/the-truth-about-the-polio-vaccinesFor an excellent review of the myth of the “successful” polio vaccines, please read “The Moth in the Iron Lung: A Biography of Polio” by Maready.
Yes, I am aware that the establishment did that to Dr. Sienkieicz but it is not disinformation any more than all the warnings about the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are disinformation. Information critical of vaccines is what the medical establishment and media like to call disinformation. If you see the word “disinformation,” odds are better than even that they are attempting to hide something you should know about.
Unfortunately, it is very common now for doctors to lose their licenses when they question vaccines. We are seeing doctors all over the US being stripped of titles and having to defend their licenses because they have been explaining exactly how dangerous the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are and how there are cheap treatments for this respiratory virus.
But the doctors are correct and the medical boards are wrong. Excess deaths are up in highly vaccinated countries all over the world often by about 20%. Excess deaths should be down not up if the vaccines work. See the book by Edward Dowd, “Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 & 2022”
But vaccines injure and kill often. (And the deaths continue to increase in 2023 especially by cancer.)
Regarding the polio vaccine, that was another undeserved “epidemic” blown up by hysteria that forms around viral outbreaks with the help of the media.
Oshinsky explains in his 2006 Pulitzer-prize winning book on polio:
“In truth, polio was never the raging epidemic portrayed in the media, not even at its height in the 1940s and 1950s. Ten times as many children would be killed in accidents in these years, and three times as many would die of cancer. Polio’s special status was due, in large part, to the efforts of a remarkable group, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which employed the latest techniques in advertising, fund raising, and motivational research to turn a horrific but relatively uncommon disease into the most feared affliction of its time.”
Polio: An American Story, Oshinsky, Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 4
https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/polio-9780195307146
If you read the book you learn that people working with other diseases were frustrated that polio was hogging all the attention when it was so rare.
In fact, it was so rare that it took the largest field trials ever done by humanity in order to detect whether the vaccine worked—over a million children were involved. You simply don’t need trials that large for truly dangerous diseases.
Paul Meier was the lead statistician on that effort. He was also the man who pushed for the use of randomization during trials and several other advances in medical statistics.
Paul Meier A Man Behind the Method
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3477951
It’s also important to distinguish between the catch-all term polio, aka “infantile paralysis,” and poliomyelitis, the virus. There were several other causes of paralysis that were incorrectly blamed on the virus as part of the hysteria.
Part of what has given vaccines their undeserved reputation is that they allegedly worked for the polio outbreak.
What actually happened is that in the middle of the “epidemic” several other diseases were renamed that used to be called polio. The “polio” rate went down and it looked like it was the vaccine that did it when it really was reclassification.
This was even seen at the time and reported (1961):
“The definition of polio also has changed in the last six or seven years. Several diseases which were often diagnosed as polio are now classified as aseptic meningitis or illnesses caused by one of the Coxsackie or Echo viruses. The number of polio cases in 1961 cannot accurately be compared with those in, say 1952, because the criteria for diagnosis have changed.”
The Truth about Polio Vaccines http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1961/03/05/page/62/article/the-truth-about-the-polio-vaccinesFor an excellent review of the myth of the “successful” polio vaccines, please read “The Moth in the Iron Lung: A Biography of Polio” by Maready.
But it is safe to modulate the baby’s immune system (and risk severe damage) by letting the baby carch measles, mumps or rubella??
Why do you spread disinformation and refer to the article of a controversial person in Poland, Dr. Dorota Sienkieicz? In 2018, her anti-vaccine activities raised serious doubts. The Medical University of Bialystok (her employer) issued a statement that her public statements are her private opinions. They have nothing to do with the university’s position on vaccines. In 2022, she was deprived of the right to practice medicine for a year. The judgment was issued by the District Medical Court in Biaystok. The credibility of Dorota Sienkiewicz’s articles has been undermined by scientists. First of all, this woman has not done any research on vaccinations. Her article is a review paper. The sources of this article are highly dubious. In 2014, one of the main Polish weekly magazines, Polityka, wrote about this case.
Rubella in pregnancy, especially in the first trimester, is very dangerous for the development of the fetus and threatens many birth defects in the child. This is the main reason for the rubella vaccination. Let us add that currently in Poland it is not possible to perform an abortion due to fetal defects. Women are forced to give birth to such children, I think that every responsible mother in Poland should vaccinate her daughter, because it will simply protect her from a tragedy in the future. I remember very well from my childhood many elderly people disabled because of polio. There was no vaccination in their time.
Certainly, the pharmaceutical industry makes money on vaccinations, but a thinking man and a history buff knows perfectly well that when there was no vaccination, many children died very early. He also understands that the argument: No need to vaccinate against X because disease X can be treated with antibiotic Y is complete nonsense because firstly, contracting a disease with serious complications is risky, secondly, antibiotics are also harmful and have many side effects. Despite this, we use antibiotics because we want to live than die thinking with joy that we have saved the intestinal flora by giving up the antibiotic.
“About the gut-brain link? Let’s have a beer (or two) and discuss it…”
Haha, yes, indeed.
Deer is having his day in the sun now but people like me will continue to point out his errors. Eventually, it will become widely known that the science exonerating vaccines from damaging brains is highly flawed. Children’s Health Defence (Bobby Kennedy) and the book “Turtles All the Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth” (Amazon) are going a long way to breaking the belief. In the book, the authors show the various tricks that have been used to convince the world that the data do not show a link when actually they do show a link.
The need to hide this link is enormous given that these drugs have been mandated by governments around the world. The damage awards will be enormous (trillions?) once it’s clear that the immune system is highly entwined with the brain and that it’s not safe to modulate a baby’s immune system in the way we are. The brains of some children will be damaged.
Some researchers see this problem already:
Thank you for that. This is why free speech is needed. Do not ban people. Let them hang on their own rope.
Unfortunately, at least two detailed comments I have written have disappeared. I saw them when I refreshed the page so it’s unlikely to be a technical glitch. Even UnHerd censors, it seems.
Happens to all of us. Out for moderations, but they generally get reinstated.
Yes, one of them has come back. Haven’t checked the other one I remember yet.
They all have come back. It can take up to 18 hours, it seems.
Yes, one of them has come back. Haven’t checked the other one I remember yet.
They all have come back. It can take up to 18 hours, it seems.
Happens to all of us. Out for moderations, but they generally get reinstated.
Unfortunately, at least two detailed comments I have written have disappeared. I saw them when I refreshed the page so it’s unlikely to be a technical glitch. Even UnHerd censors, it seems.
Thank you for this – you’re facing an uphill struggle, but the facts are the facts.
About the gut-brain link? Let’s have a beer (or two) and discuss it…
Thank you for that. This is why free speech is needed. Do not ban people. Let them hang on their own rope.
== The Thread on Everything Deer Got Wrong and Conveniently Omits ==
I’ve studied the Wakefield affair extensively and am currently writing the definitive rebuttal. Let’s collect here all the things Deer got wrong as he accused Wakefield of a fraud he did not commit. Eventually, Wakefield will be vindicated; he already has been in the eyes of many around the world. I will keep responding until UnHerd deletes this thread (don’t know if they do that; everyone else does on this topic) or closes commenting.
Allegation: Wakefield did not actually find a problem and invented the whole thing.
Reality: The gut-brain axis is well known now but wasn’t 25 years ago. Wakefield was one of the first people to see that disrupting the microbiome of a baby or infant could cause gut dysbiosis and affect the proper development of the brain. A great deal of research has now linked neurological damage to disrupted microbiota, from Parkinson’s to Multiple Sclerosis. Teams in the US and China have even shown through Fecal Microbiota Therapy that correcting the gut of autism patients improves brain function. They do this by taking fecal matter from healthy children and inserting it into the gut of autistic children. Wakefield was first to see that the measles virus from the vaccine could embed itself in the guts of children in a sub-clinical way and cause this disruption.
Allegation: Wakefield engineered this alleged fraud because he wanted to offer an alternative to the MMR.
Reality: Wakefield did register a patent on behalf of his hospital for a single-shot “vaccine.” But when I asked Deer on Twitter three times if he asked an immunologist whether the shot was an acceptable replacement for the MMR, he failed to acknowledge that he had. This is sloppy investigation—and very convenient for his narrative.
I asked Deer that because I already knew the answer and was sure he didn’t: the single-shot “vaccine” was actually for a transfer factor, one of many molecules in the immune system that are not antibodies. The new therapy was intended for children who could not receive the MMR because they had already shown susceptibility to it. The profits from the sale of this new prophylactic were to be used to pay for further research into the mechanism he discovered.
So the problem with the theory that Wakefield engineered all this to “corner the market” is two-fold:
First, the market was limited to a very small group of children who couldn’t receive the MMR.
Second, and more importantly, a transfer factor is not antibody-generating and could never replace a population-level prophylactic such as a traditional vaccine. It would have to be given too often and—to top it all off—it wasn’t even proven to work yet; it was simply a patent. Moving an idea from a patent to a workable product is a multi-year process that fails more often than it succeeds.
There was no “vaccine” ready to “corner the market,” as Deer alleges in his various writings. Besides, Wakefield was advocating single shots to replace the MMR so there was already a perfectly adequate replacement (until the British government removed the single shots from the market to prop-up the MMR program).
For the first time, he says here that he checked with immunologists regarding whether this would work “and they laughed.” He does not say this in his book or anywhere else that I have read. He failed to mention this when I directly asked him on Twitter:
Dec 2, 2022
Me: Which expert in virology did you confer with who told you that a transfer factor could compete with a live viral vaccine for population-wide immunity?
Deer: Read what I wrote, you clown. The conflict is Andrew Wakefield’s ludicrous get-rich single vaccine scheme needed confidence in MMR to be damaged. He had a financial motive. Why do you think he spent money on patents? He didn’t care that transfer factors failed in the 1970s.
Me: No, you have it wrong because you don’t understand the science.
Again, which virologist or immunologist did you confer with who told you that a transfer factor could compete with the MMR?
Second time asking.
Deer: Wakefield states it himself in his patent, you t**t.
——————
He did not ask anyone. (If this is wrong Deer, feel free to share who you checked with. You didn’t respond on Twitter but maybe your fingers got tired.)
I believe he added this comment that he checked the viability of the “vaccine” (actually a transfer factor) to cover his tracks because I caught him. He has changed his story so many times it’s hard to keep track of everything he says.
Keep in mind that Deer wrote this about himself:
This is the “investigative journalist” people are trusting to get the story correct and free of bias?
Allegation: The General Medical Council (GMC) found Wakefield committed fraud.
Reality: Fraud is nowhere in the charges by the GMC. That’s because the evidence isn’t there for it or it would have been included. Fraud is an accusation leveled first by Deer and then, like the game of telephone, it has been repeated blindly. The histopathology sheets were not changed; it was a completely new assessment made by the pathologists via a rigorous process in the tertiary referral center (the Royal Free Hospital). The more-senior pathologists at the Royal Free were not even allowed to see the initial gradings.
Allegation: The investigations were cruel and unwarranted.
Reality: On appeal, the High Court ruled that the investigations were warranted. This helped Dr. Walker-Smith to be exonerated by the court. (The insurance company would not pay for Wakefield’s defense so he could not join the appeal, unfortunately.)
There is much more but I’m sure to be hitting the maximum comment size about now.
Please ask more questions and I’ll happily respond.
For such an important issue as the health of our children and given that the ever increasing figure of more than 1 in 35 kids (up from 1 in 10,000) in America are diagnosed as having autism, it is a shame that this journalist has not given more facts rather than sensationalising, spreading fear and focusing solely on the Wakefield drama.
He could have referred to the deposition in the States where the attorney Aaraon Siri called out Dr. Kathyrn Edwards, a vaccinologist and godmother of the vaccine schedule in America. Everyone needs to listen to the following (and see it through to the end) to challenge prejudice and get informed: https://thehighwire.com/videos/top-vaccinologist-clinical-trials-fail-to-support-claim-vaccines-do-not-cause-autism/
There was no saline placebo in the MMR trial. The length of the trial was 42 days, not long enough to capture the injury of autism plus there were less than 1000 kids in the study. Kathryn Edwards admits that the trials were not designed to rule out autism.
Sounds like whoever designed that study decided that combining three vaccines that were known to be safe did not mandate a detailed search for all thinkable side effects. Not being a vaccinologist I cannot judge if that was warranted. Two points, though: 1) Was ‘the MMR trial’ the only study ever done, or were there others as well? 2) Ultimately you will not know about rare effects until you have given the stuff to a lot of people. – which means the first people post-trial have to carry some risk too. By the time a vaccine has been given to a huge number of people, like MMR or COVID taht serves as its own trial, in that any significant side effects would likely have been caught.
Finally – if autism has increased from 1 in 10000 to 1 in 35, how sure are you that it means more people have got it -as opppopsed to the cutoff simply having been changed? Once upon a time only people unable to live in human society would have got the label; today every man and his dog seem to be talking about their autism.
It is my understanding that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, through its 70 year history of revisions, has continuously redefined the criteria for the diagnosis of autism, general lowering the diagnostic threshold with each new revision. Therefore, I suspect the report of rising prevalence is not a clear reflection of increased pathological incidence.
This can be said for many so called mental disorders.
About one-third of autistic people are non-verbal. They can’t get jobs, can’t have relationships and are under the care of their parents; subsequently, they will become wards of the state once the parents pass.
If autism were always there and we are just getting better at diagnosing it, where are all these autistic adults from past decades? They should be filling care homes—yet they don’t exist. From this alone, we can tell that this is a growing cohort.
If you prefer to examine the data, the state of California keeps excellent records of the most severe form of autism, developmental-disability type autism (DDS).
As of a few years back, California had 122,000 cases of this severe form of autism and it’s much more than would be expected from population growth; the cases per 1000 have increased. Nor has the definition of autism been expanded; in fact, in 2003 the definition became more stringent.
We have a tsunami of severely autistic people who are going to be left with no caretakers when their parents die.
“National costs of autism are projected to reach $461 billion for 2025” (USA). Check out the graphs and references in this post:
The Torrential Surge in Autism Continues Unabated
January 27, 2020
Defying experts’ expectations, rates have yet to plateau, portending nothing short of catastrophe for families and our besieged social services systems.
https://www.ncsautism.org/blog//the-torrential-surge-in-autism-continues-unabated
That depends which definition of autism you use, and hence on which year you make the count in.
No, I chose non-verbal because that’s not up for discussion. It’s a very hard diagnosis. The dispute is on the edges with how “high-functioning” is defined. There is no dispute in how “non-verbal” is defined.
You are not too hot at reading yourself, you know. Let me spell it out. To say that one-third of autistic people are non-verbal, you need to know: 1) how many non-verbal autistic people there are. I can believe that is a hard diagnosis. 2) How many total autistic people there are. That is *not* a hard diagnosis. If you say that a third of autistic people are non-verbal *in year 1990*, and that the number of autistic people have (say) tripled by 2020, it does *not* follow that the number of non-verbal autistic people have tripled by 2020. Equally (or maybe more) likely, it is only the number of ‘soft’ diagnoses only that has tripled, so that by 2020 it is much less than a third of all autistic people (by the 2020 definition) that are non-verbal. Of course, if you have a reliable source for the number of non-verbal autistic people increasing enormously, that would be worth seeing. Reliable, in case you missed it – means that it is *not* from a campaigning organisations or someone already committed to the anti-vaxx couse.
“It does *not* follow that the number of non-verbal autistic people have tripled by 2020.So if the absolute number of non-verbal people has tripled.”
You aren’t understanding the math here.
To say that 1/3 of all autistic people are non-verbal does in fact require the denominator of all people with autism. However, using different statistics this subgroup can be treated independently of the larger group because they are non-verbal.
To say that the number of non-verbal people with autism has tripled can refer to two numbers.
The first is in absolute terms. However, if the population is expanding, “the cohort has tripled” doesn’t say that the prevalence is increasing. It simply says the total number of the cohort is bigger. But that’s not what I’m saying.
To say the prevalence is increasing requires the total population, which we have. Just normalize the data.
So, to be precise: the prevalence of non-verbal autistic kids has tripled.
That blog post is using California data. There are published papers, as well.
“It does *not* follow that the number of non-verbal autistic people have tripled by 2020.So if the absolute number of non-verbal people has tripled.”
You aren’t understanding the math here.
To say that 1/3 of all autistic people are non-verbal does in fact require the denominator of all people with autism. However, using different statistics this subgroup can be treated independently of the larger group because they are non-verbal.
To say that the number of non-verbal people with autism has tripled can refer to two numbers.
The first is in absolute terms. However, if the population is expanding, “the cohort has tripled” doesn’t say that the prevalence is increasing. It simply says the total number of the cohort is bigger. But that’s not what I’m saying.
To say the prevalence is increasing requires the total population, which we have. Just normalize the data.
So, to be precise: the prevalence of non-verbal autistic kids has tripled.
That blog post is using California data. There are published papers, as well.
You are not too hot at reading yourself, you know. Let me spell it out. To say that one-third of autistic people are non-verbal, you need to know: 1) how many non-verbal autistic people there are. I can believe that is a hard diagnosis. 2) How many total autistic people there are. That is *not* a hard diagnosis. If you say that a third of autistic people are non-verbal *in year 1990*, and that the number of autistic people have (say) tripled by 2020, it does *not* follow that the number of non-verbal autistic people have tripled by 2020. Equally (or maybe more) likely, it is only the number of ‘soft’ diagnoses only that has tripled, so that by 2020 it is much less than a third of all autistic people (by the 2020 definition) that are non-verbal. Of course, if you have a reliable source for the number of non-verbal autistic people increasing enormously, that would be worth seeing. Reliable, in case you missed it – means that it is *not* from a campaigning organisations or someone already committed to the anti-vaxx couse.
No, I chose non-verbal because that’s not up for discussion. It’s a very hard diagnosis. The dispute is on the edges with how “high-functioning” is defined. There is no dispute in how “non-verbal” is defined.
That depends which definition of autism you use, and hence on which year you make the count in.
This can be said for many so called mental disorders.
About one-third of autistic people are non-verbal. They can’t get jobs, can’t have relationships and are under the care of their parents; subsequently, they will become wards of the state once the parents pass.
If autism were always there and we are just getting better at diagnosing it, where are all these autistic adults from past decades? They should be filling care homes—yet they don’t exist. From this alone, we can tell that this is a growing cohort.
If you prefer to examine the data, the state of California keeps excellent records of the most severe form of autism, developmental-disability type autism (DDS).
As of a few years back, California had 122,000 cases of this severe form of autism and it’s much more than would be expected from population growth; the cases per 1000 have increased. Nor has the definition of autism been expanded; in fact, in 2003 the definition became more stringent.
We have a tsunami of severely autistic people who are going to be left with no caretakers when their parents die.
“National costs of autism are projected to reach $461 billion for 2025” (USA). Check out the graphs and references in this post:
The Torrential Surge in Autism Continues Unabated
January 27, 2020
Defying experts’ expectations, rates have yet to plateau, portending nothing short of catastrophe for families and our besieged social services systems.
https://www.ncsautism.org/blog//the-torrential-surge-in-autism-continues-unabated
It is my understanding that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, through its 70 year history of revisions, has continuously redefined the criteria for the diagnosis of autism, general lowering the diagnostic threshold with each new revision. Therefore, I suspect the report of rising prevalence is not a clear reflection of increased pathological incidence.
Sounds like whoever designed that study decided that combining three vaccines that were known to be safe did not mandate a detailed search for all thinkable side effects. Not being a vaccinologist I cannot judge if that was warranted. Two points, though: 1) Was ‘the MMR trial’ the only study ever done, or were there others as well? 2) Ultimately you will not know about rare effects until you have given the stuff to a lot of people. – which means the first people post-trial have to carry some risk too. By the time a vaccine has been given to a huge number of people, like MMR or COVID taht serves as its own trial, in that any significant side effects would likely have been caught.
Finally – if autism has increased from 1 in 10000 to 1 in 35, how sure are you that it means more people have got it -as opppopsed to the cutoff simply having been changed? Once upon a time only people unable to live in human society would have got the label; today every man and his dog seem to be talking about their autism.
For such an important issue as the health of our children and given that the ever increasing figure of more than 1 in 35 kids (up from 1 in 10,000) in America are diagnosed as having autism, it is a shame that this journalist has not given more facts rather than sensationalising, spreading fear and focusing solely on the Wakefield drama.
He could have referred to the deposition in the States where the attorney Aaraon Siri called out Dr. Kathyrn Edwards, a vaccinologist and godmother of the vaccine schedule in America. Everyone needs to listen to the following (and see it through to the end) to challenge prejudice and get informed: https://thehighwire.com/videos/top-vaccinologist-clinical-trials-fail-to-support-claim-vaccines-do-not-cause-autism/
There was no saline placebo in the MMR trial. The length of the trial was 42 days, not long enough to capture the injury of autism plus there were less than 1000 kids in the study. Kathryn Edwards admits that the trials were not designed to rule out autism.
I normally read Unherd articles on a subject matter I am interested in even when I can anticipate that I will likely disagree with the author, in hopes of a rational, principled, fact-based discussion.
With this pharma shill and Murdoch hatchet-man, I need not bother.
I normally read Unherd articles on a subject matter I am interested in even when I can anticipate that I will likely disagree with the author, in hopes of a rational, principled, fact-based discussion.
With this pharma shill and Murdoch hatchet-man, I need not bother.
How disturbing to see a biased pharma-funded author do exactly what he is accusing Wakefield of himself. Wakefield may be a crook but that doesn’t make Deer less of a crook. He just plays for the establishment filling his pockets rather than going at it for himself with some lawyers like Wakefield did. Safer but equally unscientific and this obsession with Wakefield is certainly also not journalism.
Furthermore, how on earth can the huge jump be justified from Wakefield’s fraude to covid ‘vaccines’.. This has left me unable to do anything but disregard all of the authors’ previous claims and assertions. Well, opinions really.
If anything, the fact that the scientific community does not question, does not query and does not research nor highlight anything unless it benefits pharma and that The Lancet is indeed clearly not to be trusted can only lead one to see its dogged pushing of the covid vax as well as the complete dismissal (indeed smear campaigns) against anyone critical for what it is: Money-making and politics. Even when at the expense of people’s lives. We have seen it do many times (oxy anyone?) and continue to see it. With covid I haven’t even got a doubt.
How disturbing to see a biased pharma-funded author do exactly what he is accusing Wakefield of himself. Wakefield may be a crook but that doesn’t make Deer less of a crook. He just plays for the establishment filling his pockets rather than going at it for himself with some lawyers like Wakefield did. Safer but equally unscientific and this obsession with Wakefield is certainly also not journalism.
Furthermore, how on earth can the huge jump be justified from Wakefield’s fraude to covid ‘vaccines’.. This has left me unable to do anything but disregard all of the authors’ previous claims and assertions. Well, opinions really.
If anything, the fact that the scientific community does not question, does not query and does not research nor highlight anything unless it benefits pharma and that The Lancet is indeed clearly not to be trusted can only lead one to see its dogged pushing of the covid vax as well as the complete dismissal (indeed smear campaigns) against anyone critical for what it is: Money-making and politics. Even when at the expense of people’s lives. We have seen it do many times (oxy anyone?) and continue to see it. With covid I haven’t even got a doubt.
There is definitely a case to answer regarding the SARS-CoV-2 gene-therapy prophylactics. They are not vaccines. At best, you could describe them as vaccine precursors since they require patient cells to manufacture the actual antigen. They all have problems in common, but the lipid-packaged mRNAs (eg. Pfizer and Moderna) have even more problems than the now discontinued adenovirus packaged DNAs (eg. AstraZeneca). The problems were amplified by the insane policy of population-wide deployment and the inexplicable omission of aspiration from the injection protocol.
1) Choice of antigen – the highly toxic spike protein.
2) Leakage of the inoculant out of the deltoid muscle into the bloodstream.
3) The narrow specificity of the antigen, making immune-escape inevitable – especially in a mass-inoculation (rather vulnerable only targeting) context.
4) By design, the inoculant compromises the patient’s own cells to manufacture the antigen, causing tissue damage as the cells get marked for destruction. This makes the leakage issue particularly worrying, and the missing aspiration protocol grossly negligent.
5) The mRNAs persist for many weeks due to the use of modified bases which resist the normal RNA recycling processes.
6) There is mounting evidence that the mRNAs ramp up immune-damping systems such as IgG4 – boosters actually reducing Covid-19 immunity and look for compromised natural suppression of cancers..
I have not exhausted all the problems, both seen and yet-to-be-seen (but theoretically predictable). Suffice it to say, mass-deployment was completely wrong policy on its face, while the massive coercion and deliberate violation of the informed consent rules was criminal.
Could we please stop all this newspeak about whether mRNA vaccines are ‘reallly’ vaccines? They fulfil the same function, and work a bit differently from previous vaccines. If it swims like a vaccine, moves like a vaccine, and quacks like a vaccine, it is a vaccine. If you have an argument to make, then make it – and stop trying to win by changing the terminology to make mRNA vaccines sound bad.
“They fulfil the same function”
Evidently they do no such thing – vaccines (allegedly) stop you getting the disease and therefore stop you spreading it, neither of which these so-called-vaccines do.
You could call it quackery!
There are only 2 vaccines that approach the ideal of sterilizing immunity – HPV and possibly measles. All the others (polio, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, smallpox, tetanus, Hep B, Hep A, Hib, Pertussis, Covid etc.) simply reduce your risks of becoming seriously ill.
Even though smallpox vax was not sterilising we still managed to eliminate this pathogen. The wonders of community action and common purpose.
I am guessing you aren’t a paediatrician.
“All the others (polio, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, smallpox, tetanus, Hep B, Hep A, Hib, Pertussis, Covid etc.) simply reduce your risks of becoming seriously ill.”
You’ve just lumped all the vaccines which most people understand as saving them from getting the disease, along with Covid for which it is only recently been admitted, is not as effective as it was promised to be! So the Covid vaccine looks like all the others which, you say now, simply reduce your risks.
This is rewriting history to fit the new narrative.
And no, I’m not a paediatrician, but neither do you have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows!
“This is rewriting history to fit the new narrative.”
Errr, No. History tells us and biology in general tells us that the chances of getting a 100% result (in this case sterilising immunity) with any human intervention against a disease, are vanishingly small.
The puposes of a vaccine are to give your natural immune system a boot up the backside and most importantly to prime it with memory cells (that you would otherwise not have) so that if you do meet the pathogen in question in the future, your natural immune system reacts faster and more effectively than it would otherwise do so.
You are looking for certainty. There is none when dealing with biological systems. They are too complex.
“You are looking for certainty.”
Errr, No! I am merely pointing out that for all of my 3 score years and 10, the medical industry has told us that vaccines stop disease, you however, seem to have specialist knowledge and have always known that vaccines, “simply reduce your risks of becoming seriously ill.”
My point stands; history is being re-written to justify calling the Covid so-called-vaccine, a vaccine, because it patently does not do what we lesser mortals were led to believe vaccines would.
Fauci himself started off saying the Covid vaccine would stop it dead and then later said it was only ever maybe going to lessen the severity of the symptoms!
This is what I mean about re-writing history. Or in other words, changing your story.
“You are looking for certainty.”
Errr, No! I am merely pointing out that for all of my 3 score years and 10, the medical industry has told us that vaccines stop disease, you however, seem to have specialist knowledge and have always known that vaccines, “simply reduce your risks of becoming seriously ill.”
My point stands; history is being re-written to justify calling the Covid so-called-vaccine, a vaccine, because it patently does not do what we lesser mortals were led to believe vaccines would.
Fauci himself started off saying the Covid vaccine would stop it dead and then later said it was only ever maybe going to lessen the severity of the symptoms!
This is what I mean about re-writing history. Or in other words, changing your story.
“This is rewriting history to fit the new narrative.”
Errr, No. History tells us and biology in general tells us that the chances of getting a 100% result (in this case sterilising immunity) with any human intervention against a disease, are vanishingly small.
The puposes of a vaccine are to give your natural immune system a boot up the backside and most importantly to prime it with memory cells (that you would otherwise not have) so that if you do meet the pathogen in question in the future, your natural immune system reacts faster and more effectively than it would otherwise do so.
You are looking for certainty. There is none when dealing with biological systems. They are too complex.
My replies don’t seem to have the usual up/down ticks or reply options!
All fine now.
All fine now.
“All the others (polio, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, smallpox, tetanus, Hep B, Hep A, Hib, Pertussis, Covid etc.) simply reduce your risks of becoming seriously ill.”
You’ve just lumped all the vaccines which most people understand as saving them from getting the disease, along with Covid for which it is only recently been admitted, is not as effective as it was promised to be! So the Covid vaccine looks like all the others which, you say now, simply reduce your risks.
This is rewriting history to fit the new narrative.
And no, I’m not a paediatrician, but neither do you have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows!
My replies don’t seem to have the usual up/down ticks or reply options!
There are only 2 vaccines that approach the ideal of sterilizing immunity – HPV and possibly measles. All the others (polio, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, smallpox, tetanus, Hep B, Hep A, Hib, Pertussis, Covid etc.) simply reduce your risks of becoming seriously ill.
Even though smallpox vax was not sterilising we still managed to eliminate this pathogen. The wonders of community action and common purpose.
I am guessing you aren’t a paediatrician.
It does not swim like a vaccine, move like a vaccine or quack like a vaccine. Quickly and forcefully changing the definition of words has been another casualty this trickery
Rasmus Fogh said: “If it swims like a vaccine, moves like a vaccine, and quacks like a vaccine, it is a vaccine”
However the lipid packaged mRNA inoculants don’t. The newspeak is calling them vaccines. A vaccine is itself the antigen array (usually presenting many facets of the target pathogen). The best you can say is that these inoculants stimulate host cells the production of a single target antigen.
The method of antigen stimulation is fraught with hazards for the host and the choice of antigen bizarre given its high toxicity. And being a single point of antigenic recognition pretty much guaranteed rapid obsolescence under the best case assumptions.
Not so much a vaccine as a gene “therapy”.
“They fulfil the same function”
Evidently they do no such thing – vaccines (allegedly) stop you getting the disease and therefore stop you spreading it, neither of which these so-called-vaccines do.
You could call it quackery!
It does not swim like a vaccine, move like a vaccine or quack like a vaccine. Quickly and forcefully changing the definition of words has been another casualty this trickery
Rasmus Fogh said: “If it swims like a vaccine, moves like a vaccine, and quacks like a vaccine, it is a vaccine”
However the lipid packaged mRNA inoculants don’t. The newspeak is calling them vaccines. A vaccine is itself the antigen array (usually presenting many facets of the target pathogen). The best you can say is that these inoculants stimulate host cells the production of a single target antigen.
The method of antigen stimulation is fraught with hazards for the host and the choice of antigen bizarre given its high toxicity. And being a single point of antigenic recognition pretty much guaranteed rapid obsolescence under the best case assumptions.
Not so much a vaccine as a gene “therapy”.
Could we please stop all this newspeak about whether mRNA vaccines are ‘reallly’ vaccines? They fulfil the same function, and work a bit differently from previous vaccines. If it swims like a vaccine, moves like a vaccine, and quacks like a vaccine, it is a vaccine. If you have an argument to make, then make it – and stop trying to win by changing the terminology to make mRNA vaccines sound bad.
There is definitely a case to answer regarding the SARS-CoV-2 gene-therapy prophylactics. They are not vaccines. At best, you could describe them as vaccine precursors since they require patient cells to manufacture the actual antigen. They all have problems in common, but the lipid-packaged mRNAs (eg. Pfizer and Moderna) have even more problems than the now discontinued adenovirus packaged DNAs (eg. AstraZeneca). The problems were amplified by the insane policy of population-wide deployment and the inexplicable omission of aspiration from the injection protocol.
1) Choice of antigen – the highly toxic spike protein.
2) Leakage of the inoculant out of the deltoid muscle into the bloodstream.
3) The narrow specificity of the antigen, making immune-escape inevitable – especially in a mass-inoculation (rather vulnerable only targeting) context.
4) By design, the inoculant compromises the patient’s own cells to manufacture the antigen, causing tissue damage as the cells get marked for destruction. This makes the leakage issue particularly worrying, and the missing aspiration protocol grossly negligent.
5) The mRNAs persist for many weeks due to the use of modified bases which resist the normal RNA recycling processes.
6) There is mounting evidence that the mRNAs ramp up immune-damping systems such as IgG4 – boosters actually reducing Covid-19 immunity and look for compromised natural suppression of cancers..
I have not exhausted all the problems, both seen and yet-to-be-seen (but theoretically predictable). Suffice it to say, mass-deployment was completely wrong policy on its face, while the massive coercion and deliberate violation of the informed consent rules was criminal.
Oh. Thank you Unherd for allowing such an article on your site. We need to see what dribble is being bandied about.
Oh. Thank you Unherd for allowing such an article on your site. We need to see what dribble is being bandied about.
This article affirms a few things I have known for a long time…
Experts are no more moral than the rest of us. They are driven by greed, pride and a desire for status as much as any other group.They can use asymmetrical knowledge and specialized terminology to cover up their mistakes, corruption or to protect their earningsGroups of experts can be intellectually lazy, prone to group think, and will try to protect their own credibility by covering for other members.
Yes, this is true but not in the way you are thinking. It’s actually the “experts” who are unwilling to learn the latest science and blindly continue to think that injecting kids with this many immune-modulating drugs will not negatively impact their brains.
Vaccine-induced autism is real. Deer helped cover up one of the mechanisms (“viral infective”) but there are five other known phenotypes of autism—all of which can be induced by vaccines.
Although there are many triggers for autism, they all act through a common mechanism, namely, microglial activation (that won’t turn off once activated). Another term for this is neuroinflammation.
Here are the main phenotypes that have been identified thus far.
1. Intoxication: Al, Hg, Pb and other metals cause microglial activation as they travel to and settle in the brain.
2. Bacterial infections: “inflammation of intestinal mucosa, leads to the introduction of bacterial components, including neurotoxins, into the bloodstream, creating oxidative stress as well as microvascularities, especially affecting meningeal vessels, and finally neuronal damage.” — Luc Montagnier, 2008 Nobel Prize Winner for discovering HIV
3. Viral infections: Injecting live viruses causes some portion to settle in the brain and stomach. They excrete nagalese thereby reducing the child’s native production of GcMAF and inflammation never reduces. About 15% of autistics are chronically infected with the live viruses that were injected into them (primarily MMR).
For both viral and bacterial infections, see:
https://www.mcleanhospital.org/news/mclean-hospital-neuroscientists-find-immune-system-newborns-may-affect-developing-brain
4. Allergic: Al that isn’t being fully excreted causes IL-33 and IgE production; helminth therapy sometimes helps with this phenotype.
See:http://web.archive.org/web/20061004113852/http://www.autismmedical.com/thescience/?selected_menu=3
But an Ig4 response to casein proteins also sensitizes the child:
Food based dietary patterns and chronic disease preventionhttps://www.bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k2396/rr
5. Mitochondrial: This is what got Hannah Poling (mitochondrial damage likely occurred from an earlier shot containing Hg). The mitochondria provide energy to our cells, and are necessary for the Kreb’s cycle, fatty acid oxidation, metabolism of amino acids, and oxidative phosphorylation.
Developmental regression and mitochondrial dysfunction in a child with autism. J Child Neurol, 2006, Poling et al
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16566887
“Young children who have dysfunctional cellular energy metabolism therefore might be more prone to undergo autistic regression between 18 and 30 months of age if they also have infections or immunizations at the same time. Although patterns of regression can be genetically and prenatally determined, it is possible that underlying mitochondrial dysfunction can either exacerbate or affect the severity of regression. Abnormalities of oxidative phosphorylation can be developmental and age related and can normalize with time.”
6. Autoimmune: One study found that mothers with autoimmune disorders (such as celiac disease, type 1 diabetes, or rheumatoid arthritis) are three times more likely to have autistic kids; other studies uniformly show elevated risk. Vaccinations in children, which cause an autoimmune response, create the same problem. One possible source of the attack is molecular mimicry of the measles hemagglutinin but there are other proposed mechanisms.
As you can see, there are many ways to damage an infant’s brain through these drugs.
That is an unsubstantiated claim. The available evidence does not support it. Indeed there is no consensus whatsoever, on what *does* cause autism, just a lot of contested theories. Your claim can be refuted with the standard rejoinder of the atheists: “what is claimed without evidence can be rejected without evidence”.
I’ve given already lots of evidence for gut dysbiosis-induced autism and more is arriving daily. Why do you think Fecal Transfer Therapy works?
If you want an in-depth review of the papers for how aluminum causes autism, get yourself of a coffee and read this site:
vaccinepapers.org
Or read “How to End the Autism Epidemic.”
But you are right it is not common knowledge yet. It will be.
I’ve given already lots of evidence for gut dysbiosis-induced autism and more is arriving daily. Why do you think Fecal Transfer Therapy works?
If you want an in-depth review of the papers for how aluminum causes autism, get yourself of a coffee and read this site:
vaccinepapers.org
Or read “How to End the Autism Epidemic.”
But you are right it is not common knowledge yet. It will be.
That is an unsubstantiated claim. The available evidence does not support it. Indeed there is no consensus whatsoever, on what *does* cause autism, just a lot of contested theories. Your claim can be refuted with the standard rejoinder of the atheists: “what is claimed without evidence can be rejected without evidence”.
That is true. But the same could be said about sceptics.
Yes, this is true but not in the way you are thinking. It’s actually the “experts” who are unwilling to learn the latest science and blindly continue to think that injecting kids with this many immune-modulating drugs will not negatively impact their brains.
Vaccine-induced autism is real. Deer helped cover up one of the mechanisms (“viral infective”) but there are five other known phenotypes of autism—all of which can be induced by vaccines.
Although there are many triggers for autism, they all act through a common mechanism, namely, microglial activation (that won’t turn off once activated). Another term for this is neuroinflammation.
Here are the main phenotypes that have been identified thus far.
1. Intoxication: Al, Hg, Pb and other metals cause microglial activation as they travel to and settle in the brain.
2. Bacterial infections: “inflammation of intestinal mucosa, leads to the introduction of bacterial components, including neurotoxins, into the bloodstream, creating oxidative stress as well as microvascularities, especially affecting meningeal vessels, and finally neuronal damage.” — Luc Montagnier, 2008 Nobel Prize Winner for discovering HIV
3. Viral infections: Injecting live viruses causes some portion to settle in the brain and stomach. They excrete nagalese thereby reducing the child’s native production of GcMAF and inflammation never reduces. About 15% of autistics are chronically infected with the live viruses that were injected into them (primarily MMR).
For both viral and bacterial infections, see:
https://www.mcleanhospital.org/news/mclean-hospital-neuroscientists-find-immune-system-newborns-may-affect-developing-brain
4. Allergic: Al that isn’t being fully excreted causes IL-33 and IgE production; helminth therapy sometimes helps with this phenotype.
See:http://web.archive.org/web/20061004113852/http://www.autismmedical.com/thescience/?selected_menu=3
But an Ig4 response to casein proteins also sensitizes the child:
Food based dietary patterns and chronic disease preventionhttps://www.bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k2396/rr
5. Mitochondrial: This is what got Hannah Poling (mitochondrial damage likely occurred from an earlier shot containing Hg). The mitochondria provide energy to our cells, and are necessary for the Kreb’s cycle, fatty acid oxidation, metabolism of amino acids, and oxidative phosphorylation.
Developmental regression and mitochondrial dysfunction in a child with autism. J Child Neurol, 2006, Poling et al
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16566887
“Young children who have dysfunctional cellular energy metabolism therefore might be more prone to undergo autistic regression between 18 and 30 months of age if they also have infections or immunizations at the same time. Although patterns of regression can be genetically and prenatally determined, it is possible that underlying mitochondrial dysfunction can either exacerbate or affect the severity of regression. Abnormalities of oxidative phosphorylation can be developmental and age related and can normalize with time.”
6. Autoimmune: One study found that mothers with autoimmune disorders (such as celiac disease, type 1 diabetes, or rheumatoid arthritis) are three times more likely to have autistic kids; other studies uniformly show elevated risk. Vaccinations in children, which cause an autoimmune response, create the same problem. One possible source of the attack is molecular mimicry of the measles hemagglutinin but there are other proposed mechanisms.
As you can see, there are many ways to damage an infant’s brain through these drugs.
That is true. But the same could be said about sceptics.
This article affirms a few things I have known for a long time…
Experts are no more moral than the rest of us. They are driven by greed, pride and a desire for status as much as any other group.They can use asymmetrical knowledge and specialized terminology to cover up their mistakes, corruption or to protect their earningsGroups of experts can be intellectually lazy, prone to group think, and will try to protect their own credibility by covering for other members.
Reminds me of that odious and tedious little patronising gnome of Covid ” Malter” Whitty, who polluted the airwaves with his covid propoganda.
Reminds me of that odious and tedious little patronising gnome of Covid ” Malter” Whitty, who polluted the airwaves with his covid propoganda.
Whatever the merit or otherwise of denouncing Wakefield’s heresy it has very little to do with the covid ‘vaccines’.
The response to the appearance of covid was panic and confusion. Governments wanted a fix- and fast. They gave financial immunity to the pharmas for whatever ‘vaccine’ they could come up with. Years of research and testing were compressed into months. Long term side effects could not be spotted or foreseen.
It’s the cowardice of the governments and administrators that’s responsible for the damages in health and in economic life. Had they supported the careful and logical Great Barrington approach lives ,money, immune systems would have been saved.
But no. They gave in – almost all of them – to the hysteria of the media and social networks.
Perhaps we will be lucky and no unknown unknowns will leak out. But next time…?
Whatever the merit or otherwise of denouncing Wakefield’s heresy it has very little to do with the covid ‘vaccines’.
The response to the appearance of covid was panic and confusion. Governments wanted a fix- and fast. They gave financial immunity to the pharmas for whatever ‘vaccine’ they could come up with. Years of research and testing were compressed into months. Long term side effects could not be spotted or foreseen.
It’s the cowardice of the governments and administrators that’s responsible for the damages in health and in economic life. Had they supported the careful and logical Great Barrington approach lives ,money, immune systems would have been saved.
But no. They gave in – almost all of them – to the hysteria of the media and social networks.
Perhaps we will be lucky and no unknown unknowns will leak out. But next time…?
This is a hit piece because it insinuates compromise in one aspect of an argument leads to conclusion in another. Classic guilt by association. I don’t support or deny the validity of Wakefield’s work. There are countless examples of compromised studies. If funding of a study was the sole measure of its validity, we would have no studies as most all are pharma backed, even at university level. And in the States, NIH benefits from pharma patents as well as donations. I support challenging any study for the right reasons, ie data and conclusion integrity.
It is widely known that to a greater or lesser extent, vaccines induce brain inflammation. How long this lasts and whether it injures the very old and very young is as yet unknown. But it bears investigation as we are now 1:40 with autism since amping the newborn schedule to 8+ mostly unnecessary jabs. Historically autism was 1:10,000 in prior decades with a less aggressive schedule. Increased autism diagnostic tools do not account for all of this.
Medicine can be like religion in that we burn the heretics and realize decades later that they had good reason to question doctrine. Both deal in mortality which tends to compromise rational thought with emotional response. Often enough, it is the local doc who sees patient injury and feels compelled to act who is burned first. Those most complicit generally tend to be the most aggressive in pillorying the heretics.
The covid vaccines are more and more appearing to be a massive failure and fraud in the trials is coming out. Some childhood vaccines have been historically responsible for injury and we don’t know the long term effects of barraging newborns with jabs. It is not a matter of believing in vaccines or not. It is a matter of questioning the claims and admitting failure when those claims appear unfounded.
“It is widely known that to a greater or lesser extent, vaccines induce brain inflammation.”
I am glad to see this opinion expressed. My 33 year old son just took his own life in July and he was up to date on vaccines, including Covid. He was a brilliant, successful, lively and slightly quirky individual who began to appear as if he had dementia rather than quirks. He was put on every medication imaginable without bloodwork or an MRI. He was in California where they are proposing assisted suicide. Kaiser Permanente was neglectful and now they, and the State of California, are free of the cost of his treatment.
There are medical abstracts documenting the incidences of death from autoimmune vaccine encephalitis after the Covid vaccines. Look it up.
Sorry for your heartbreaking loss.
I’m so sorry, Gayle.
As you point out, vaccines cause brain inflammation temporarily in all people (inflammation is the whole point of vaccines, after all) and for some brains the inflammation never subsides because lasting damage was caused. In addition, the aluminum nanoparticles from childhood vaccines migrate from the injection site creating a ready toxic load to arrive at and damage the brain upon subsequent immune activations (via the MCP-1 trigger). (See: Biopersistence and Brain Translocation of Aluminum Adjuvants of Vaccines, Gherardi, 2015).
I know this doesn’t bring your son back but please know that many of us are working hard to end this vaccine carnage.
I’m very sorry for your loss Gayle. I had a child severely impacted neurologically after her MMR vaccine.
^^^ This is such a huge and common problem, especially in California, that I’m at a loss as to potential reasons it is still allowed to continue. They have now largely gone back to prescribing antibiotics after a 5 minute “Tele-Doc” visit via an app/video call. 🙁 In the case of California, it might just be their constantly overwhelmed “health care” systems: huge population, increased costs of care (largely related to both state and federal regulations), shrinking pool of healthcare workers to handle the load.
Sorry for your heartbreaking loss.
I’m so sorry, Gayle.
As you point out, vaccines cause brain inflammation temporarily in all people (inflammation is the whole point of vaccines, after all) and for some brains the inflammation never subsides because lasting damage was caused. In addition, the aluminum nanoparticles from childhood vaccines migrate from the injection site creating a ready toxic load to arrive at and damage the brain upon subsequent immune activations (via the MCP-1 trigger). (See: Biopersistence and Brain Translocation of Aluminum Adjuvants of Vaccines, Gherardi, 2015).
I know this doesn’t bring your son back but please know that many of us are working hard to end this vaccine carnage.
I’m very sorry for your loss Gayle. I had a child severely impacted neurologically after her MMR vaccine.
^^^ This is such a huge and common problem, especially in California, that I’m at a loss as to potential reasons it is still allowed to continue. They have now largely gone back to prescribing antibiotics after a 5 minute “Tele-Doc” visit via an app/video call. 🙁 In the case of California, it might just be their constantly overwhelmed “health care” systems: huge population, increased costs of care (largely related to both state and federal regulations), shrinking pool of healthcare workers to handle the load.
“It is widely known that to a greater or lesser extent, vaccines induce brain inflammation.”
I am glad to see this opinion expressed. My 33 year old son just took his own life in July and he was up to date on vaccines, including Covid. He was a brilliant, successful, lively and slightly quirky individual who began to appear as if he had dementia rather than quirks. He was put on every medication imaginable without bloodwork or an MRI. He was in California where they are proposing assisted suicide. Kaiser Permanente was neglectful and now they, and the State of California, are free of the cost of his treatment.
There are medical abstracts documenting the incidences of death from autoimmune vaccine encephalitis after the Covid vaccines. Look it up.
This is a hit piece because it insinuates compromise in one aspect of an argument leads to conclusion in another. Classic guilt by association. I don’t support or deny the validity of Wakefield’s work. There are countless examples of compromised studies. If funding of a study was the sole measure of its validity, we would have no studies as most all are pharma backed, even at university level. And in the States, NIH benefits from pharma patents as well as donations. I support challenging any study for the right reasons, ie data and conclusion integrity.
It is widely known that to a greater or lesser extent, vaccines induce brain inflammation. How long this lasts and whether it injures the very old and very young is as yet unknown. But it bears investigation as we are now 1:40 with autism since amping the newborn schedule to 8+ mostly unnecessary jabs. Historically autism was 1:10,000 in prior decades with a less aggressive schedule. Increased autism diagnostic tools do not account for all of this.
Medicine can be like religion in that we burn the heretics and realize decades later that they had good reason to question doctrine. Both deal in mortality which tends to compromise rational thought with emotional response. Often enough, it is the local doc who sees patient injury and feels compelled to act who is burned first. Those most complicit generally tend to be the most aggressive in pillorying the heretics.
The covid vaccines are more and more appearing to be a massive failure and fraud in the trials is coming out. Some childhood vaccines have been historically responsible for injury and we don’t know the long term effects of barraging newborns with jabs. It is not a matter of believing in vaccines or not. It is a matter of questioning the claims and admitting failure when those claims appear unfounded.
During the 2nd half of last week I had a cold and felt slightly under the weather. Now I have recovered and my immune system is stronger. This is as it should be.
During the 2nd half of last week I had a cold and felt slightly under the weather. Now I have recovered and my immune system is stronger. This is as it should be.
Odd timing for this article with pharma being found out time and time again. I note also he does not take on any of the many doctors and experts who have ripped the covid scam apart. Yes indeed. How do we know what goes on behind closed doors? Independent experts, doctors, media, citizens and politicians. I note also the British Medical Journal he sights as a trusted authority is far from happy with the covid response. His argument seems to be if Wakefield was a fraud, then nobody else in the vaxination field can be. Not a strong position.
Odd timing for this article with pharma being found out time and time again. I note also he does not take on any of the many doctors and experts who have ripped the covid scam apart. Yes indeed. How do we know what goes on behind closed doors? Independent experts, doctors, media, citizens and politicians. I note also the British Medical Journal he sights as a trusted authority is far from happy with the covid response. His argument seems to be if Wakefield was a fraud, then nobody else in the vaxination field can be. Not a strong position.
“The man who launched the vaccine wars.”
I think you’ll find the debate has been going on for over a hundred years at least. The correlation between the introduction of vaccines and the improvement of hygiene, diet and water quality is too obvious to ignore. It’s only an assumption that vaccines cured disease.
The mistake with this Wakefield obsession is in taking one example of a vaccine questioner and assuming, because he appears to have been discredited, that any suggestion of possible damage done by vaccination is therefore discredited. Huge resources were employed to create this strawman argument and it acts as an effective distraction from all the countless other vaccine questioners – which of course is the whole purpose.
My parents in the late 40s saw no benefit in vaccines over a healthy life style – they were also not willing to take the risk of their children being brain damaged from those vaccines.
Wakefield only reported what parents were telling him. Parents had been fighting the so-called vaccine wars for decades. Look at Barbara Loe Fisher in the early 80s and her amazing legacy. Wakefield is being punished for listening to and taking seriously ‘hysterical’ mothers. It’s gaslighting. A witch hunt. Mysogyny.
“It’s gaslighting. A witch hunt. Mysogyny”
Exactly! And the gaslighting continues with one statement in these comments saying that no vaccine was ever expected to prevent disease but merely to lessen the symptoms!!!
This is re-writing history to fit with the failure of Covid gene therapy.
One irony I see in this debate is that those who see no danger in vaccines tend to have a narrow, technical and logical view which is often associated with autistic people!
We need this balanced with a more right-brain approach which sees the bigger picture illuminated by common sense and intuition.
‘Hysteria’ if it even exists, sounds like a healthy reaction to dangerous nonsense.
“It’s gaslighting. A witch hunt. Mysogyny”
Exactly! And the gaslighting continues with one statement in these comments saying that no vaccine was ever expected to prevent disease but merely to lessen the symptoms!!!
This is re-writing history to fit with the failure of Covid gene therapy.
One irony I see in this debate is that those who see no danger in vaccines tend to have a narrow, technical and logical view which is often associated with autistic people!
We need this balanced with a more right-brain approach which sees the bigger picture illuminated by common sense and intuition.
‘Hysteria’ if it even exists, sounds like a healthy reaction to dangerous nonsense.
Wakefield only reported what parents were telling him. Parents had been fighting the so-called vaccine wars for decades. Look at Barbara Loe Fisher in the early 80s and her amazing legacy. Wakefield is being punished for listening to and taking seriously ‘hysterical’ mothers. It’s gaslighting. A witch hunt. Mysogyny.
“The man who launched the vaccine wars.”
I think you’ll find the debate has been going on for over a hundred years at least. The correlation between the introduction of vaccines and the improvement of hygiene, diet and water quality is too obvious to ignore. It’s only an assumption that vaccines cured disease.
The mistake with this Wakefield obsession is in taking one example of a vaccine questioner and assuming, because he appears to have been discredited, that any suggestion of possible damage done by vaccination is therefore discredited. Huge resources were employed to create this strawman argument and it acts as an effective distraction from all the countless other vaccine questioners – which of course is the whole purpose.
My parents in the late 40s saw no benefit in vaccines over a healthy life style – they were also not willing to take the risk of their children being brain damaged from those vaccines.
An excellent article. Now while ‘science’ was rightly criticised the dirty secret is that almost all fields of human endeavour are less ‘certain’ than we collectively choose to trust.
And generally speaking we have to accept the assurances of experts to get through the day without nervous collapse. But ask yourself why there are so many religions, or why there are so many ineffective economists, or why the first aid treatment for burns has changed over the years, or why philosophers don’t converge on ‘one true philosophy’, or conflicting ‘diet’ recommendations, or why politicians are so changeable.
Almost as bad as disbelieving everything and vanishing down the conspiracy theory hole.
A really bad article – published at a time which makes it’s cause Very suspect.
Obviously this is to attack mRNA ‘hesitancy’ and nothing to do with the mmr vaccine
Garbage. The article is quite specifically and only about the MMR vaccine. A lot of anti-Covid vaccine types seem to have been triggered by this – but this tells us more about their hyper-sensitivity to criticism and challenge than anything else.
Why would Mr Deer be dredging up this old story again at this time unless it was to try to conflate this episode with the current justified reservations about the new mRNA vaccines. If you want to educate yourself on the issues around why many of us are reluctant to participate in the jabs (not least the total capture of health regulatory bodies by Big Pharma), have a read of the book ‘Vaccination Policy and the UK Government: The Untold Truth’, or you might want to try Wakefield’s book, ‘Callous Disregard’.
Yes, those books are highly recommended but to understand how the pharmaceutical industry is hiding vaccine-induced autism, please read, “Turtles All the Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth.”
The authors dissect several key studies currently being used to say there is no signal of autism after vaccination.
In reality, as often is the case, these studies were performed to cover up the truth, not to elucidate it. Pay special attention to the conflicts of interest the Turtles authors describe. The CDC and likely the FDA know very well that by admitting that these drugs are damaging children’s brains, the entire vaccine edifice will collapse. And there may be indictments for covering it up.
I’m guessing all of them simply want to reach retirement as quickly as possible and pass the buck to the next group of federal employees.
Completely agree especially with your last point. I suspect this is why the FDA asked the judge at first, for 50 years time to release all of their mRNA therapy/Pfizer data (even though they are expected to routinely collect and scrub this for FOIA requests as they perform drug trials of any kind), and then probably went back and did the math on average lifetimes, rates of conviction, culpability, etc, and asked for 75 years from the judge. 😀
Yes, 50 years will let most of them retire but 75 will for sure!
Yes, 50 years will let most of them retire but 75 will for sure!
Completely agree especially with your last point. I suspect this is why the FDA asked the judge at first, for 50 years time to release all of their mRNA therapy/Pfizer data (even though they are expected to routinely collect and scrub this for FOIA requests as they perform drug trials of any kind), and then probably went back and did the math on average lifetimes, rates of conviction, culpability, etc, and asked for 75 years from the judge. 😀
Yes, those books are highly recommended but to understand how the pharmaceutical industry is hiding vaccine-induced autism, please read, “Turtles All the Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth.”
The authors dissect several key studies currently being used to say there is no signal of autism after vaccination.
In reality, as often is the case, these studies were performed to cover up the truth, not to elucidate it. Pay special attention to the conflicts of interest the Turtles authors describe. The CDC and likely the FDA know very well that by admitting that these drugs are damaging children’s brains, the entire vaccine edifice will collapse. And there may be indictments for covering it up.
I’m guessing all of them simply want to reach retirement as quickly as possible and pass the buck to the next group of federal employees.
Why would Mr Deer be dredging up this old story again at this time unless it was to try to conflate this episode with the current justified reservations about the new mRNA vaccines. If you want to educate yourself on the issues around why many of us are reluctant to participate in the jabs (not least the total capture of health regulatory bodies by Big Pharma), have a read of the book ‘Vaccination Policy and the UK Government: The Untold Truth’, or you might want to try Wakefield’s book, ‘Callous Disregard’.
Garbage. The article is quite specifically and only about the MMR vaccine. A lot of anti-Covid vaccine types seem to have been triggered by this – but this tells us more about their hyper-sensitivity to criticism and challenge than anything else.
A really bad article – published at a time which makes it’s cause Very suspect.
Obviously this is to attack mRNA ‘hesitancy’ and nothing to do with the mmr vaccine
An excellent article. Now while ‘science’ was rightly criticised the dirty secret is that almost all fields of human endeavour are less ‘certain’ than we collectively choose to trust.
And generally speaking we have to accept the assurances of experts to get through the day without nervous collapse. But ask yourself why there are so many religions, or why there are so many ineffective economists, or why the first aid treatment for burns has changed over the years, or why philosophers don’t converge on ‘one true philosophy’, or conflicting ‘diet’ recommendations, or why politicians are so changeable.
Almost as bad as disbelieving everything and vanishing down the conspiracy theory hole.
“The Medical Establishment”? That says it all. Oh, deer, deer!
No, it doesn’t say it all. Personal smears such as yours do, however, say a good deal. The establishment to which the author refers is real, and able to be witnessed at close quarters by anyone involved in the NHS (for instance) as i was for over three decades.
For the most part, doctors are doing great work (my daughter is a Paediatrician) but there’s an unwritten and often unspoken code of conduct amongst the senior ranks that exists to cover each other’s backs.
If you are a doctor, you will surely know that very well indeed.
ALL ‘gangs’ cover up for each other, even God’s anointed in the Vatican, so nothing new there.
Perhaps genetics/ eugenics will eliminate it.
ALL ‘gangs’ cover up for each other, even God’s anointed in the Vatican, so nothing new there.
Perhaps genetics/ eugenics will eliminate it.
No, it doesn’t say it all. Personal smears such as yours do, however, say a good deal. The establishment to which the author refers is real, and able to be witnessed at close quarters by anyone involved in the NHS (for instance) as i was for over three decades.
For the most part, doctors are doing great work (my daughter is a Paediatrician) but there’s an unwritten and often unspoken code of conduct amongst the senior ranks that exists to cover each other’s backs.
If you are a doctor, you will surely know that very well indeed.
“The Medical Establishment”? That says it all. Oh, deer, deer!
The lesson clearly learnt by the manufacturers of Covid vaccines was that they needed to get on the media onside for as long as it took to get their money into offshore back accounts.
The lesson clearly learnt by the manufacturers of Covid vaccines was that they needed to get on the media onside for as long as it took to get their money into offshore back accounts.
I’m surprised and disappointed that UnHerd would publish anything written by this charlatan. What were you thinking? The war on Wakefield is scapegoating and misdirection; and contributed to the conditions that allowed Covid and its devastating global response to happen.
Quite the opposite reaction from me. We need to see nonsense to understand. I knew nothing of this journalist or his fixation with Wakefield. Now I do.
That’s a reassuring response; thank you.
Thus far my comments have not been deleted and for this I am grateful to UnHerd.
There is no other major outlet that has let me provide rebuttals to Deer. My comments are always deleted. No wonder we are getting nowhere with autism rates. The primary cause of them can’t be discussed.
There are two other outlets (that may not be considered major) not deleting my comments: Twitter after the Musk acquisition and Substack articles.
But everywhere else any factual comment by me is immediately deleted, whether it’s the BBC or Newsweek. It doesn’t matter how many citations to the scientific literature I provide; questioning the link between early infant brain damage (i.e. autism) and early infant immune-system modulation (i.e. vaccination) shall not be permitted in public fora.
That’s a reassuring response; thank you.
Thus far my comments have not been deleted and for this I am grateful to UnHerd.
There is no other major outlet that has let me provide rebuttals to Deer. My comments are always deleted. No wonder we are getting nowhere with autism rates. The primary cause of them can’t be discussed.
There are two other outlets (that may not be considered major) not deleting my comments: Twitter after the Musk acquisition and Substack articles.
But everywhere else any factual comment by me is immediately deleted, whether it’s the BBC or Newsweek. It doesn’t matter how many citations to the scientific literature I provide; questioning the link between early infant brain damage (i.e. autism) and early infant immune-system modulation (i.e. vaccination) shall not be permitted in public fora.
Quite the opposite reaction from me. We need to see nonsense to understand. I knew nothing of this journalist or his fixation with Wakefield. Now I do.
I’m surprised and disappointed that UnHerd would publish anything written by this charlatan. What were you thinking? The war on Wakefield is scapegoating and misdirection; and contributed to the conditions that allowed Covid and its devastating global response to happen.
How encouraging for those with limited knowledge of the machinations of the medical world.
Particularly as we hear of a new super Chinese/Cambodian Avian Flu, which seems to have a human mortality rate of 50%.
When the fabled Black Death* (14th century) really got moving, Pope Clement VI had to declare the River Rhône ‘consecrated ground’ to aid the disposal of corpses. I trust ‘we’ have also made suitable provision, the River Wye might be an obvious candidate in view of the UnHerd essay earlier this week!
(* Chop rate now thought to be about 50%.)
How encouraging for those with limited knowledge of the machinations of the medical world.
Particularly as we hear of a new super Chinese/Cambodian Avian Flu, which seems to have a human mortality rate of 50%.
When the fabled Black Death* (14th century) really got moving, Pope Clement VI had to declare the River Rhône ‘consecrated ground’ to aid the disposal of corpses. I trust ‘we’ have also made suitable provision, the River Wye might be an obvious candidate in view of the UnHerd essay earlier this week!
(* Chop rate now thought to be about 50%.)
Not all vaccine technologies are equal, and the immune system is vastly more complex and subtle than the popular (and easily measured) “antigen provokes anti-bodies” caricature.
Weakened (but otherwise viable) pathogens seem to produce the best, most lasting and generally beneficial immune response.
By contrast, there is mounting evidence that dead pathogen (and other non reproduction capable vaccines) are not just inferior, but actually counterproductively compromise the generality and flexibility of the immune system to deal with novel pathogens and variants of old ones.
I would go so far as to say that any vaccine that requires adjuvants to work properly should be view with great suspicion as there is a high likelihood that the generality of the immune system will be compromised. So while the MMR-autism link is (at best) unproven, there are good reasons to believe that vaccines of this type may do more overall harm than good. Look for increased prevalence of immune deficiency and autoimmune disorders in those subjected to the excessive childhood vaccination regime.
I can’t help wondering whether the whole Wakefield-autism debacle was a psy-op to brand any questioning of the indiscriminate expansion of the childhood vaccination scheme, “anti-vax conspiracy theory”.
Please see my comment elsewhere here on how Deer worked with Medico-Legal Investigations (funded by the British Pharma industry) and how his work conveniently (and, unfortunately, successfully) covered up the Urabe strain scandal.
Please see my comment elsewhere here on how Deer worked with Medico-Legal Investigations (funded by the British Pharma industry) and how his work conveniently (and, unfortunately, successfully) covered up the Urabe strain scandal.
Not all vaccine technologies are equal, and the immune system is vastly more complex and subtle than the popular (and easily measured) “antigen provokes anti-bodies” caricature.
Weakened (but otherwise viable) pathogens seem to produce the best, most lasting and generally beneficial immune response.
By contrast, there is mounting evidence that dead pathogen (and other non reproduction capable vaccines) are not just inferior, but actually counterproductively compromise the generality and flexibility of the immune system to deal with novel pathogens and variants of old ones.
I would go so far as to say that any vaccine that requires adjuvants to work properly should be view with great suspicion as there is a high likelihood that the generality of the immune system will be compromised. So while the MMR-autism link is (at best) unproven, there are good reasons to believe that vaccines of this type may do more overall harm than good. Look for increased prevalence of immune deficiency and autoimmune disorders in those subjected to the excessive childhood vaccination regime.
I can’t help wondering whether the whole Wakefield-autism debacle was a psy-op to brand any questioning of the indiscriminate expansion of the childhood vaccination scheme, “anti-vax conspiracy theory”.
Am I reading the guardian again?
Am I reading the guardian again?
Regarding vaccines which now use aluminum as an adjuvant, this is an interesting development: there is not a single study to support the safety of aluminum adjuvants (which, as a neuro toxin, is a key culprit behind the autism epidemic). Another legal win for Attorney Aaran Siri, demanding greater transparency from big pharma:
https://icandecide.org/press-release/cdc-and-nih-unable-to-provide-a-single-study-to-support-the-safety-of-injecting-aluminum-adjuvants-despite-its-widespread-use-in-childhood-vaccines/
Yes, they were allowed to be continued to be used with no evidence for their safety “because they have been used for 70 years safely.” In reality, the medical establishment didn’t look for the harms of the Al adjuvants; that they are safe is a mirage and there is some evidence that insiders know this.
To understand how the Al nanoparticles migrate to the brain and cause the brain damage called “autism,” see either of these two resources:
“How to End the Autism Epidemic”, available at booksellers such as Amazon
which is based on the work of the author of VaccinePapers.org:
“Introduction to Al Adjuvant and Autism”, 20 pages, 97 references
https://vaccinepapers.org/review-paper-al-adjuvant-autism-20-pages-97-references/
Wakefield discovered the viral infective phenotype of autism; this is part of the toxic phenotype. There are four other phenotypes (mitochondrial, bacterial infective, allergic, autoimmune). See my comment elsewhere on this page that describes all 6 phenotypes.
Yes, they were allowed to be continued to be used with no evidence for their safety “because they have been used for 70 years safely.” In reality, the medical establishment didn’t look for the harms of the Al adjuvants; that they are safe is a mirage and there is some evidence that insiders know this.
To understand how the Al nanoparticles migrate to the brain and cause the brain damage called “autism,” see either of these two resources:
“How to End the Autism Epidemic”, available at booksellers such as Amazon
which is based on the work of the author of VaccinePapers.org:
“Introduction to Al Adjuvant and Autism”, 20 pages, 97 references
https://vaccinepapers.org/review-paper-al-adjuvant-autism-20-pages-97-references/
Wakefield discovered the viral infective phenotype of autism; this is part of the toxic phenotype. There are four other phenotypes (mitochondrial, bacterial infective, allergic, autoimmune). See my comment elsewhere on this page that describes all 6 phenotypes.
Regarding vaccines which now use aluminum as an adjuvant, this is an interesting development: there is not a single study to support the safety of aluminum adjuvants (which, as a neuro toxin, is a key culprit behind the autism epidemic). Another legal win for Attorney Aaran Siri, demanding greater transparency from big pharma:
https://icandecide.org/press-release/cdc-and-nih-unable-to-provide-a-single-study-to-support-the-safety-of-injecting-aluminum-adjuvants-despite-its-widespread-use-in-childhood-vaccines/
There is a correlation between the beginning of large scale childhood vaccinations in the 1960/70s and the astonishing rise in autism, ADHD and allergy diagnoses in children subsequently. Wakefield may have acted fraudulently or unethically in the case of MMR (could he have been encouraged, and then exposed, as a way of undermining any broader critique of vaccinations generally?)
The argument is made that it is the adjuvants (eg aluminium) in vaccines that are the cause of the problems and that these are often masked out in vaccine trials because both the vaccinated and the placebo control groups receive the adjuvant.
I encourage you to look at my other comments; Wakefield acted neither fraudulently nor unethically.
Metal intoxication is one phenotype for vaccine-induced autism; one of my comments outlines the five other known ones. (Note that autism is caused not only by vaccines; forgive me if you know that already.)
I encourage you to look at my other comments; Wakefield acted neither fraudulently nor unethically.
Metal intoxication is one phenotype for vaccine-induced autism; one of my comments outlines the five other known ones. (Note that autism is caused not only by vaccines; forgive me if you know that already.)
There is a correlation between the beginning of large scale childhood vaccinations in the 1960/70s and the astonishing rise in autism, ADHD and allergy diagnoses in children subsequently. Wakefield may have acted fraudulently or unethically in the case of MMR (could he have been encouraged, and then exposed, as a way of undermining any broader critique of vaccinations generally?)
The argument is made that it is the adjuvants (eg aluminium) in vaccines that are the cause of the problems and that these are often masked out in vaccine trials because both the vaccinated and the placebo control groups receive the adjuvant.
The irony is that the first wave of vaccine paranoia (about thimerosal) was mostly among progressives. Now, with the COVID ‘vaccines’ (I’m not sure exactly what the best term is, since they apparently don’t prevent infection, which I thought was what a ‘vaccine’ did – maybe ‘moderator’?) it has migrated to conservatives
The irony is that the first wave of vaccine paranoia (about thimerosal) was mostly among progressives. Now, with the COVID ‘vaccines’ (I’m not sure exactly what the best term is, since they apparently don’t prevent infection, which I thought was what a ‘vaccine’ did – maybe ‘moderator’?) it has migrated to conservatives
All this merely demonstrates is that ‘the truth’ (whatever that’s supposed to be be) will contribute to any number of perspectives, on any number of particular subjects, in any number of people.. Including those on the loony left and right. That is, those people of interest to journalists, and that go to make up much of those ‘important news items’.
What the truth, almost invariably, will not do however (if in fact it does anything more than momentarily ‘tickle your fancy’) is ‘set you free’ .. Rather, it could bind you to a point of view that might even end in your demise..
If you have a raging tooth-ache and you go to the dentist for an extraction, then statistically speaking, that anesthetic, or that novocaine shot, could cause your death.. The same goes for any anesthetic of course… … And if that did happen – particularly to someone who happened to be the flavour of the month (such as a minor royal ,for instance) then that would be newsworthy … Wouldn’t it? … And I’m guessing that there would be a element of ‘just how safe are these proceedures’ lurking about somewhere in that journalistic ‘truthful account’ of this incident.
But I won’t insult anyone here by suggesting there is in fact ‘something of major importance to us all in this’ and that (in the case of those anesthetics say) we should all go back to using the pliers and the hack-saw. But that is an idea that I could currently peddle in that market-place of fashionable ideas as some sort of ‘back to nature’ maneuver. (‘The environment! … ‘Climate Warming’ … ‘Save the Warthog!’). That would be ridiculous wouldn’t it? Almost like suggesting that to calm your noisy child down we should stick a coat-hanger up their eye-lids and scramble their frontal lobes – because it has actually been ‘proved’ to calm patients down (yet another one of those ‘truths’ then).. We could call it ‘lobotomizing’ – Sounds ‘scientific’ enough for me! … Oh! but wait a minute – wasn’t that was done in America (50,000 operations and counting) during the 20th century.
Sadly there seems to be no other way of moving forward. The kindest thing you can say about much of this is that (regrettably perhaps) whatever progress is made, some will be left behind. (Try Russia and their response to the industrtial revolution if you want an interesting example) So IMO those few who do not get their children vaccinated against those deadly infections and diseases that saw off so many of my generation (I was born in 1943) are playing Russian roulette .. Sadly the only down side of that for met, is that I can’t help wanting to run down to the local pub every time one of these clowns succumbs to one of these diseases, and buy a round of drinks.. And this gleeful reaction of mine bothers me far more than angsting over whether or not I should wear a mask when I visit my local supermarket etc.
All this merely demonstrates is that ‘the truth’ (whatever that’s supposed to be be) will contribute to any number of perspectives, on any number of particular subjects, in any number of people.. Including those on the loony left and right. That is, those people of interest to journalists, and that go to make up much of those ‘important news items’.
What the truth, almost invariably, will not do however (if in fact it does anything more than momentarily ‘tickle your fancy’) is ‘set you free’ .. Rather, it could bind you to a point of view that might even end in your demise..
If you have a raging tooth-ache and you go to the dentist for an extraction, then statistically speaking, that anesthetic, or that novocaine shot, could cause your death.. The same goes for any anesthetic of course… … And if that did happen – particularly to someone who happened to be the flavour of the month (such as a minor royal ,for instance) then that would be newsworthy … Wouldn’t it? … And I’m guessing that there would be a element of ‘just how safe are these proceedures’ lurking about somewhere in that journalistic ‘truthful account’ of this incident.
But I won’t insult anyone here by suggesting there is in fact ‘something of major importance to us all in this’ and that (in the case of those anesthetics say) we should all go back to using the pliers and the hack-saw. But that is an idea that I could currently peddle in that market-place of fashionable ideas as some sort of ‘back to nature’ maneuver. (‘The environment! … ‘Climate Warming’ … ‘Save the Warthog!’). That would be ridiculous wouldn’t it? Almost like suggesting that to calm your noisy child down we should stick a coat-hanger up their eye-lids and scramble their frontal lobes – because it has actually been ‘proved’ to calm patients down (yet another one of those ‘truths’ then).. We could call it ‘lobotomizing’ – Sounds ‘scientific’ enough for me! … Oh! but wait a minute – wasn’t that was done in America (50,000 operations and counting) during the 20th century.
Sadly there seems to be no other way of moving forward. The kindest thing you can say about much of this is that (regrettably perhaps) whatever progress is made, some will be left behind. (Try Russia and their response to the industrtial revolution if you want an interesting example) So IMO those few who do not get their children vaccinated against those deadly infections and diseases that saw off so many of my generation (I was born in 1943) are playing Russian roulette .. Sadly the only down side of that for met, is that I can’t help wanting to run down to the local pub every time one of these clowns succumbs to one of these diseases, and buy a round of drinks.. And this gleeful reaction of mine bothers me far more than angsting over whether or not I should wear a mask when I visit my local supermarket etc.
The article further underpins the importance of when reading about new scientific findings asking oneself – ‘have these findings been peer reviewed and by whom?’ This should always be the first question, regardless of the ‘tug’ of confirmatory bias we all prone to feel.
When done properly peer review helps build trust and can work as a ‘quality control’ mechanism. It’s fundamental to quality science.
One example – to get published in Nature (one of the world’s foremost scientific journals) the peer review process every submission is subjected to first is extensive. Nature’s credibility as the foremost scientific publication depends on it.
The problem is ‘peer review’ can delay conclusions. It takes time. Vested interests can want to publish now. So sometimes that’ll happen. We just all need to ask the question – is this conclusive until properly and thoroughly peer reviewed?
Peer review is a good first filter, but it is not enough. It will catch the most obvious howlers, but Wakefield’s paper was peer reviewed. Ultimately you do not believe it and act on it till there is some confirmation elsewhere and some widespread consensus around it.
Wakefield’s primary observation, that an elevated level of gut conditions were prevalent amongst autistic children, is still absolutely valid 20 years on.
That was the primary conclusion of the paper that was ultimately retracted and that paper did NOT, repeat did NOT, state that MMR was the cause. It alluded to the fact that it was a possibility and stated quite clearly that further research was necessary to test that hypothesis out.
The chinese whispers in the media the past 20 years has created a crowd of people who aren’t aware of that because they don’t bother to actually go and read the original paper.
The difficulties all arose due to the desire of certain lawyers to litigate against big pharma in court, using Wakefield as an expert witness.
If he had stuck to ‘autistic children are more likely to suffer from gut problems’, he would have added significantly to a particular biomedical field.
It may be that the actual paper only ‘speculated that the MMR vaccine might be a cause’, but this is not enough to exonerate Wakefield. First because there is strong evidence to suggest that he deliberately tried to discredit the MMR vaccine for personal profit (as said in the OP). Second because of Wakefield quotes like this (see above):
But most importantly because Wakefield knew as well as anybody else that just this kind of speculation would be amplified by the media and cause a panic. That gives him an obligation to not speculate in public unless he has some very hard evidence – akin to the obligation of not shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatree.
You’ve got a key detail incorrect.
Deer has fooled the world into thinking the “vaccine” Wakefield would attempt to bring to market was able to compete with the MMR when it has absolutely no possibility of doing so:
• it was merely a transfer factor. These are not antibodies and any “vaccine” using them could not replace population-level vaccines such as the MMR that do generate antibodies.
• it was just a patent; the experience of transfer factors was already poor and there was no guarantee the new company could get a successful product to market; it certainly wasn’t able or ready to replace the MMR.
• the new “vaccine” was intended only for the subset of children who proved to be susceptible to traditional vaccines and could not longer take them without risk of further harm.
The full comment is entitled “The Thread on Everything Deer Got Wrong and Conveniently Omits.”
I’m thinking of writing a book called, “How Brian Deer Fooled the World.”
Considering that Wakefield (according to the OP) gained not only fame and attention but hundreds of thousands of pounds in fees from the controversy, and was being advised by that lawyer while he was still dong the research, I think my claim stands without refernce to that patented vaccine. Which, indeed, I did not mention.
You did not mention the alleged competing vaccine but Deer does every chance he gets so it’s important for people to learn that Deer (purposefully?) gets this wrong. Wakefield explained to Deer the nature of a transfer factor, the subset of children it was intended for and why the three single shots were still required. Deer’s theory is wrong in every respect. A transfer factor cannot compete with a traditional antibody-producing vaccine.
At this point, you should at least start to be questioning Deer if you aren’t already. Recall what he wrote about himself:
As for making money, yes, people earn fees for the work they do. Do you work for free? I don’t.
As for the fact that Wakefield was working with the lawyer, yes there were simultaneous cases going on. The GMC got these (purposefully?) confused so that they could say that Wakefield and Walker-Smith were mixing up ethical permissions. It took the High Court to sort out the mess the GMC had made. Ultimately, the GMC Panel’s determination suffered from “inadequate and superficial reasoning and, in a number of instances, a wrong conclusion.” Justice Mitting quashed Walker-Smith’s finding of serious professional misconduct and the sanction of erasure.
Unfortunately, Wakefield did not have the money to join the appeal because the insurance company would not pay. But if Walker-Smith was exonerated from ethical violations and he was the lead clinician, it’s not reasonable to expect the same charges to be valid against Wakefield given that he did not perform any of the clinical investigations.
I deliberately did not mention that competing vaccine, because Deer may or may not have got that one right. I therefore stuck to other arguments. If you want to refute me, you need to argue against what I say, not against something I did not say but that is easier to target.
In your own link it is said that ethical permission was only sought for a research project that was clearly different from what Wakefield was actually doing – and what Wakefield at the same time was proposing to the law firm. The work actually done had no ethics permission as a research project. And, the high court said, Wakefield was clearly motivated by research interest. Walker-Smith was found innocent of gross misconduct because it had not been proved to a legal standard that he could not and did not have considered his actions justified as medical treatment of the individual children, and because the distinction between research and (experimental) treatment may (in law) depend in part on the intention of the person doing it.
If you want to defend Wakefield you need to stop referring to the judgement on Walker-Smith. Find some authoritative source that says that Wakefield himself was acting in good faith and following good practice. If you can. Since Wakefield *was* found guilty and struck off you may find that difficult.
Yes, Deer completely got the competing vaccine issue wrong.
It’s not perfect to use Walker-Smith’s exoneration for the Wakefield case but it can bring us a long way.
I’ve responded to another of your comments where I mention how the GMC Panel got the studies mixed up. My comment seems to be off for moderation since I don’t see it.
The short, short version is that they confused the 172-96 study with LAB study. They then drew incorrect conclusions with respect to ethics and funding. It takes a close reading of their judgement to see where they get everything mixed up.
Yes, Deer completely got the competing vaccine issue wrong.
It’s not perfect to use Walker-Smith’s exoneration for the Wakefield case but it can bring us a long way.
I’ve responded to another of your comments where I mention how the GMC Panel got the studies mixed up. My comment seems to be off for moderation since I don’t see it.
The short, short version is that they confused the 172-96 study with LAB study. They then drew incorrect conclusions with respect to ethics and funding. It takes a close reading of their judgement to see where they get everything mixed up.
I deliberately did not mention that competing vaccine, because Deer may or may not have got that one right. I therefore stuck to other arguments. If you want to refute me, you need to argue against what I say, not against something I did not say but that is easier to target.
In your own link it is said that ethical permission was only sought for a research project that was clearly different from what Wakefield was actually doing – and what Wakefield at the same time was proposing to the law firm. The work actually done had no ethics permission as a research project. And, the high court said, Wakefield was clearly motivated by research interest. Walker-Smith was found innocent of gross misconduct because it had not been proved to a legal standard that he could not and did not have considered his actions justified as medical treatment of the individual children, and because the distinction between research and (experimental) treatment may (in law) depend in part on the intention of the person doing it.
If you want to defend Wakefield you need to stop referring to the judgement on Walker-Smith. Find some authoritative source that says that Wakefield himself was acting in good faith and following good practice. If you can. Since Wakefield *was* found guilty and struck off you may find that difficult.
You did not mention the alleged competing vaccine but Deer does every chance he gets so it’s important for people to learn that Deer (purposefully?) gets this wrong. Wakefield explained to Deer the nature of a transfer factor, the subset of children it was intended for and why the three single shots were still required. Deer’s theory is wrong in every respect. A transfer factor cannot compete with a traditional antibody-producing vaccine.
At this point, you should at least start to be questioning Deer if you aren’t already. Recall what he wrote about himself:
As for making money, yes, people earn fees for the work they do. Do you work for free? I don’t.
As for the fact that Wakefield was working with the lawyer, yes there were simultaneous cases going on. The GMC got these (purposefully?) confused so that they could say that Wakefield and Walker-Smith were mixing up ethical permissions. It took the High Court to sort out the mess the GMC had made. Ultimately, the GMC Panel’s determination suffered from “inadequate and superficial reasoning and, in a number of instances, a wrong conclusion.” Justice Mitting quashed Walker-Smith’s finding of serious professional misconduct and the sanction of erasure.
Unfortunately, Wakefield did not have the money to join the appeal because the insurance company would not pay. But if Walker-Smith was exonerated from ethical violations and he was the lead clinician, it’s not reasonable to expect the same charges to be valid against Wakefield given that he did not perform any of the clinical investigations.
Considering that Wakefield (according to the OP) gained not only fame and attention but hundreds of thousands of pounds in fees from the controversy, and was being advised by that lawyer while he was still dong the research, I think my claim stands without refernce to that patented vaccine. Which, indeed, I did not mention.
I believe transfer factor is basically the same thing as or a component of colostrum? Which is supposedly beneficial to supplement in certain situations, the details of which I don’t know.
Are you familiar with Russell Blaylock?
I was just listening to this talk of his the other day from 2008.
I would pay someone who could finally discredit the MMR vaccine- heaven knows it should be discredited but no one has been able to succeed so this evil persists.
Here’s a section of this talk: “Vaccinations and Brain Development”
https://www.bitchute.com/video/jujN87oWouua/
”Now the other thing is we know that when you inject live viruses in people, in a certain percentage of those people that virus will live for the rest of their life in their body, and they did a study on elderly people and looking for measles virus in their tissue and what they found is if you looked at their brain 20% of their brains had live measles virus in it and if you looked at their other organs about 45% of their organs had live measles virus in it. Now when you make a live vaccine what you do is you attenuate the virus so it won’t cause measles, that’s the whole idea is that you take this virus and you run it through tissue cultures until the virus loses it’s ability to produce the measles illness. You call that an attenuated virus and you inject that into a person, hopefully getting an immune reaction they develop resistance. Well the problem and this is discussed in the virology literature is that when this virus enters your body and it doesn’t die it becomes what we call a persistant virus and grows there for decades, because your body is producing free radicals all the time, particularly when you get ill from something else, those free radicals bombard that virus’ DNA and it can attenuate back to a fully pathogenic virus and even produce new diseases, and that’s why we know there’s a correlation between measles vaccination and things like Chrone’s disease and even multiple sclerosis. So injecting live virus is a very hazaardous thing to do, paricularly in small babies whose immune system is not fully funcitonal yet particularly if those babies are not breastfed, because babies get their immunity for the first year from their mother. They don’t have the ability to resist infections. If the mother is bottle feeding the baby’s immunity is fully vulnerable to every disease and this is why, again a lot of babies end up with meningitis and these other things that they scream we need vaccines for because they are not breastfeeding- they are not transferring their maternal antibodies to the baby to protect the baby. You should breastfeed at least for a year to 2 years.”
You’ve got a key detail incorrect.
Deer has fooled the world into thinking the “vaccine” Wakefield would attempt to bring to market was able to compete with the MMR when it has absolutely no possibility of doing so:
• it was merely a transfer factor. These are not antibodies and any “vaccine” using them could not replace population-level vaccines such as the MMR that do generate antibodies.
• it was just a patent; the experience of transfer factors was already poor and there was no guarantee the new company could get a successful product to market; it certainly wasn’t able or ready to replace the MMR.
• the new “vaccine” was intended only for the subset of children who proved to be susceptible to traditional vaccines and could not longer take them without risk of further harm.
The full comment is entitled “The Thread on Everything Deer Got Wrong and Conveniently Omits.”
I’m thinking of writing a book called, “How Brian Deer Fooled the World.”
I believe transfer factor is basically the same thing as or a component of colostrum? Which is supposedly beneficial to supplement in certain situations, the details of which I don’t know.
Are you familiar with Russell Blaylock?
I was just listening to this talk of his the other day from 2008.
I would pay someone who could finally discredit the MMR vaccine- heaven knows it should be discredited but no one has been able to succeed so this evil persists.
Here’s a section of this talk: “Vaccinations and Brain Development”
https://www.bitchute.com/video/jujN87oWouua/
”Now the other thing is we know that when you inject live viruses in people, in a certain percentage of those people that virus will live for the rest of their life in their body, and they did a study on elderly people and looking for measles virus in their tissue and what they found is if you looked at their brain 20% of their brains had live measles virus in it and if you looked at their other organs about 45% of their organs had live measles virus in it. Now when you make a live vaccine what you do is you attenuate the virus so it won’t cause measles, that’s the whole idea is that you take this virus and you run it through tissue cultures until the virus loses it’s ability to produce the measles illness. You call that an attenuated virus and you inject that into a person, hopefully getting an immune reaction they develop resistance. Well the problem and this is discussed in the virology literature is that when this virus enters your body and it doesn’t die it becomes what we call a persistant virus and grows there for decades, because your body is producing free radicals all the time, particularly when you get ill from something else, those free radicals bombard that virus’ DNA and it can attenuate back to a fully pathogenic virus and even produce new diseases, and that’s why we know there’s a correlation between measles vaccination and things like Chrone’s disease and even multiple sclerosis. So injecting live virus is a very hazaardous thing to do, paricularly in small babies whose immune system is not fully funcitonal yet particularly if those babies are not breastfed, because babies get their immunity for the first year from their mother. They don’t have the ability to resist infections. If the mother is bottle feeding the baby’s immunity is fully vulnerable to every disease and this is why, again a lot of babies end up with meningitis and these other things that they scream we need vaccines for because they are not breastfeeding- they are not transferring their maternal antibodies to the baby to protect the baby. You should breastfeed at least for a year to 2 years.”
Rhys – your feedback is thought provoking. It is sometimes hard not to despair over what I see as many current “post-truth” phenomena, and the blurring of fact and fantasy. Maybe it has always been so, but it seems that lies, sex and violence are powerful click-bait, and “nice little earners”. Rather depressing. Do you think Wakefield really believes his message, or is he only concerned about making money?
It may be that the actual paper only ‘speculated that the MMR vaccine might be a cause’, but this is not enough to exonerate Wakefield. First because there is strong evidence to suggest that he deliberately tried to discredit the MMR vaccine for personal profit (as said in the OP). Second because of Wakefield quotes like this (see above):
But most importantly because Wakefield knew as well as anybody else that just this kind of speculation would be amplified by the media and cause a panic. That gives him an obligation to not speculate in public unless he has some very hard evidence – akin to the obligation of not shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatree.
Rhys – your feedback is thought provoking. It is sometimes hard not to despair over what I see as many current “post-truth” phenomena, and the blurring of fact and fantasy. Maybe it has always been so, but it seems that lies, sex and violence are powerful click-bait, and “nice little earners”. Rather depressing. Do you think Wakefield really believes his message, or is he only concerned about making money?
Yes RP it is also about who one gets to peer review and that this is more than one body/institution.
But I think the point holds – be sceptical about all new science reports that don’t outline what process of peer review has taken place
Wakefield’s primary observation, that an elevated level of gut conditions were prevalent amongst autistic children, is still absolutely valid 20 years on.
That was the primary conclusion of the paper that was ultimately retracted and that paper did NOT, repeat did NOT, state that MMR was the cause. It alluded to the fact that it was a possibility and stated quite clearly that further research was necessary to test that hypothesis out.
The chinese whispers in the media the past 20 years has created a crowd of people who aren’t aware of that because they don’t bother to actually go and read the original paper.
The difficulties all arose due to the desire of certain lawyers to litigate against big pharma in court, using Wakefield as an expert witness.
If he had stuck to ‘autistic children are more likely to suffer from gut problems’, he would have added significantly to a particular biomedical field.
Yes RP it is also about who one gets to peer review and that this is more than one body/institution.
But I think the point holds – be sceptical about all new science reports that don’t outline what process of peer review has taken place
Peer review isn’t the critical amphitheatre of scientific challenge by the best of one’s peers that we might hope it is. Review now operates in a more collegiate and dare one link this to publications almost exclusively funded by the giants of their industry.
another fine mess we have ‘gotten’ ourselves into.
Yes there does need to be full transparency too in who has peer reviewed and any ‘conflict of interests’ that may exist. But in general it’s a fundamental part of scientific disciple.
It’s not entirely the same but as we know the value of companies is subject to intense scrutiny in the West because big investment decisions rely on it. Doesn’t mean every conclusion correct, nor that attempts to manipulate value don’t take place routinely. But the overall market discipline means getting caught lying has v expensive consequences.
Yes there does need to be full transparency too in who has peer reviewed and any ‘conflict of interests’ that may exist. But in general it’s a fundamental part of scientific disciple.
It’s not entirely the same but as we know the value of companies is subject to intense scrutiny in the West because big investment decisions rely on it. Doesn’t mean every conclusion correct, nor that attempts to manipulate value don’t take place routinely. But the overall market discipline means getting caught lying has v expensive consequences.
The problem is actually the media. They don’t present this story as ‘interesting, small scale study as yet not confirmed or denied by the wider biomedical community’.
It ranks alongside the sort of unsubstantiated gossip in the Daily Mail, which may or may not turn out in time to be true.
It’s always the media that spins things in ways designed to brainwash people. Always. Without the media doing what it did, no-one would have ever even heard of Wakefield’s assertions.
Totally agree RJ.
‘If it bleeds it leads’ constantly true about much of the media. And as Mark Twain (I think) said – ‘Lies will travel twice round the world before the Truth has got up and put it’s shoes on’
Totally agree RJ.
‘If it bleeds it leads’ constantly true about much of the media. And as Mark Twain (I think) said – ‘Lies will travel twice round the world before the Truth has got up and put it’s shoes on’
No idea how much experience you actually have with peer review but as somebody who has published several hundred scientific papers and reviewed many hundreds of papers, I would say that peer review is not some panacea. And by the way there is usually no way of knowing who has actually peer reviewed a paper as the review process is generally (although recently not always) anonymous. As for Nature, the quality of their reviewing is generally very poor and Nature is more interested in the latest fad du jours than in high quality science. In crystallography, for example, the quality of protein crystal structures is inversely correlated to the impact factor of the journal in which they are published!
The bottom line is that no matter where a scientific paper has been published, and no matter how prestigious the journal, as a practicing scientist one should always look at the published literature with a very critical eye. And that’s especially true in medical journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet where deeply flawed randomized controlled trials, funded or carried out by Pharma, are continually being published.
For once I mostly agree with you.
That is an interesting observation. One can speculate about the cause. The quality of a crystal structure follows from the quality of the data. And the structures that make it into the high-impact journals are those of the most medically and biologically interesting proteins. Those will generally be hard to get data for (if it had been easy they would have been done long ago), eagerly awaited by readers (which is a reason to get them out fast), and have multiple groups trying to get there first (so no one will risk getting scooped while spending six months on growing better crystals). It is well known that Nature has a preference for new and important results – which will contain more duds than papers expanding on established fields. I can well believe your observation, but it does not necessarily reflect on the quality of Nature reviewers.
For once I mostly agree with you.
That is an interesting observation. One can speculate about the cause. The quality of a crystal structure follows from the quality of the data. And the structures that make it into the high-impact journals are those of the most medically and biologically interesting proteins. Those will generally be hard to get data for (if it had been easy they would have been done long ago), eagerly awaited by readers (which is a reason to get them out fast), and have multiple groups trying to get there first (so no one will risk getting scooped while spending six months on growing better crystals). It is well known that Nature has a preference for new and important results – which will contain more duds than papers expanding on established fields. I can well believe your observation, but it does not necessarily reflect on the quality of Nature reviewers.
Peer review is a good first filter, but it is not enough. It will catch the most obvious howlers, but Wakefield’s paper was peer reviewed. Ultimately you do not believe it and act on it till there is some confirmation elsewhere and some widespread consensus around it.
Peer review isn’t the critical amphitheatre of scientific challenge by the best of one’s peers that we might hope it is. Review now operates in a more collegiate and dare one link this to publications almost exclusively funded by the giants of their industry.
another fine mess we have ‘gotten’ ourselves into.
The problem is actually the media. They don’t present this story as ‘interesting, small scale study as yet not confirmed or denied by the wider biomedical community’.
It ranks alongside the sort of unsubstantiated gossip in the Daily Mail, which may or may not turn out in time to be true.
It’s always the media that spins things in ways designed to brainwash people. Always. Without the media doing what it did, no-one would have ever even heard of Wakefield’s assertions.
No idea how much experience you actually have with peer review but as somebody who has published several hundred scientific papers and reviewed many hundreds of papers, I would say that peer review is not some panacea. And by the way there is usually no way of knowing who has actually peer reviewed a paper as the review process is generally (although recently not always) anonymous. As for Nature, the quality of their reviewing is generally very poor and Nature is more interested in the latest fad du jours than in high quality science. In crystallography, for example, the quality of protein crystal structures is inversely correlated to the impact factor of the journal in which they are published!
The bottom line is that no matter where a scientific paper has been published, and no matter how prestigious the journal, as a practicing scientist one should always look at the published literature with a very critical eye. And that’s especially true in medical journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet where deeply flawed randomized controlled trials, funded or carried out by Pharma, are continually being published.
The article further underpins the importance of when reading about new scientific findings asking oneself – ‘have these findings been peer reviewed and by whom?’ This should always be the first question, regardless of the ‘tug’ of confirmatory bias we all prone to feel.
When done properly peer review helps build trust and can work as a ‘quality control’ mechanism. It’s fundamental to quality science.
One example – to get published in Nature (one of the world’s foremost scientific journals) the peer review process every submission is subjected to first is extensive. Nature’s credibility as the foremost scientific publication depends on it.
The problem is ‘peer review’ can delay conclusions. It takes time. Vested interests can want to publish now. So sometimes that’ll happen. We just all need to ask the question – is this conclusive until properly and thoroughly peer reviewed?
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I wonder when parents of children left maimed by measles will start suing Wakefield. That would be an obvious next step.
Why should they be allowed to sue him. He was one man who expressed opinions that turned out to be wrong. He didn’t have the backing of any Government policy, nor the backing of the GMC.
As adults, you are required to be a bit more sophisticated as parents than ‘XXX said so, so it must be true!’
As a judge, I would throw any law suits out with extreme prejudice based on the overwhelming position of the Government, the pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession opposing Wakefield.
The point is that Wakefield engaged in scientific fraud, not just an “opinion”.
He egregiously falsified data to fit his hypothesis, while also having shares in an alternative treatment that he stood to gain from financially should his fraudulent finding be picked up by mainstream media.
It is to the huge credit of Mr Deere that Wakefield’s deception was uncovered.
No, Deer has it wrong. Unfortunately, there isn’t a good rebuttal all in one place to show all of his reporting errors.
Are you aware that the GMC charges did not include fraud? That’s because there was no evidence for that, despite it being the longest “trial” in the history of the GMC.
No, Deer has it wrong. Unfortunately, there isn’t a good rebuttal all in one place to show all of his reporting errors.
Are you aware that the GMC charges did not include fraud? That’s because there was no evidence for that, despite it being the longest “trial” in the history of the GMC.
The point is that Wakefield engaged in scientific fraud, not just an “opinion”.
He egregiously falsified data to fit his hypothesis, while also having shares in an alternative treatment that he stood to gain from financially should his fraudulent finding be picked up by mainstream media.
It is to the huge credit of Mr Deere that Wakefield’s deception was uncovered.
I thought he explicitly advised all parents to get separate doses of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines? If so I find it hard to see how he could be held accountable for children left maimed by measles.
Further, irrespective of anything else, getting the three vaccines separately may not be such a silly thing to do. One might ask oneself whether it’s a good idea to challenge the immature immune system of a young infant with multiple vaccines at the same time. The problem, of course, and this is why the vaccines are combined, is that it is a pain for the parents to have to make multiple visits to the pediatrician (in the US) or GP (in the UK).
In the US now, the standard protocol is some 84 vaccines by age two. The hospitals routinely vaccinate newborns even for venereal disease. Many parents are pushing back on this as overkill and even insulting. These same parents don’t doubt the efficacy of the vaccines. They doubt the need for them. Of course each vaccination represents a billing opportunity.
Exactly.
Exactly.
If the multiple vaccines are given closely enough, immunologically there will be little difference from being given on the same day.
Well yes but if you were going to give them separately you would probably wait 2-4 weeks between shots.
Is that long enough? How do you know? Where are the studies assessing timing of vaccines?
The US Institute of Medicine in “The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies, National Academies Press, Institute of Medicine, 2013” wrote:
“Key elements of the immunization schedule—for example, the number, frequency, timing, order, and age at the time of administration of vaccines—have not been systematically examined in research studies.”1 (emphasis added)
Saying that vaccines are well-studied is an oft-repeated lie. (Not saying that you are saying they are well-studied.)
Is that far enough in between? How would you know?
Quite right. It was an educated guess. But generally, most adverse events from a vaccine are likely to occur within say 1-2 weeks of vaccination.
Those are the immediate adverse events.
There is an incorrect notion that vaccines have few long-term effects. But is it rational to think that a drug that is designed to cause an immune effect for the life of the recipient won’t have long-term effects?
In fact, vaccines have effects that don’t necessarily appear immediately, from allergies to otitis to ADHD to autism.
These effects are not currently recognized by the medical community as vaccine-induced but many of us are attempting to change that. Bobby Kennedy completely gets it: a great deal (perhaps most?) of chronic disease today is either caused by or exacerbated by vaccines.
These drugs are damaging our immune systems. We are getting some attention to this because of the Cleveland Clinic data showing how the more one is vaccinated, the higher the risk of natural infection. That’s not supposed to happen. I had a conversation with two doctors just a few months ago in which they confidently asserted that vaccines only strengthen the immune system.
They clearly haven’t followed the work of Dr. Stabell-Benn in Guinea-Bissau who demonstrated that the DTP vaccine is killing more children than it is saving when it is given as the last vaccine in a series. In other words, order matters. When a live viral vaccine is last, the series shows lower mortality. Otherwise, it shows higher mortality than the baseline.
She concisely explains what is happening in her TED talk, “How vaccines train the immune system in ways no one expected | Christine Stabell Benn | TEDxAarhus.” Her team’s findings have been reproduced by other teams and there is now even an annual conference to study these non-specific effects. She and Aaby co-wrote: “The non-specific and sex-differential effects of vaccines”, Nature Reviews Immunology, 2020.
The doctors are the least knowledgeable on this topic, I’ve found. They live in a fantasy world when it comes to vaccines. They will grant that there are immediate effects but have zero knowledge of the long-term effects.
That’s one of the reasons AIDS was so insidious. The problems only started a long time after the infection.
Those are the immediate adverse events.
There is an incorrect notion that vaccines have few long-term effects. But is it rational to think that a drug that is designed to cause an immune effect for the life of the recipient won’t have long-term effects?
In fact, vaccines have effects that don’t necessarily appear immediately, from allergies to otitis to ADHD to autism.
These effects are not currently recognized by the medical community as vaccine-induced but many of us are attempting to change that. Bobby Kennedy completely gets it: a great deal (perhaps most?) of chronic disease today is either caused by or exacerbated by vaccines.
These drugs are damaging our immune systems. We are getting some attention to this because of the Cleveland Clinic data showing how the more one is vaccinated, the higher the risk of natural infection. That’s not supposed to happen. I had a conversation with two doctors just a few months ago in which they confidently asserted that vaccines only strengthen the immune system.
They clearly haven’t followed the work of Dr. Stabell-Benn in Guinea-Bissau who demonstrated that the DTP vaccine is killing more children than it is saving when it is given as the last vaccine in a series. In other words, order matters. When a live viral vaccine is last, the series shows lower mortality. Otherwise, it shows higher mortality than the baseline.
She concisely explains what is happening in her TED talk, “How vaccines train the immune system in ways no one expected | Christine Stabell Benn | TEDxAarhus.” Her team’s findings have been reproduced by other teams and there is now even an annual conference to study these non-specific effects. She and Aaby co-wrote: “The non-specific and sex-differential effects of vaccines”, Nature Reviews Immunology, 2020.
The doctors are the least knowledgeable on this topic, I’ve found. They live in a fantasy world when it comes to vaccines. They will grant that there are immediate effects but have zero knowledge of the long-term effects.
That’s one of the reasons AIDS was so insidious. The problems only started a long time after the infection.
Quite right. It was an educated guess. But generally, most adverse events from a vaccine are likely to occur within say 1-2 weeks of vaccination.
Is that long enough? How do you know? Where are the studies assessing timing of vaccines?
The US Institute of Medicine in “The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies, National Academies Press, Institute of Medicine, 2013” wrote:
“Key elements of the immunization schedule—for example, the number, frequency, timing, order, and age at the time of administration of vaccines—have not been systematically examined in research studies.”1 (emphasis added)
Saying that vaccines are well-studied is an oft-repeated lie. (Not saying that you are saying they are well-studied.)
Is that far enough in between? How would you know?
Well yes but if you were going to give them separately you would probably wait 2-4 weeks between shots.
In the US now, the standard protocol is some 84 vaccines by age two. The hospitals routinely vaccinate newborns even for venereal disease. Many parents are pushing back on this as overkill and even insulting. These same parents don’t doubt the efficacy of the vaccines. They doubt the need for them. Of course each vaccination represents a billing opportunity.
If the multiple vaccines are given closely enough, immunologically there will be little difference from being given on the same day.
Further, irrespective of anything else, getting the three vaccines separately may not be such a silly thing to do. One might ask oneself whether it’s a good idea to challenge the immature immune system of a young infant with multiple vaccines at the same time. The problem, of course, and this is why the vaccines are combined, is that it is a pain for the parents to have to make multiple visits to the pediatrician (in the US) or GP (in the UK).
Why should they be allowed to sue him. He was one man who expressed opinions that turned out to be wrong. He didn’t have the backing of any Government policy, nor the backing of the GMC.
As adults, you are required to be a bit more sophisticated as parents than ‘XXX said so, so it must be true!’
As a judge, I would throw any law suits out with extreme prejudice based on the overwhelming position of the Government, the pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession opposing Wakefield.
I thought he explicitly advised all parents to get separate doses of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines? If so I find it hard to see how he could be held accountable for children left maimed by measles.
I wonder when parents of children left maimed by measles will start suing Wakefield. That would be an obvious next step.
I still go along and get my covid vaccines, five now, but I have little faith that they’re all they’re claimed to be; which isn’t much now, come to think of it, as their claimed efficacy is gradually walked back by Big Medical, governments and their tendentious barrackers.
if you have little faith in the COVID vaccines, why are you bothering to get endless boosters. It’s quite possible that multiple boosters of the COVID vaccines may be doing you more harm than good, not only in terms of increased risk of adverse events, but equally in terms of the functioning of your immune system (e.g. the interesting observation that IgG4 which does nothing against viruses or bacteria goes up from 0.05% to 20%+ after 3 shots).
How many times have you had Covid?
if you have little faith in the COVID vaccines, why are you bothering to get endless boosters. It’s quite possible that multiple boosters of the COVID vaccines may be doing you more harm than good, not only in terms of increased risk of adverse events, but equally in terms of the functioning of your immune system (e.g. the interesting observation that IgG4 which does nothing against viruses or bacteria goes up from 0.05% to 20%+ after 3 shots).
How many times have you had Covid?
I still go along and get my covid vaccines, five now, but I have little faith that they’re all they’re claimed to be; which isn’t much now, come to think of it, as their claimed efficacy is gradually walked back by Big Medical, governments and their tendentious barrackers.
Brian, you are a hero. What you did in exposing the liar Wakefield was amazing. And your book is brilliant as well.
Actually, Deer has gotten the key points of his fraud story about Wakefield wrong. See my full comment elsewhere on the page.
Never forget that he presents himself as an investigative journalist but it was he who wrote this about himself:
This is the “investigative journalist” people are trusting to get the story accurately and fairly reported on how Big Pharma is hiding the problems with their drugs and delicate, developing infant brains?
Actually, Deer has gotten the key points of his fraud story about Wakefield wrong. See my full comment elsewhere on the page.
Never forget that he presents himself as an investigative journalist but it was he who wrote this about himself:
This is the “investigative journalist” people are trusting to get the story accurately and fairly reported on how Big Pharma is hiding the problems with their drugs and delicate, developing infant brains?
Brian, you are a hero. What you did in exposing the liar Wakefield was amazing. And your book is brilliant as well.
I have met vaccine-haters who assure me, with a straight face, that one of the many reasons they are unable to consider a vaccination is their concern that it will make them magnetic. They’re worried that they will stick to radiators etc, and that steel cutlery could be a problem in restaurants. To a man and woman, they also all support Brexit, passionately.
There’s a half-smile demur which one trots out on such occasions, while backing away, before scarpering.
I have met uncritical ‘the government is a kindly organisation’ sheeple who simply believe whatever the Government, the BBC, the Daily Mail and ignorant celebrities tell them.
To a person they are all virulent Remainers.
It’s usually a good idea to assume that every public body is lying to you until proven otherwise, whether they supported Brexit or not. It’s a good idea to assume that people who acquire a lot of money are good at presenting smokescreens to cover up less palatable underlying motives.
And it’s a very, very good idea to take as your starting point that both the EU AND the USA Deep State hate ordinary people with a virulence and want to corral them into lives of unutterable monotony amidst 24/7 surveillance.
Did someone hack your account? Based on previous posts I had filed you as a sensible and well-argued person worth paying attention to. If you stand by this post I shall have to refile you.
Did someone hack your account? Based on previous posts I had filed you as a sensible and well-argued person worth paying attention to. If you stand by this post I shall have to refile you.
Sounds like the same escape route I use when I talk to businessmen who palm off the consequences of their lack of strategic thinking and investment as being the fault of Brexit.
I’m talking about the types who can only run businesses if they have an infinite supply of cheap, smart labour from Central Europe.
I have met uncritical ‘the government is a kindly organisation’ sheeple who simply believe whatever the Government, the BBC, the Daily Mail and ignorant celebrities tell them.
To a person they are all virulent Remainers.
It’s usually a good idea to assume that every public body is lying to you until proven otherwise, whether they supported Brexit or not. It’s a good idea to assume that people who acquire a lot of money are good at presenting smokescreens to cover up less palatable underlying motives.
And it’s a very, very good idea to take as your starting point that both the EU AND the USA Deep State hate ordinary people with a virulence and want to corral them into lives of unutterable monotony amidst 24/7 surveillance.
Sounds like the same escape route I use when I talk to businessmen who palm off the consequences of their lack of strategic thinking and investment as being the fault of Brexit.
I’m talking about the types who can only run businesses if they have an infinite supply of cheap, smart labour from Central Europe.
I have met vaccine-haters who assure me, with a straight face, that one of the many reasons they are unable to consider a vaccination is their concern that it will make them magnetic. They’re worried that they will stick to radiators etc, and that steel cutlery could be a problem in restaurants. To a man and woman, they also all support Brexit, passionately.
There’s a half-smile demur which one trots out on such occasions, while backing away, before scarpering.
Excellent article. The grip this kind of nonsense holds is crazy.
That self-proclaimed bastion of Conservatism, The Conservative Woman (which stands under the banner of “Defending Freedom”), banned me for constantly bringing to the forums attention that a hideously stupid anti-vac cult had taken over. I kept trying until it dawned on me that the founder Kathy Gyngell was probably head cultist, whereupon after pointing that out my fate was sealed.
Fortunately I pulled through and ever since have appreciated how much time they saved me in pointless argument with the mess of religious zealots and tin foil hatters that live on there.
Maybe the fact that you were “constantly” posting on their forum led them to believe you were a crazy stalker. I never heard of The Conservative Woman, and I’m a conservative woman.
Good point!
I like TCW for its open mindedness, and I’m a socialist man!!
Ooo! We should party!
Ooo! We should party!
Oh the word “constantly” shouldn’t be read literally. Perhaps the point was made a good few times but who’d have thought a forum that screams against cancelling and which claims to be a bastion of free speech would reject contrarian opinions?
You should try it if you fancy a laugh, it’s bonkers. My favourite was the religious fundamentalism on there, they actually think ethical behaviour is impossible without a God. I never heard anyone proud to declare they were personally morally empty vessels without an outside agency to dictate ethical behaviour (under threat of eternal damnation of course) before.
May I recommend “By Design”with Drs. Behe, Lennox, and Breyer on Uncommon Knowledge, for just one example? I’d link, but I’m sure you can find it.
Perhaps, when using a word like “constantly”, it is you who should be a bit more judicious. Often is a choice. So is frequently. Constantly – your description – is a confession.
Science can tell us how to build a house or how to sow a field, but it cannot tell us if we will live in that house or if we will eat what we sow. Whether ethical behavior is possible without a God is, and always will be, the core question in human life.
Phil. I take it you are about 12 years of age. Give yourself a chance to grow up a little and then we might take things you say a little more seriously.
So you have no actual points to put to him and just resort to personal abuse. You won’t convince anyone outside your own tribe with that approach. Quite the reverse.
So you have no actual points to put to him and just resort to personal abuse. You won’t convince anyone outside your own tribe with that approach. Quite the reverse.
May I recommend “By Design”with Drs. Behe, Lennox, and Breyer on Uncommon Knowledge, for just one example? I’d link, but I’m sure you can find it.
Perhaps, when using a word like “constantly”, it is you who should be a bit more judicious. Often is a choice. So is frequently. Constantly – your description – is a confession.
Science can tell us how to build a house or how to sow a field, but it cannot tell us if we will live in that house or if we will eat what we sow. Whether ethical behavior is possible without a God is, and always will be, the core question in human life.
Phil. I take it you are about 12 years of age. Give yourself a chance to grow up a little and then we might take things you say a little more seriously.
Priceless.
Given that the Conservative Woman was founded to support free speech, it should not be possible to be a “crazy stalker” on that platform.
In fact, it has regressed from where it was pre-Covid as an open forum where a wide range of views could be openly and honestly discussed without any attempt to suppress views which did nopt toe the editorial line. Now it is just a sad echo chamber.
How do I know this ? Because I used to read it every day and even sent a donation. Then one day, someone in the comments labelled me a “fa..ict”. I pointed this out to Kathy Gyngell and suggested that she should take some action against the author of this remark (not least for brining her site into disrepute).
What do you think her response was ? She reviewed my contributions in general and then told me that my views “were not in line” and “I didn’t really belong” (I paraphrase, but that was the gist). My ability to comment was disabled from that moment.
That was her actual response to one of her donors who had not made any offensive remarks being abused on her site.
My crime was apparently to have an open mind on Covid and not endorse the group think now required on the site. Statements like “the vaccines might provide some benefit” could no longer be tolerated.
I then asked for my donation back. No response.
When Kathy Gyngell was banned from Twitter, I had no sympathy. She does not defend free speech and must suffer the consequences.
Covid has driven a lot of people mad. Not from the disease. From the sort of hysterical and tribal reactions you read in the comments here. This article wasn’t even about Covid.
Good point!
I like TCW for its open mindedness, and I’m a socialist man!!
Oh the word “constantly” shouldn’t be read literally. Perhaps the point was made a good few times but who’d have thought a forum that screams against cancelling and which claims to be a bastion of free speech would reject contrarian opinions?
You should try it if you fancy a laugh, it’s bonkers. My favourite was the religious fundamentalism on there, they actually think ethical behaviour is impossible without a God. I never heard anyone proud to declare they were personally morally empty vessels without an outside agency to dictate ethical behaviour (under threat of eternal damnation of course) before.
Priceless.
Given that the Conservative Woman was founded to support free speech, it should not be possible to be a “crazy stalker” on that platform.
In fact, it has regressed from where it was pre-Covid as an open forum where a wide range of views could be openly and honestly discussed without any attempt to suppress views which did nopt toe the editorial line. Now it is just a sad echo chamber.
How do I know this ? Because I used to read it every day and even sent a donation. Then one day, someone in the comments labelled me a “fa..ict”. I pointed this out to Kathy Gyngell and suggested that she should take some action against the author of this remark (not least for brining her site into disrepute).
What do you think her response was ? She reviewed my contributions in general and then told me that my views “were not in line” and “I didn’t really belong” (I paraphrase, but that was the gist). My ability to comment was disabled from that moment.
That was her actual response to one of her donors who had not made any offensive remarks being abused on her site.
My crime was apparently to have an open mind on Covid and not endorse the group think now required on the site. Statements like “the vaccines might provide some benefit” could no longer be tolerated.
I then asked for my donation back. No response.
When Kathy Gyngell was banned from Twitter, I had no sympathy. She does not defend free speech and must suffer the consequences.
Covid has driven a lot of people mad. Not from the disease. From the sort of hysterical and tribal reactions you read in the comments here. This article wasn’t even about Covid.
Phil, you are not alone. Wear it as a badge or pride. See my reply in this thread. I’m not wasting time on that site any longer either.
Maybe the fact that you were “constantly” posting on their forum led them to believe you were a crazy stalker. I never heard of The Conservative Woman, and I’m a conservative woman.
Phil, you are not alone. Wear it as a badge or pride. See my reply in this thread. I’m not wasting time on that site any longer either.
Excellent article. The grip this kind of nonsense holds is crazy.
That self-proclaimed bastion of Conservatism, The Conservative Woman (which stands under the banner of “Defending Freedom”), banned me for constantly bringing to the forums attention that a hideously stupid anti-vac cult had taken over. I kept trying until it dawned on me that the founder Kathy Gyngell was probably head cultist, whereupon after pointing that out my fate was sealed.
Fortunately I pulled through and ever since have appreciated how much time they saved me in pointless argument with the mess of religious zealots and tin foil hatters that live on there.