The question in the title of this week’s column was the title of the Duluth News-Tribune’s Opinion Page PRO/CON feature that was published yesterday, April 30, 2018. For those who have discarded the paper already, or for those who didn’t read the original, the “alleged” two sides of the argument can be found online at https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/opinion/columns/4438644-procon-evidence-vaccination-so-overwhelmingand at https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/opinion/columns/4438645-procon-dont-mandate-do-nudge-parents-vaccinate.
When I read the PRO side of the argument, I was mildly chagrined because the writer of the PRO argument, journalist Tim Wendel (who has written a dozen books, most of them about baseball!) had close to zero credentials for even offering an opinion on the matter to some stranger on the street.
Wendel’s only mentioned credential was that his little brother died of leukemia in 1972, a couple of months after acquiring chickenpox at age 10. Wendel’s brother was, of course, immunocompromised because he was likely also being treated with chemotherapeutic drugs. Wendel lamented the fact that there was no chickenpox vaccine available back in 1972 that might have prevented some unknown infected contact from infecting his brother with the virus.
Wendel spouted a number of biased pro-vaccine propaganda from the Big Pharma infiltrated and dominated CDC (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), which every year buys and sells $4 billion dollars of vaccines and also holds patents on some of the vaccines. He also quoted from the American Academy of Pediatrics (the trade association and lobbying arm of the specialty of pediatrics).
<<<Debunking the Propaganda Myth that Immunocompromised Patients Need a Fully Over-vaccinated Populace to Survive>>>
Wendel, a layperson and a non-scientist journalist who is obviously uneducated about the complexities of vaccinology, only knows what he has learned from the biased pro-vaccine mainstream sources and the blindly pro-vaccine medical professionals who often are largely unaware of the dangers of America’s over-vaccination agendas.
Of course I expected Wendel to be relatively uninformed about the intricacies of vaccinology. So it wasn’t hard for me to understand how he would erroneously assume that a chickenpox vaccine would have somehow saved his brother’s life. Such a hoped-for situation would have required that every person that his brother might ever accidentally come into contact with would have had to be repeatedly injected with booster doses in order to maintain a theoretical, non-contagious status. Or perhaps Wendel erroneously thought that his brother could have himself been inoculated with a chickenpox vaccine, thus revealing his ignorance of the fact that live virus vaccines are contra-indicated for immunocompromised patients.
Wendel is probably also unaware that the chickenpox vaccine that eventually was developed two decades later actually contains live chickenpox viruses (albeit allegedly “attenuated”). Persons that have been vaccinated with live virus vaccines have been known to shed those viruses for unknown numbers of weeks after the inoculation, all the while being unaware that they were contagious.
In the case of the chickenpox vaccine, the vaccinated person may be totally unaware of hidden or very early skin lesions that could be shedding the virus, which is then capable of infecting unsuspecting contacts. Therefore Wendel’s little brother would have had to quarantine himself from all the chickenpox vaccinated kids as well as from the usual irrationally-feared suspects that were unvaccinated. (Incidentally, the scenario of viral shedding from those recently inoculated destroys the feeble claim that immunocompromised individuals benefit from having fully vaccinated kids in their homes, playgrounds, churches or classrooms.)
In other words, the otherwise healthy toddlers or children that have been vaccinated with a live virus vaccine are the ones that should be quarantined for an uncertain number of weeks while they are shedding vaccine viruses. That logical scientific advice, if followed as the science demands, would really screw up playdates, parties, family gatherings, preschool attendance, church attendance or just going to a movie or the mall. And it would really screw up the well child pediatric checkups that always end up with another intramuscular vaccine inoculation or three.
<<<Tim Wendel’s PRO Argument Supports Pharmacofascism>>>
Wendel’s PRO statement in the Duluth News-Tribune yesterday urged the US Congress to pass legislation to force all parents to have their innocent, otherwise healthy children be fully over-vaccinated with who knows what number, combination or sequence of neurotoxic, disease-producing, aluminum-, mercury- or live virus-containing vaccines that are all good for the businesses of various greedy Big Pharma executive or brain-washed bureaucrats at the CDC or “bought” ivory-tower academic pediatricians at the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Having such important parenting decisions made by faceless entities in the power centers of the nation whose motivations might be financial is a revolt-worthy problem. Parenting decisions made by distant authority figures who know nothing about any individual child - with no discussion allowed - is surely grounds for resistance and revolution.
The cops coming to enforce some mandatory vaccine law don’t know anything about one’s unique child. Important questions about past vaccine accidents, changes in immune status or whether or not one’s child has developed a recent vaccine-induced autoimmune disorder that would make future vaccinations contraindicated. Anonymous bureaucrats understand even less than pediatricians and nurses do about immunocompromised children, but they have orders to obey and penalties to impose. And it is important to inform parents and physicians that there are increasingly large minorities of US children that have developed vaccine-induced autoimmune disorders and other vaccine-induced illnesses.
Wendel’s PRO position demands harsh penalties that include the imprisonment of resisting parents, fines, or even having one’s child legally taken away.
Wendel exhibited no awareness of any of the above, beyond spouting the biased pro-vaccine propaganda that everybody has heard ad nauseum in every magazine, newspaper, radio and TV station and every medical clinic and hospital. There is a complete black-out of the unwelcome truths about the dangers and lack of efficacy of American’s over-vaccination agendas.
<<<The Julie Gumlock’s CON Argument is Pharmacofascism Lite>>>
But what really outraged me was the alleged CON argument (against mandatory over-vaccinations) of a woman named Julie Gunlock, who is an equally unqualified journalist that was somehow chosen to write the opposing side of the argument. Her statements consisted of classical pro-vaccine propaganda that came right out of the Big Pharma infiltrated CDC and AAP. And there was essentially no discernable difference between the PRO and CON arguments of their unqualified authors.
Gunlock’s CON argument (that vaccines shouldn’t be mandatory) was that instead of harshly forcing parents to over-vaccinate their children against their wills, they be “nudged” into consenting voluntarily. Gunlock, like Wendel, also showed her ignorance about the science of vaccinology by repeating the old propaganda bit that “the evidence that vaccines are safe is overwhelming” and that the fears about vaccines are “unfounded”.
Gunlock claimed in the article that failure of any parent to follow America’s dangerous over-vaccination agendas “renders their child defenseless against diseases that cripple, maim and even kill”. By “nudging”, Gunlock means to cruelly deny any parental resister future government services such as a public school education, food assistance, health and welfare benefits and the time-honored use of conscientious/religious objections to unwanted over-vaccination agendas.
It needs to be pointed out that the two PRO/CON writers, in addition to exhibiting no expertise in the vaccine debate, have backgrounds that should have disqualified them from the assignment.
Wendel is the author of a dozen books, half of which have baseball-themes. He is currently employed at a Baltimore Johns Hopkins University teaching journalism to undergrad students. He has no professional background in medical science and has nothing to do with Johns Hopkins Medical School, which is, however, highly likely to be equally blind to the dangers of the serious neurotoxicity of aluminum vaccine adjuvants that are often used simultaneously with mercury vaccine preservatives, either of which probably account for America’s vaccine-induced autoimmune disease epidemic.
Gunlock’s background should be a wake-up call for the readers of northern Minnesota, particularly because of her financial ties to right-wing organizations that espouse anti-environmentalism and polluting multinational corporations.
Gunlock is a long-time member of the innocent-sounding Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), a right-wing anti-feminist, pro-corporate, climate-denying organization that got its start 25 years ago in an effort to defend former Monsanto attorney Clarence Thomas as he faced sexual harassment charges during his confirmation hearings to be appointed to the US Supreme Court.
Gunlock’s IWF has raised tens of millions of dollars of dark money that comes from various secretive foundations that are closely connected to the Koch brothers and other right-wing billionaires in order to carry out its stated mission of “increasing the number of women who value free markets and personal liberty.”
Gunlock, who is a director of the IWF, is also close to Kellyanne Conway, who is a long-time IWF Board of Directors member. Conway, of course, is on temporary leave from the IWF while serving as a Trump advisor.
The IWF is heavily funded not only by the Koch Brothers and various Koch-related multinational corporate entities but also by such financially-powerful entities as the American Legislative Exchange Council, Monsanto, ExxonMobil, American Beverage Council, Marathon Oil, Phillip Morris, American Chemical Council, Searle Freedom Trust, etc.
Among other things that should concern average citizens, the IWF 1) defends toxic chemicals in food and consumer products; 2) thinks that global warming is “junk science” and that teaching it unnecessarily scares schoolchildren; 3) argues against laws that would curb the power of corporations; 4) pushes the deregulatory agenda of corporations; 5) attacks the organic food industry; 6) tries to counter criticism of pesticides; and 7) criticizes mothers who are concerned about toxic chemicals, toxic drugs and toxic vaccines getting into the bodies of their children.
The IWF has vocally supported Rush Limbaugh whenever he goes on his sexist verbal rampages., but it should be noted that Limbaugh has donated a quarter of a million dollars to the organization.
The IWF partners with other corporate front groups such as the deceptively named American Council on Science and Health(ACSH), which is a leading defender of toxic chemicals. The ACSH has deep ties to the corporate behemoths Monsantoand Syngenta.
· The IWF partners with Academics Review – an innocently-named front group that is funded by various Big Agrichemical industries that attack the organic food industry and any critics of Genetically-Modified Organisms. (GMOs). It advertises itsself as “a nonprofit group of independent scientists.”
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· The IWF partners with the Alliance for Food and Farming, another innocently-named Big Food front group that tries to counter criticism of pesticides, claiming that those toxic synthetic chemical are nothing to worry about.
And, to emphasize the lack of ethics that groups like the IWF exhibit, I attach below some pertinent quotes that expose the ulterior motives of large corporations.
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“The news media is full of propaganda, due to the corrupting influence of huge corporations that own them or advertise on them. The overall agenda is to convince the audience to be in favor of and vote for their own victimization and abuse, willingly and voluntarily…The majority of the human population has allowed itself to be deceived through ignorance, deception, stupidity, chronic apathy or a serious lack of curiosity and questioning…as long as their bellies are full and heads filled with mindless entertainment…they’re happy. Genetic cloning is unnecessary. Cloning has already been done thanks to mass media brainwashing.”– Paul A. Philips
“An ignorant population…never questions authorities…and therefore provides little opposition to a dictatorship. If we want to grow as a race we must start to recognize when the media is trying to manipulate us, be aware of their hidden ulterior motives; do something worthwhile and campaign for the truth.”-- Paul A. Philips
”The whole notion of journalism being an institution whose fundamental purpose is to educate and inform has been altered, under commercial pressure, into a different kind of purpose, which is to divert and distract and entertain”--Tom Stoppard
“Iate breakfast last week with the president of a network news division and he told me that during non-election years, 70% of the advertising revenues for his news division come from pharmaceutical ads. And if you watch the network news, you’llsee it has just become a vehicle for selling pharmaceuticals. He also told me that he would fire an interview host who brought onto his station a guest who lost him a pharmaceutical account.”-- Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been “taken”. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”– Carl Sagan,author of The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“Industry-controlled ‘science’ is not really science but a smokescreen to pave the way for products that may be harmful - but what do they care as long as they profit? There are many great scientists but there are also some who are willing to be hired to ‘prove’ that something doesn't cause cancer, or that something is ‘safe’. You cannot trust the CDC, the EPA, the FDA, or industry ‘science’.” – Anonymous blogger
“The top ten environmental compounds suspected of causing autism and learning disabilities were listed and they included: lead, methyl-mercury, polychorinated biphenyls, organophosphate pesticides, organochlorine pesticides, endocrine disruptors, automotive exhaust, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, polybrominated diphenyl ethers, and perfluorinated compounds.”– MR Geier, MD
And below is a portion of an article that de-mystifies the Chicken Pox vaccine
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It is from: https://www.nvic.org/Vaccines-and-Diseases/Chickenpox.aspx)
Chickenpox Vaccine
< >There are two live virus vaccines for chickenpox licensed in the U.S.: Varivax and ProQuad (MMRV) manufactured by Merck;The CDC recommends that children get a chickenpox shot at 12 months of age, followed up by a booster dose between 4 and 6 years old;Reported complications from the chickenpox live virus vaccine include shock, seizures, brain inflammation (encephalitis), thrombocytopenia (blood disorder), Guillian Barre syndrome, death and infection with vaccine strain chickenpox or transmission of vaccine strain chickenpox to others;Chickenpox vaccine effectiveness is reported to be 44 percent for any form of the disease and 86 percent for moderate to severe disease;Mass use of chickenpox vaccine by children in the U.S. has removed natural boosting of immunity in the population, which was protective against shingles, and now adults are experiencing a shingles epidemic;In 2006, the CDC recommended a booster dose of chickenpox vaccine for all children and a shingles vaccine was licensed and recommended for all adults over age 60. As of September 1, 2015, there had been 122 claims filed in the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) for injuries and deaths following chickenpox or varicella vaccination, including 8 deaths and 114 serious injuries.· Using the MedAlerts search engine, as of September 30, 2015 there had been 3,358 serious adverse events reported to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) in connection with chickenpox and varicella-containing vaccines since 1990. Over half of those serious chickenpox vaccine-related adverse events occurring in children six years old and under. Of these chickenpox-vaccine related adverse event reports to VAERS, 161 were deaths, with over 60% of the deaths occurring in children under six years of age.