I have to ask, why are so many misinformation articles being voted to the top for this sub?

Urnovitz also discussed “jumping genes”—normal genes that may recombine with viral fragments to form new hybrid viruses called chimeras. He believes that this is exactly what happened when monkey viruses and human genes were brought together during early polio vaccine campaigns.

And because the chimera “has the envelope of a normal human gene,” typical cures won't work. How do you develop a vaccine or other antidote against the body's own DNA?

For more information about autoimmune diseases and viruses, I recommend the following lecture available on Youtube: "The Exploding Autoimmune Epidemic: It's Not Autoimmune, you have Viruses." Here's a summary I put together of the important points mentioned in the lecture.

Manufacturing Mutation The World Health Organization launched its Global Polio Eradication Initiative will the goal of eliminating the disease by 2000.

However, by 2000 it became clear that polio was still around, and new strains derived form the vaccine itself were emerging.

In 1983, some researchers realized that a “vaccine-derived” polio virus had caused an outbreak in Egypt. [Reuters Health. “Polio outbreak in Dominican Republic and Haiti caused by vaccine-derived virus.” Reuters Medical News (December 4, 2000)]

In 1993, Dr. Radu Crainic of the Pasteur Institute discovered that strains of the polio virus have the ability to spontaneously recombine with themselves and create new strains.

Crainic showed that if you vaccinate a child with polio strains 1, 2, and 3, you can produce a new strain, strain 4, out of the child's stool. Crainic concluded that the polio vaccine creates favorable conditions contributing to the evolution of viral “recombinations.”

In 2000, virologist Hiromy Yoshida found a new infectious polio virus in Japanese rivers and sewages. The virus had mutated from the polio vaccine and regained much of its original virulence, as confirmed by genetic sequencing. According to Yoshida, this poses a “persistent environmental threat” and the live oral polio vaccine is to blame.

According to a 2000 Reuters Medical News article, a polio outbreak in Haiti and the Dominican Republic resulted in numerous cases of flaccid paralysis. Laboratory examinations confirmed health authorities' worst suspicions: the disease was caused by “an unusual viral derivative” of the polio vaccine. The virus demonstrates genetic similarity to the parent vaccine strain, “but it has assumed the neuro-virulence and transmissibility” of the wild polio virus. Health officials are obviously concerned, “because a wild poliovirus has not circulated in the Western Hemisphere since 1991,” and if the newly mutated polio virus spreads, it could cause new epidemics of the disease.

People around the world continue to be stricken with vaccine-derived polio viruses (VDPVs), and the aforementioned case in India is just one example. Under certain circumstances, polio viruses within the vaccine “regain both neuro-virulence and the capacity to circulate and cause outbreaks.”

For example, from 2001 to 2005, there were several vaccine-derived polio outbreaks in the Philippines, Madagascar, China and Indonesia. In 2006, additional cases of vaccine-derived polio were recorded in Cambodia. In 2010, a study was published in Finland with a title that just about says it all: “Highly divergent neurovirulent vaccine-derived polioviruses of all three serotypes are recurrently detected in Finnish sewage.”

Although no cases of “suspected poliomyelitis” have reportedly occurred in Finland since 1985, “Since December 2008, 21 genetically highly divergent, neurovirulent vaccine-derived polioviruses (VDPV) have been isolated from sewage in Tampere, Finland. While the source of the VDPV is unknown, characteristics of the viruses resemble those of strains isolated from immunodeficient, persistently infected persons.”

Unfortunately, animal matter and questionable drugs are still used in making the polio vaccine.

Despite the polio vaccine's long history of causing polio, and the manufacturer's inability to protect the public from dangerous microorganisms that perpetually contaminate an ever expanding repertoire of “new and improved” products, the currently available inactivated, or “killed-virus” polio vaccine continues to be manufactured in much the same way as earlier versions.

In the United States, today's polio vaccine is a sterile suspensions of three types of poliovirus. The viruses are grown in cultures of “a continuous line of monkey kidney cells...supplemented with newborn calf serum...” The vaccine also contains two antibiotics (neomycin and streptomycin), in addition to formaldehyde as a preservative.

In Canada, the inactivated polio vaccine is made in “human diploid cells” instead of monkey kidneys. Some researchers believe this is a safer alternative. According to Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center in Virginia, “With mounting evidence that cross-species transfer of viruses can occur, the United States should no longer be using animal tissues to produce vaccines.”

Dr. Arthur Levine of the NIH, however, believes that making polio vaccines using human cells isn't risk-free either, “because they must be tested for human infections.”

Levine also worries that even discussing these issues will frighten parents, “We do a grave disservice to the public if we were now to question the safety of the current polio vaccines on the basis of SV40.”

It is perhaps this attitude that prompted the CDC to recently remove the section of their website devoted to SV40 information. However, how can this be justified when hundreds of studies have now been conducted linking SV40 to cancer? Barbara Loe Fisher would like to see changes in the way vaccine safety is governed. She believes that agencies like the FDA have an inherent conflict of interest because of their mandate to promote universal vaccination on one hand and regulate vaccine safety on the other. “Who's minding the store when the FDA has allowed drug companies to produce vaccines grown on contaminated monkey kidneys?”

Dr. Urnovitz is even more resolute in his convictions. He thinks that an extensive study of human exposure to simian microbes is long overdue. “Half of the people in this country are baby boomers who were born between 1941 and 1961 and are at high risk for having been exposed to polio vaccines contaminated with monkey viruses. Are we just a time bomb waiting to happen, waiting to develop lupus, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease?”

Urnovitz sums it up nicely, “You have to realize that if you mess around with nature, you're going to pay the price...”

Beginning in the early 1980s, simultaneous outbreaks of Kaposi sarcoma and serious opportunistic infections (later associated with AIDS) were reported among homosexual men, especially in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. This time span coincides with the average incubation period between HIV infections and the development of AIDS.

In 1982, the CDC concluded that such outbreaks “strongly suggests the occurrence of a single epidemic of underlying immunosuppression....” The next year, HIV was identified as the causative agent.

In 1992, Lancet (http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PII0140-6736%2892%2990876-5/fulltext) published the first scientific explanation showing how repeated doses of SIV-contaminated polio vaccines may have seeded HIV among American homosexual men.

In the 1980s, hundreds of people diagnosed with AIDS had no identified risk factor, in other words, they didn't engage in risky behaviors associated with AIDS infection. Many children were listed as NIR. Some parents even claimed that HIV-contaminated polio vaccines infected their children.

On February 12, 1994, Bruce Williams filed a civil suit against the American Cyanamid Company, claiming its polio vaccine caused his daughter's illness. The suit alleges that “the live oral poliovirus vaccine was produced, tested, and approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration pursuant to measures inconsistent with accepted standards of medical practice.” The lawsuit also asserts that “the product was FDA approved despite the known presence of contaminants, including retroviruses such as HIV.”

The Williams' lawyer even identified the specific lots of vaccine the child received, but the CDC and federal health officials refused to test them. According to their lawyer, “The CDC could disprove my entire hypothesis by testing the vaccines they have in their possession. The fact that they haven't done so is evidence there's something wrong with the vaccine.”

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, was first noticed in the mid-1980s. Mad cow disease is a progressive nerve disorder of cattle that's similar to scrapie, a disease that affects sheep. Authorities believe it spread to cows from sheep when they were fed scrapie-infected bone meal. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD and vCJD (a newly discovered variant) are the human equivalents of mad cow disease. They cause a comparable wasting of the brain leading to muscle incoordination, sensory loss, and mental confusion. It is always fatal.

Mad cow disease and the newly discovered variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob may be caused by the same infectious agent. A study published in Nature showed that monkeys injected with BSE developed very similar symptoms to vCJD. They also have similar molecular characteristics.

Mad cow disease can be passed from cows to humans if they ingest BSE-infected beef, or if they receive vaccines contaminated with BSE. BSE-associated infectious agents are capable of contaminating polio vaccines because polio vaccines are not only grown in monkey kidneys, but in calf serum as well. In fact, many parts of the cow are used in vaccine production. Glycerol is derived from cow fat; gelatin and amino acids come from cow bones; and the growth medium for viruses and other microorganism may require cow skeletal muscle, enzymes, and blood.

Authorities knew that vaccines could be infected with BSE-associated transmissible agents as early as 1988. Yet, in England, vaccine manufacturers waited months before switching to cows less likely to be infected and refused to removed current stock off the shelves and out of doctor's offices until it was all sold, or expired five years later toward the end of 1993.

According to one British legislator, “The Department of Health was potentially criminally negligent in not requiring the immediate withdrawal or cessation of use of vaccines from potentially contaminated sources. It is also beyond belief the Department should not even have monitored those who were injected, and is now trying to sweep the whole thing under the carpet.”

Finally, in October 2000, the Department of Health became so concerned about the likelihood of of children being infected with BSE-contaminated vaccines and falling prey to vCreutzfeldt-Jakob disease—dozens of people, including children, had already contracted it—that they issued a recall of hundreds of thousands of polio vaccines made using fetal bovine serum extracted from British cows. In the United States, the FDA issued a “warning” to manufacturers in 1996 instructing them to “take whatever steps are necessary to reduce potential risk of transmission of BSE agent.” By 2000, the FDA realized that its “recommendations” were being ignored, for vaccines were still being made in bovine materials from countries reporting BSE. These vaccines wouldn't be removed from the market until 2002, when all existing stock had been purchased. Although cows in America don't exhibit “mad cow symptoms,” tens of thousands of cattle are severely incapacitated each year in what some have suggested may be related to BSE. These “downed” animals have not been ruled out of vaccine production by the FDA.

Dr. Richard Marsh of the Department of Animal Health and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, conducted research providing evidence that down cattle in the U.S. may harbor a new variant of mad cow disease. He inoculated cows with TME, a variant of BSE. They became “downed” instead of “mad.”

Other scientists inoculated cows with scrapie from U.S. sheep. They, too, became “downed” instead of “mad.”

According to Farm Sanctuary, a national non-profit organization dedicated to preventing irresponsible agricultural practices, “We are concerned that, like in Britain, there is a powerful economic incentive to ignore evidence that BSE, or a variant of BSE, exists in the U.S.”

More Malicious Microorganisms SV-40, SIV, and BSE aren't the only concern. Monkeys and cows, the preferred animals for making the polio vaccine, harbor thousands of viruses and potentially infectious microorganisms. Scientists have known since 1955 that monkeys host the “B” virus, foamy agent virus, haemadsorption viruses, the LCM virus, arboviruses, bovine immunodeficiency virus (BIV), and more.

In 1956, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) was discovered in chimpanzees. According to the controversial researcher Dr. Viera Scheibner, RSV viruses “formed prominent contaminants in polio vaccines, and were soon detected in children.” Allegedly, RSV caused “serious cold-like symptoms in small infants and babies who received the polio vaccine.”

By 1961, the link between RSV and respiratory tract illnesses became clear, as the virus was found in 57% of infants with bronchiolitis or pneumonia, and 12% of babies with a milder febrile respiratory disease.

Infected babies babies remained ill for three to five months. RSV was also found to be contagious, and soon spread to adults where it has been linked to the common cold.

According to the CDC, today RSV affects the majority of children by the age of two, and is the most common cause of bronchiolitis and pneumonia among children under one.

RSV remains highly contagious and results in thousands of hospitalizations every year; many people die from it. Ironically, scientists are developing a vaccine to combat RSV—the infectious agent that very likely entered the human population by way of a vaccine.

The Wikipedia page for RSV ends with this provocative statement: “The RSV is virtually the same as chimpanzee coryza virus and can be transmitted from monkeys to humans...the inactivated polio vaccine was reportedly contaminated with simian viruses, including Chimpanzee coryza, during 1955-1963.” The two sources given for this statement are a 2005 study and, in the category of other simian viruses, Wikipedia provides a link to the now-deleted CDC page on SV40 contamination of the polio vaccine.

In 1996, at the Eighth Annual Houston Conference on AIDS, a microbiologist named Dr. Howard B. Urnovitz revealed that as many as 26 monkey viruses may have been in the original Salk vaccines, including the simian equivalents of human echo virus, coxsackie, herpes (HHV-6, HHV-7, and HHV-8), adenoviruses, Epstein-Barr, and cytomegalovirus. Urnovitz maintains that contaminated Salk vaccines given to U.S. children between 1955 and 1961 likely set this generation up for immune system damage and neurological disorders.

He sees correlations between early polio vaccine campaigns and the sudden emergence of human T-cell leukemia, epidemic Kaposi's sarcoma, Burkitt's lymphoma, herpes, Epstein-Barr and chronic fatigue syndrome.

Indeed, as early as 1957 it was known that as many as eight “apparently new” viruses had contaminated the vaccine from using monkey-kindey tissue cultures. Urnovitz challenged medical science to prove wrong his theory that the human immunodeficiency virus Type-1 (HIV-1) is a monkey-human hybrid that was created after 300,000 Africans were injected between 1957 and 1959 with quantities of experimental live oral polio vaccines contaminated with different monkey viruses.

Although this time period is widely accepted by medical researchers, more recent conflicting reports suggest that the first HIV infection may have occurred years earlier.

Regardless of when the first HIV infection occurred, it would seem to be premature to dismiss the OPV (Oral Polio Vaccine) AIDS hypothesis on this basis alone. The timing of the first HIV infection is irrelevant to the question of whether or not some doses of the experimental polio vaccine used in Africa in the late 1950s were contaminated, thus precipitating a future outbreak.

Koprowski's vaccine was not approved for human use, so it was discontinued in 1960 following the African trials. Thus, it was only administered to inhabitants of the Belgian Congo, Rwanda and Burundi—the precise area where high levels of HIV infection were identified by researcher 30 years later.

Furthermore, the AIDS virus is known to infect mucous cells, prevalent in the mouth. The African vaccines were squirted into people's mouths.

Could squirting an HIV-contaminated polio vaccine into people's mouths cause AIDS? According to Tom Folks, chief retrovirologist at the CDC, “Any time a person has a lesion in his mouth, then there could be transmission” of the virus. Dr. Robert Bohannon of Baylor College of Medicine asserts that squiring polio vaccines into one's mouth would tend to aerosolize some of the liquid. Small drops could then go into the lungs, and from there to the blood cells susceptible to infection. This could be an efficient mode of HIV transmission. Experts believe that the average time between HIV infection and the development of AIDS is approximately 8-10 years.

If the African polio vaccine was indeed contaminated with SIV/HIV, initial outbreaks of AIDS would have occurred from the mid-1960s to early 1970s. This period accurately coincides with the emergence of AIDS in equatorial Africa. Understandably, authorities are very reluctant to admit that there's even a possibility that scientists may have contributed to the AIDS pandemic by growing polio vaccines in virus-laden monkey kidneys.

In 1992, Tom Curtis published a story for Rolling Stone that created quite a stir. Although dismissed by most experts, “a few scientists, notably the biologist W.D. Hamilton, thought the hypothesis required serious investigation, but they received little support from the scientific community.”

William Haseltine, a professor at Harvard, believes that hypothesizing about the origin of AIDS is distracting and nonproductive, saying, “It's not relevant...I'm not interested in discussing it.” Dr. David Heymann, head of the WHO's Global Program of AIDS, stated that “the origin of the AIDS virus is of no importance to science today.”

Jonas Salk wouldn't comment on the possibility, as apparently he was too busy working on an AIDS vaccine, and Sabin's response was “you can't hang Koprowski with that.” Koprowski himself initially dismissed the idea with a laugh, and then later said that “this is a highly theoretical situation.”

His amusement must not have lasted long, because Koprowski sued Curtis and Rolling Stone for “...the destruction of (his) professional and personal reputation, for mental and emotional suffering, and for...humiliation and embarrassment.” As a result the magazine was ordered to pay $1 in damages. [See The Seeds of Doom by Christian Biasco]

However, both Tom Folks of the CDC and Robert Gallo thought testing the seed stocks of polio might be a good idea. According to Folks, “any time we can learn more about the natural history [of AIDS], it helps us understand the pathogenesis and...the transmission.”

Gallo believes that questions like this “are of more than academic interest because answering them may help avoid future zoonitic catastrophes—that is, transmission of disease from lower animals to humans.”

Responding to these concerns, some AIDS researchers formally requested samples of the original polio vaccine seed stocks. But the government would neither release nor test them because there are “only a small number of vials” of the material, and tests “might use it all up.”

Inspired by Curtis' investigative report, a British writer named Edward Hooper traveled in Africa, Europe, and the United States for seven years. As a result of his research, he published a book in 1999 called The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS.

Although the scientific community generally rejects the OPV AIDS hypothesis, Hooper “criticizes the research and conduct of many of the scientists involved in the investigation and alleges a 'very substantial cover-up' took place to silence the hypothesis.”

One of the several arguments against the hypothesis was that Koprowski was not using chimpanzees in his experiments, and therefore HIV contamination didn't occur. However, eyewitness testimony suggests otherwise. In 2004, The Origins of AIDS, a French TV documentary strongly supportive of the OPV hypothesis, appeared on several television stations around the world. The film offers a convincing case for the hypothesis, and seriously challenges the questionable nature of the categorical denials by Koprowski and others that no chimpanzees were used in the development of his experimental vaccine.

The Koprowski vaccines were tested and found not to contain SIV or HIV genetic material: http://aidscience.org/Science/Cohen289(5486)1850.html

AIDS in America Although Koprowski's experiment may have contributed to the rise of AIDS in Africa, what might have contributed to the spread of the disease to the homosexual community in America?

In 1974, clinics in New York and California began experimental treatments for gay men afflicted with herpes. Therapy consisted of multiple doses of the live polio vaccine.

The vaccine was produced in the kidneys of the African Green monkey, a known reservoir for SIV, a likely precursor to HIV.

From Polio to Smallpox and HIV to AIDS

If the WHO's smallpox vaccination campaign triggered an AIDS epidemic in Africa, how did so many people get infected with HIV in the first place? SV40 was just one of many simian viruses known to have contaminated polio vaccines.

Hilary Koprowski, who is about to be featured heavily in this story, wrote a letter to the Congressional Health and Safety Subcommittee in 1961 saying: As monkey kidney culture is host to innumerable simian viruses, the number found varying in relation to the amount of work expended to find them, the problem presented to the manufacturer is considerable, if not insuperable. As our technical methods improve we may find fewer and fewer lots of vaccine which can be called free from simian virus.

According to Ronald Desrosier, a professor at Harvard Medical School, growing polio vaccine in monkey kidneys is “a ticking time bomb.” Desrosier acknowledges that you can test monkeys before using their tissue and screen out those carrying harmful viruses. But he warns that you can test only for those viruses you know about—and that our knowledge is limited to perhaps “2% of existing monkey viruses.”

During the 1950s-70s, virus detection techniques were crude and unreliable. It wasn't until the 1980s that more sophisticated testing procedures were developed.

That was when researchers discovered that about 50% of all African green monkeys—the primate of choice for making polio vaccines—were infected with simian immunodeficieny virus (SIV), a virus closely related to human immunodeficieny virus (HIV), the infectious agent thought to precede AIDS.

Essex, M., et al. “The origin of the AIDS virus” Scientific American 1988;259:64-71. Karpas, A. “Origin and spread of AIDS.” Nature 1990;348:578 Kyle, WS. “Simian retroviruses, poliovaccine, and origin of AIDS.” Lancet 1992;339:600-1. Elswood, BF., Stricker, RB. “Polio vaccines and the origin of AIDS.” Medical Hypothesis 1994:42:347-54

From the last study: “We hypothesize that the AIDS pandemic may have originated with a contaminated polio vaccine that was administered to inhabitants of Equatorial Africa from 1957 to 1959.” This has caused some researchers to wonder if HIV may simply be SIV “residing in and adapting to a human host.” This led others to wonder if SIV mutated into HIV once introduced into the human population by way of contaminated polio vaccines.

Martin, B. “Polio vaccines and the origin of AIDS: the career of a threatening idea.” Townsend Letter for Doctors (January 1994):97-100. Curtis, T. “The origin of AIDS: A startling new theory attempts to answer the question 'Was it an act of God or an act of man?'” Rolling Stone (March 19, 1992):57. “Workshop on simian virus-40 (SV-40): A possible human polyomavirus.” NVIC (Jan 27-28, 1997). Curtis, T. “Did polio vaccine experiment unleash AIDS in Africa?” The Washington Post (April 5, 1992):C3+.

Vaccine authorities were so concerned about the possibility that SIV was a precursor to HIV, and that polio vaccines were the means of transmission from monkey to human, that the World Health Organization convened two meetings of experts in 1985 to explore the data and consider their options. After all, SIV was very similar to HIV and occurred naturally in the monkey species predominantly used by vaccine manufacturers.

However, WHO concluded the vaccines were safe enough and insisted the mass vaccination campaigns continue. By 1989, they recommended not making the polio vaccine using monkeys infected with SIV.

The following year, wild chimpanzees in Africa were found to be infected with a strain of SIV that was almost identical to HIV. Some researchers even referred to it as the “missing link” to the origins of HIV.

Since chimpanzees were used to test viruses for potential use in vaccines, and were kept in captivity by research laboratories, they could have been a source of vaccine contamination.

Scientific concerns were also heightened when researchers found some West Africans who were infected with an SIV-like virus that was a fundamental twin to HIV. They called it HIV-2, and like the initial HIV subtype, it was implicated in the development of AIDS.

According to Robert Gallo: “The monkey virus is the human virus. There are monkey viruses as close to isolates of HIV-2 as HIV-2 isolates are to each others.”

By 1991, as the result of improvements in virus-detection techniques, researchers found SIV DNA in the kidneys of infected monkeys. Minced monkey kidneys were, and still are, used to produce the live polio vaccine. SIV was also found in the cancer cells of an AIDS victim, and in other people as well. To many researchers, this trail of evidence had become too persuasive to deny. Apparently, millions of people were infected with monkey viruses capable of causing AIDS, and this cross-species transfer very likely occurred by way of SIV-contaminated polio vaccines.

Giunta, S., et al. “The primate trade and the origin of AIDS virus.” Nature 1987;329:22. Seale, J. “Crossing the species barrier—viruses and the origins of AIDS in perspective.” J R Soc Med 1989;82:519-23. Lecatsas, G. “Origin of AIDS.” Nature 1991;351:179. Gilks, C. “AIDS, monkeys and malaria” Nature 1991;354:262.

Since most historians agree that AIDS originated in Africa, how could it be linked to the polio vaccine if Salk and Sabin's trials were conducted in the U.S., the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe?

In March 1951, several years before Drs. Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin would scuffle over whose vaccine was the true prophylactic, Dr. Hilary Koprowski announced at a medical conference that he had become the first doctor in history to test polio vaccine on humans. His “volunteers” included several institutionalized children with mental handicaps. They drank the vaccine in chocolate milk.

From 1957 to 1960, after years of tinkering with monkey kidneys and polio germs, Koprowski tested his own experimental polio vaccine on 325,000 equatorial Africans, including 75,000 citizens of Leopoldville, Belgian Congo (now Kinshasa, Zaire).

Called by drums, rural natives traveled to local villages where they had a liquid vaccines squirted into their mouths. 98% of the vaccine recipients were infants and toddlers. The youngest children received 15 times the adult dosage. Though Koprowski claimed he had the backing of the World Health Organization, WHO denied sanctioning the large-scale trials.

In 1959, Albert Sabin published a study that claimed that Koprowski's polio vaccine used in the African trials contained un “unidentified” and “unstable” cell-killing virus. Although he was quick to point out the flaws in the vaccine of Koprowski, his professional rival, unfortunately his ability to detect viruses in the polio vaccine fell short when it came to mass contamination of Sabin's own polio vaccine with SV-40.

In response to Sabin's claims of contamination, Koprowski simply scoffed at him and said he was just trying to discredit his work (as he would do again and again to anyone making this accusation). The virus allegedly detected by Sabin was never identified. Until recently, the earliest known blood sample containing antibodies against HIV was traced back to 1959. The serum came from a patient visiting a clinic in Leopoldville, one of the epicenters of the AIDS epidemic that would occur a decade later.

Gerald Myers, a genetic sequencing expert with Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico, tracked the evolution of HIV and confirmed that today's major subtypes of the AIDS virus in humans appear to have arisen as recently as 1960.

Moreover, this slow-growing strain was the same as one found in some types of cancerous tumors. Had Ratner not saved vials of vaccine, the source of this slow-growing strain would have been suspected but unproven. Not only is SV40 showing up in brain tumors and leukemia, but according to research conducted by Carbone and others, SV40 is being detected in 38% of patients with bone cancer and in 58% of those with mesothelioma, a deadly type of lung cancer. Carbone's pioneering work indicates that SV40 blocks an important protein that normally protects cells from becoming malignant.

Carbone, M., et al. “SV40-like sequences in human bone tumors.” Oncogene 1996;13(3):527-35. Pass, HI., Carbone, M., et al. “Evidence for and implications of SV40-like sequences in human mesotheliomas and osteosarcomas.” Important Advances in Oncology 1996:89-108. Rock, A. “The lethal dangers of the billion dollar vaccine business.” Money (December 1996):161.

In 2001, the San Francisco Chronicle published a story called “Rogue virus in the vaccine: Early polio vaccine harbored virus now feared to cause cancer in humans,” stating: The discovery of SV40 in human tumors has generated intense debate within the scientific community, pitting a handful of government health officials, who believe that the virus is harmless; against researchers from Boston to China who now suspect SV40 may be a human carcinogen. At stake are millions of research dollars and potential medical treatments for those afflicted with the cancers SV40 may be causing.

“I believe that SV40 is carcinogenic (in humans),” said Dr. Michele Carbone of Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Ill. “We need to be creating therapies for people who have these cancers, and now we may be able to because we have a target—SV40.”

But scientists at the National Cancer Institute say their studies show almost no SV40 in human tumors and no cancer increase in people who received the contaminated vaccine. “No one would dispute there's been a widespread, very scary exposure to the population of potentially cancer-causing virus,” said Dr. Howard Strickler, NCI's chief investigator. “But none of our studies and other major analyses have shown an inkling of an effect on the population.” Critics charge, however, that the few studies done by the government are scientifically flawed and that health officials have downplayed the potential risks posed by SV40 ever since they learned in 1961 that the virus contaminated the polio vaccine and caused tumors in rodents.

“How long can the government ignore this?” asked Dr. Adi Gazdar, a University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center cancer researcher. “The government has not sponsored any real research. Here's something possibly affecting millions of Americans, and they're indifferent. Maybe they don't want to find out.” In 1998, after a national cancer database was analyzed, it was determined that among those exposed to SV40 from the polio vaccine, there were 17% more bone cancers, 20% more brain cancers, and 178% more mesotheliomas. Researchers also found 10 times more osteosarcoma rates.

Even more alarming, some research suggests that SV40 can be passed from human to human and form mother to child. A study of nearly 60,000 women found that children of mothers who received the Salk vaccine in the early 1960s had brain tumors at a rate 13 times greater than mothers who didn't receive the shot.

Also, a 1996 study published in the journal Cancer Research found SV40 in 23% of blood samples and 45% of semen taken from healthy subjects. Mauro Tognon, one of the authors of this study, believes this might explain why brain, bone, and lung cancers are on the rise.

Despite official denials of any correlation between SV40-contaminated polio vaccines and increased cancer rates, by April 2001, 62 papers from 30 laboratories around the world had reported SV40 in human tissues and tumors. Even the National Cancer Institute issued a statement that SV40 “may be associated with human cancer.”

Why the uncertainty? Why the obfuscation? Why the silence? In his book The Health Century, Edward Shorter asks these questions and quotes an extraordinary statement made by Albert Sabin: Was this silence merely the incompetence of the press in the face of a complex scientific question, or was there a deliberate effort to keep a lid on the story? Albert Sabin was asked thirty years later why the silence? “I think to release certain information prematurely,” he said, “is not a public service. There's too much scaring the public unnecessarily. Oh, your children were injected with a cancer virus and all that. That's not very good.”

Today, the SV40 Cancer Foundation is devoted to raising awareness about a potential link between the simian virus and human cancer.

The SV40 Cancer Foundation was founded by Raphaele and Michael Horwin. The Horwin's son Alexander Horwin was born on June 7, 1996 and was given the oral polio vaccine in November 1997. Alexander was diagnosed with medulloblastoma, a malignant brain cancer, leading to his death on January 31, 1999.

The Horwins contend that the polio vaccine their son ingested was contaminated with SV40, leading to his death. Four independent PCR tests performed at four separate research institutes on Alexander's brain tissue demonstrated the presence of the virus.

The Virus and the Vaccine documents the incredible saga of the Horwin family. The vaccine manufacturer unsuccessfully tried to argue in court that the SV40 contamination was the result of a trip to the zoo (!), but the Horwin family had overwhelming scientific evidence on their side.

Tragically, although the judge admitted the polio vaccine was the likely origin of the SV40 that was found in his tumor, the vaccine manufacturer was exonerated because their equipment was insufficient and unable to offer 100% certainty that the product would be SV40-free.

One of the most important reasons this subject needs to be thoroughly studied is that traditional methods of cancer treatment such as chemotherapy may make SV40-related cancers worse: It is well documented that SV40 binds with tumor suppressor genes p53 and RB. These genes and their proteins are needed to drive a damaged cell towards apoptosis—programmed cell death. Apoptosis is a critical cellular function that stops the growth of tumors in man.

Cell-killing or cytotoxic therapies like chemotherapy and radiation utilize apoptosis. These therapies cause cellular DNA damage such as point mutations, strand breaks, and other disturbances to a cell’s DNA. This DNA damage, in turn, triggers the apoptosis which leads to cell death. In this way, chemo and radiation kill cells (cancer cells and healthy cells).

However, when the large T antigen (Tag) of SV40 is present in a cancer cell it binds p53 and RB and stops these genes from working. There is no apoptosis. The result is that chemo and radiation kill healthy cells, but the cancerous cells infected with SV40’s Tag live on with even more mutations.

This means that standard cancer therapies may only make a SV40 cancer more abnormal and aggressive and less responsive to standard cytotoxic therapies. Knowing this, you would think that a patient who is diagnosed with a cancer associated with SV40 (i.e. brain cancers, mesothelioma, bone cancers, Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, and thyroid cancers) would have their cancer tested for the presence of this virus. And, if the virus is present, the patient would be offered rational therapies.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. There are no prospective tests or trials in which SV40 status is used in clinical decision-making. Instead, tumors are tested often after a patient has died to determine whether it contained SV40. At this point, there is no benefit to the patient.

SV40 is a problem that federal government authorities have not addressed responsibly because the government’s own vaccine programs are responsible for the spread of the virus throughout the western world. Federal authorities are so concerned about being blamed for unleashing a cancer-causing monkey virus that they would rather ignore its role in cancer than take the appropriate steps to develop rational therapies.

Eventually, Bernice Eddy lost her labs. In successive measures she was denied permission to attend scholarly conferences, her papers were held up, and finally she was removed from vaccine research altogether.

Her treatment became a scandal within the scientific community and was discussed in Senate hearings.

Bernice Eddy came to a shocking conclusion: an entire generation had been given cancer-causing monkey viruses. Using this knowledge, she predicted a future epidemic of cancer.

Maurice Hilleman and Benjamin Sweet came to similar conclusions. Sweet and Hilleman were pharmaceutical researchers for Merck and are credited with first identifying the virus as SV40, the 40th such simian virus discovered until that point. According to Hilleman: The discovery of this new virus...raises the important question of the existence of other such viruses...As shown in this report, all three types of Sabin's live poliovirus vaccine, now fed to millions of persons of all ages, were contaminated with SV40.

Hilleman and Sweet noted the possibility that it might cause cancer, “especially when administered to human babies.” According to Sweet: It was a frightening discovery because, back then, it was not possible to detect the virus with the testing procedures we had....We had no idea of what this virus would do. First, we knew that SV40 had oncogenic (cancer-causing) properties in hamsters, which was bad news. Secondly, we found out that it hybridized with certain DNA viruses...such that [they] would then have SV40 genes attached [to them]....

When we started growing the vaccines, we just couldn't get rid of the SV40-contaminated virus. We tried to neutralize it, but couldn't....Now, with the theoretical links to HIV and cancer, it just blows my mind. Further research uncovered even more disturbing information.

This cancer-causing virus was not only ingested via Sabin's contaminated oral sugar-cube vaccine, but was directly injected into people's bloodstreams as well. Apparently, SV40 survived the formaldehyde Salk used to kill microbes that defiles his injectable vaccine. Experts have estimated that up to 100 million Americans and at least 100 millions others throughout the world were exposed to SV40 through the polio vaccine. [Bookchin, D., et al. “Tainted polio vaccine still carries its threat 40 years later. The Boston Globe (January 26, 1997)]

Even though SV40 is universally acknowledged to cause cancer in animal models, strangely enough its role in causing cancer in humans is still debated. As Wikipedia explains: The hypothesis that SV40 might cause cancer in humans has been a particularly controversial area of research. Several different methods have been used to detect SV40 in a variety of human cancers, although how reliable these detection methods are, and whether SV40 has any role in causing these tumors, remains unclear.

As a result of these uncertainties, academic opinion remains divided, with some arguing that this hypothesis is not supported by the data, and others arguing that some cancers may involve SV40.

However, the United States National Cancer Institute announced in 2004 that although SV40 does cause cancer in some animal models, “substantial epidemiological evidence has accumulated to indicate that SV40 likely does not cause cancer in humans.”

As the Wikipedia article points out, this is in contrast to a 2002 study conducted by The National Academy of Sciences Immunization Safety Review committee that declared, “The committee concludes that the biological evidence is moderate that SV40 exposure could lead to cancer in humans under natural conditions.”

Despite the United States National Cancer Institute's reliance on broad “epidemiological evidence” that SV40 “likely” does not cause cancer in humans, numerous studies published throughout the world strongly suggest that SV40 is a catalyst for many types of cancer:

Innis, MD. “Oncogenesis and poliomyelitis vaccine.” Nature 1968;219:972-3. Soriano, F., et al. “Simian virus 40 in a human cancer.” Nature 1974;249:421-4. Scherneck, S., et al. “Isolation of a SV-40-like papovavirus from a human glioblastoma.” Internat J Cancer 1979;24:523-31. Stoian, M., et al. “Possible relation between viruses and oromaxillofacial tumors. II. Research on the presence of the SV40 antigen and specific antibodies in patients with oromaxillofacial tumors.” Virologie 1987;38:35-40. Bravo, MP., et al. “Association between the occurrence of antibodies to simian vacuolating virus 40 and bladder cancer in male smokers.” Neoplasma 1988;35:285-8. O'Connell, K., et al. “Endothelial cells transformed by SV40 T-antigen cause Kaposi's sarcoma-like tumors in nude mice.” American Journal of Pathology 1991;139(4):743-9. Weiner, LP., et al. “Isolation of virus related to SV40 from patients with progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy. New England Journal of Medicine 1972;286:385-90. Tabuchi, K. “Screening of human brain tumors for SV-40-related T-antigen.” International J of Cancer 1978;21:12-7. Meinke, W., et al. “Simian virus 40-related DNA sequences in a human brain tumor.” Neurology 1979;29:1590-4. Krieg, P., et al. “Episomal simian virus 40 genomes in human brain tumors.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 1981;78:6446-50. Geissler, E. “SV40 and human brain tumors.” Progress in Medical Virology 1990;37:211-22. Martini, M., et al. “Human brain tumors and simian virus 40.” J of the National Cancer Institute, 1995;87(17):1331 Lednicky, JA., et al. “Natural simian virus 40 strains are present in human choroid plexus and ependymoma tumors.” Virology 1995;212(2):710-7 Vilchez, RA., et al. “Association between simian virus 40 and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.” Lancet (Mar 9, 2002):817-23.

One of the most important researchers and authorities on SV40 is a molecular pathologist at Chicago's Loyola University Medical Center named Michael Carbone. From the Wikipedia page of American physician Herbert Ratner: In 1960 Ratner learned that a government researcher Dr. Bernice Eddy had discovered evidence of a cancer-causing agent that she described as a vacuolating virus in the Salk vaccine rhesus-monkey-kidney culture medium. Dr. Ben Sweet working under Dr. Maurice Hilleman at Merck observed a similar agent in the same kind of medium that they were using to develop a vaccine for adenovirus. The agent was later identified as a monkey virus and named Simian Virus 40 (SV40). Sweet & Hilleman published their work in November 1960 and Eddy published her work in May 1961.

The unused box of 1955 Salk polio vaccine Ratner had placed in his refrigerator remained there for more than forty years. In the meantime researchers had begun to discover that SV40 was associated with various cancers. One of these researchers was Dr. Michele Carbone, a molecular pathologist of Italian birth and education, then working at the University of Chicago.

Eventually the entire box of remaining vials was given to Carbone in the presence of a lawyer and witnesses. In these vials Carbone discovered two separate strains of SV40, one of which was a slow-growing strain previously not known to have been in polio vaccines and for which the vaccines currently being marketed were not being tested.

Dr. Biskind had the composure to argue what he thought was the most obvious explanation for the polio epidemic: Central nervous system diseases (CNS) such as polio are actually the physiological and symptomatic manifestations of the ongoing government- and industry-sponsored inundation of the world's populace with central nervous system poisons. Biskind emphasized physiological evidence of DDT poisoning that resembled polio physiology: Particularly relevant to recent aspects of this problem are neglected studies by Lillie and his collaborators of the National Institutes of Health, published in 1944 and 1947 respectively, which showed that DDT may produce degeneration of the anterior horn cells of the spinal cord in animals. These changes do not occur regularly in exposed animals any more than they do in human beings, but they do appear often enough to be significant.

He continues, bearing his exasperation in trying to make the obvious plain. “When the population is exposed to a chemical agent known to produce in animals lesions in the spinal cord resembling those in human polio, and thereafter the latter disease increases sharply in incidence and maintains its epidemic character year after year, is it unreasonable to suspect an etiologic relationship?”

A German study of the physiology of acute DDT poisoning confirmed that DDT often causes polio-like physiology.

Biskind's views fell into disfavor after the introduction of the polio vaccine, which “proved” to most that the majority of polio cases were caused by a virus. By 1955, Biskind, whose works had been published in established medical journals and who testified before the Senate on the dangers of pesticides, was forced self-publish his writings. The Present Polio Predicament

Problems with the polio vaccine continue today, for in February of 2014, a study was published identifying a “polio-like” illness in five California children. “All children presented with acute flaccid paralysis of one or more limbs that reached peak severity within 48 hours of onset...All had been previously vaccinated against polio-virus.”

What the Abstract authors may not know is that 47,500 cases of vaccine-induced polio paralysis followed an oral polio vaccination campaign conducted by the GAVI Alliance, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the World Health Organization (WHO) in India in 2011.

Incredibly, the oral polio vaccine was given to Indian children, despite the fact that in the U.S., the CDC had dropped the OPV from its vaccine schedule because it was causing polio.

According to Neetu Vashisht and Jacob Puliyel at St. Stephens Hospital in Delhi: The charade about polio eradication and the great savings it will bring has persisted to date. It is a paradox that while the director general of WHO and Bill Gates are trying to muster support for polio eradication it has been known to the scientific community, for over 10 years, that eradication of polio is impossible. This is because in 2002 scientists had synthesized a chemical called poliovirus in a test-tube with the empirical formula C332,652H492,388N98,245O131,196P7, 501S2,340. It has been demonstrated that by positioning the atoms in sequence, a particle can emerge with all the properties required for its proliferation and survival in nature.

Vashisht and Puliyel published their findings in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics and “should have made headlines around the globe.” They determined: …while India has been polio-free for a year, there has been a huge increase in non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP). In 2011, there were an extra 47,500 new cases of NPAFP.

Clinically indistinguishable from polio paralysis but twice as deadly, the incidence of NPAFP was directly proportional to doses of oral polio received. Though this data was collected within the polio surveillance system, it was not investigated. The principle of primum-non-nocere [First, do no harm] was violated. For more information, here's one of the best lectures on the subject of polio available on Youtube. Suzanne Humphries, MD, speaks about the “disappearance” of polio, and includes detailed information about the deceptive reclassification of “polio” and the connection between the rampant use of DDT and polio-like disorders of the central nervous system.

If this brief overview doesn't already raise serious questions and concerns about the history of the polio vaccine, then strap yourselves in.

SV40

We return to 1959 and the pioneering work of Dr. Bernice Eddy, whose previous warnings about the Salk polio vaccine went unheeded, resulting in many deaths. For her efforts, she was removed from polio research at the NIH. For a complete account of Eddy and her story, read The Virus and the Vaccine: Contaminated Vaccine, Deadly Cancers, and Government Neglect. History, as they say, is doomed to repeat herself, for Eddy would yet again discover something was wrong with the polio vaccine. This time, however, the ramifications would be far more catastrophic, and her subsequent silencing was much more profound.

Dr. Eddy was fresh from her research into viral causes of cancer and her pioneering work in first describing the polyoma virus. However, she soon would earn the dubious honor of being the first to identify what we now call SV40 (Simian virus 40), an infectious agent capable of causing cancer. SV40 had widely contaminated the polio vaccine, and Eddy desperately tried to sound the alarm. Even though her previous warnings, if heeded, would have prevented the tragic Cutter Incident, she yet again was met with astonishing opposition.

What happened next was tragic not only for Eddy herself, but it precipitated one of the worst medical blunders/conspiracies of the 20th century. The Health Century by Edward Shorter offers the following account of this story: Sarah Stewart and Bernice Eddy's discovery of the polyoma in 1957 marked the real takeoff of theories about virus and cancer. It could be destructive like polio, but produce tumors at the same time.

At the same time in the late 1950s that Eddy and Stewart were producing cancers in animals with the polyoma virus, Eddy had sneaked back to the polio vaccine. “I did things on the side which I wasn't assigned to do,” Eddy said. One of them was starting to conduct safety experiments on the polio vaccine in June 1959, from which she had officially been removed four years earlier. In observing cells from the kidneys of rhesus monkeys under the microscope—the kind of cell preparation from which the polio vaccine was being made by private drug companies—Eddy had noted spontaneous degeneration, meaning that the cells would start to die without any apparent cause. She did more experiments with these cells, and on July 6, 1960, reported to her chief Joseph Smadel, that when she injected preparations from those monkey kidneys into hamsters, the hamsters got cancer. Tumors grew in newborn hamsters at the site of injection; probably a virus in the monkey cells was causing the cancer.

The story that follows is such a sad one, partly because Smadel himself was a distinguished scientist, not just a petty bureaucrat...he was not pleased, just after assuming his new post in viral research, when Eddy threw this time bomb onto his desk: the possibility of a cancer-causing virus in the polio vaccine. In August he sat down with Eddy, went over her data, and dismissed the findings as “lumps.”

Eddy tried every possible means to alert her peers to the danger, and ultimately decided she would “surprise” a meeting of the Cancer Society with her findings. The Eddy problem landed again on Smadel's desk when, in October of 1960, she gave a talk at the New York meeting of the Cancer Society. At the meeting she described finding a cancer-causing virus in the monkey cells from which the polio vaccine was grown.

Smadel hit the roof. “Smadel called me up,” Eddy said, “and if there was anything in the English language—any awful name—that he could call me, he did. Oh, he was mad. I never saw anybody so mad.” Smadel wrote Eddy a letter later that day forbidding her to speak in public again without clearing a written text of her remarks specifically with him. That was just the beginning.

In 1976, Salk even testified that the live-virus vaccine (used almost exclusively in the U.S. from the early 1960s to 2000) was the “principal if not sole cause” of all reported cases of polio in the U.S. since the early 1960s. [Washington Post, September 24, 1976.]

In 1992, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published an admission that the live-virus vaccine had become the dominant cause of polio in the United States.

Although authorities claimed that the vaccine caused only 8 cases of polio each year, an independent study “uncovered 13,641 reports of adverse events following use of the oral polio vaccine. These reports included 6,364 hospital/emergency room visits and 540 deaths.” [Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS); OPV Vaccine Report—Document #14] Eventually, after the public became increasingly aware of the dangers of the oral polio vaccine, it was removed from immunization schedules.

There has been much speculation that the polio vaccine did little, if anything, to cause the virus to disappear. Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, a medical researcher and pediatrician, claimed that there was no scientific evidence this was the case. From 1923 to 1953, before the Salk killed-virus vaccine was introduced, the polio death rate in the United States and England had already declined on its own by 47% and 55% respectively. Statistics show a similar decline in other European countries as well. [Alderson, M. International Mortality Statistics (Washington, DC: Facts on File, 1981):177-8]

And when the vaccine did become available, many European countries questioned its effectiveness and refused to systematically inoculate their citizens. Yet, polio epidemics also ended in these countries.

Part of the reason for the apparent decline in polio rates after the introduction of the vaccine, even while it was infecting many people with polio, was that polio was redefined at the same the vaccination program began.

The subject was controversial enough to be discussed during congressional hearings in 1962, when Dr. Bernard Greenberg, chairman of the Committee on Evaluation and Standards of the American Public Health Association, provided expert testimony documenting this important fact.

Prior to the introduction of the vaccine the patient only had to exhibit paralytic symptoms for 24 hours. Laboratory confirmation and tests to determine residual paralysis were not required.

The new definition required the patient to exhibit paralytics symptoms for at least 60 days, and residual paralysis had to be confirmed twice during the course of the disease.

Also, cases of aseptic meningitis, a condition with many variations and causes, were formally distinguished from the polio vaccine after the vaccine was introduced, as well as coxsackie virus infections (which can also lead to aseptic meningitis).

Both Guillain-Barré disease and aseptic meningitis were diagnosed as polio during the US epidemics prior to 1957. If you use the pre-1957 definition, then there are many more cases of poliomyelitis occurring in the US today, than there were in 1952—at the height of the US polio epidemics.

The Textbook of Child Neurology reported: “Coxsackie virus and echoviruses can cause paralytic syndromes that are clinically indistinguishable from paralytic poliomyelitis.” This new requirement for doctors caused a vast drop in the number of cases registered as poliomyelitis—a drop that ever since has been credited solely to the vaccine.

Dr. Bernard Greenberg, who also was head of the Dept. of Biostatistics for the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, “testified that not only did the cases of polio increase substantially after mandatory vaccinations—a 50% increase from 1957 to 1958, and an 80% increase from 1958 to 1959—but that the statistics were deliberately manipulated by the Public Health Service to give the opposite impression.” According to Greenberg: Prior to 1954 any physician who reported paralytic poliomyelitis was doing his patient a service by way of subsidizing the cost of hospitalization....Two examinations at least 24 hours apart was all that was required....In 1955 the criteria were changed...residual paralysis was determined 10 to 20 days after onset of illness and again 50 to 70 days after onset.

This change in definition meant that in 1955 we started reporting a new disease....Furthermore, diagnostic procedures have continued to be refined. Coxsackie virus infections and aseptic meningitis have been distinguished from poliomyelitis....Thus, simply by changes in diagnostic criteria, the number of paralytics cases was predetermined to decrease.

Some have speculated that approximately 90% of polio cases were eliminated from statistics by health authorities’ redefinition of the disease when the vaccine was introduced. In reality, the Salk vaccine contributed to increased cases of polio in numerous countries at a time when there were no epidemics being caused by the wild virus.

Polio has not been eradicated by vaccination, it is lurking behind a redefinition and new diagnostic names like viral or aseptic meningitis...there are some 30,000 to 50,000 cases of viral meningitis per year in the United States alone. That's where all those 30,000 to 50,000 cases of polio disappeared after the introduction of mass vaccination.

According to proponents of this claim, polio now “hides” behind the following conditions: acute flaccid paralysis, transverse myelitis, viral or aseptic meningitis, Guillain–Barré syndrome, Chinese paralytic syndrome, spinal meningitis, inhibitory palsy, etc.

The Los Angeles County health authorities stated: “Most cases reported prior to July 1, 1958 of non-paralytic poliomyelitis are now reported as viral or aseptic meningitis.”

In July 1955, before the new polio definition was introduced, there were 273 reported cases of polio in Los Angeles County, as compared to 50 reported cases of aseptic meningitis.

In July 1961, after the new definition was introduced, there were 65 cases of polio and 161 cases of aseptic meningitis. In September 1966, there were only 5 reported cases of polio, and 256 reported cases of aseptic meningitis. [Los Angeles County Health Index: Morbidity and Mortality, Reportable Diseases.] The incidence of meningitis skyrocketed as “official” polio cases declined, as the following data, compiled from national surveillance reports, shows. Non-paralytic polio cases vs. aseptic meningitis cases: 1951-1960: 70,083 - 0 1961-1982: 589 - 102,999 1983-1992: 0 - 117,366

If this process of reclassification had not occurred, it would have been impossible to hide the fact that infantile paralysis cases had sharply increased after the introduction of Salk’s vaccine.

DDT is good for me-e-e! DDT may have played a significant role in the polio epidemics of the 1940s and 50s. By the early 1960s, it finally became understood that DDT was having a devastating impact on the environment and possibly human health.

DDT spraying and DDT delousing were both extremely, and terrifyingly, common before this realization.

In 1953, Morton S. Biskind published a damning report called “Public health aspects of the new insecticides.” A decade before Rachel Carson would release her groundbreaking Silent Spring, Biskind was desperately trying to sound the alarm: It was even known by 1945 that DDT is stored in the body fat of mammals and appears in the milk. With this foreknowledge the series of catastrophic events that followed the most intensive campaign of mass poisoning in known human history, should not have surprised the experts.

Yet, far from admitting a causal relationship so obvious that in any other field of biology it would be instantly accepted, virtually the entire apparatus of communication, lay and scientific alike, has been devoted to denying, concealing, suppressing, distorting and attempts to convert into its opposite, the overwhelming evidence. Libel, slander and economic boycott have not been overlooked in this campaign.

The mistake resulted in the production of 120,000 doses of polio vaccine that contained live polio virus. Of the children who received the vaccine, 40,000 developed abortive poliomyelitis. The Cutter incident was one of the worst pharmaceutical disasters in U.S. history.

The renowned surgeon Alton Ochsner even gave the vaccine to two of his grandchildren...one died and the other was paralyzed. “Apparently, Salk's killed-virus vaccine was not completely inactivated.”

Perhaps it was their eagerness to get the polio vaccine developed and distributed as quickly as possible, but unfortunately the NIH did receive dire warnings before the release of the vaccine...a warning from one of their own. Dr. Bernice Eddy and her research partner Dr. Sarah Stewart are two of the most important scientists of the 20th century in the field of viral research.

Stewart developed an interest in researching viral links to cancer in light of the pioneering research of Jonas Salk in developing a vaccine for the virus which caused polio. Stewart is credited with discovering the Polyomavirus in 1953. She and research partner, Dr. Bernice Eddy, were successful in growing the virus in 1958 and the SE (Stewart-Eddy) polyoma virus is named after them. Stewart was the first to successfully demonstrate that viruses causing cancer could be spread from animal to animal.

The NIH Laboratory of Biologics Control, which had certified the Cutter polio vaccine, had received advance warnings of problems: in 1954, staff member Dr. Bernice Eddy had reported to her superiors that some of the inoculated monkeys had become paralyzed (pictures were sent as well). William Sebrell, the director of NIH wouldn't hear of such a thing.

Perhaps he should have listened, for a result, “The director of the microbiology institute lost his job, as did the equivalent of the assistant secretary for health. Dr Sebrell, the director of the NIH, resigned.”

Incredibly, instead of acknowledging Eddy for her validated concerns, they took her off polio research and instead ordered her to the influenza research division. Eddy continued her polio research on her own time, ultimately leading to one of the greatest medical conspiracies of the 20th century.

Following the Cutter Incident, the authorities acted quickly to alleviate the public's legitimate concerns about the safety of the recently developed polio vaccine. The vaccine was redeveloped, and by August 1955 over 4 million doses were administered in the United States. By 1959, nearly 100 other countries were using Salk's vaccine.

In 1957 Albert Sabin developed an oral live-virus polio vaccine over concerns that Salk's killed-virus vaccine would be ineffective at preventing epidemics. Sabin's goal was to simulate a real-life infection.

This meant using an attenuated or weakened form of the live virus. He experimented with thousands of monkeys and chimpanzees before isolating a rare type of poliovirus that would reproduce in the intestinal tract without penetrating the central nervous system.

The initial human trials were conducted in foreign countries. In 1958, it was tested in the U.S. In 1963, Sabin's oral “sugar-cube” vaccine became available for general use.

However, it cannot be given to people with compromised immune systems. Plus it is capable of causing polio in some recipients of the vaccine, and in individuals with compromised immune systems who come into close contact with recently vaccinated children.

Strebel, PM., et al. “Epidemiology of polio in U.S. one decade after the last reported case of indigenous wild virus associated disease.” Clin Infec Dis, CDC (Feb 1992):568-79 Gorman, C. “When the vaccine causes the polio.” Time (October 30, 1995):83. Shaw, D. “Unintended casualties in war on polio.” Philadelphia Inquirer (June 6, 1993):A1.

In 2000, the CDC “updated” its U.S. polio vaccine recommendations, reverting back to policies first implemented during the 1950s, namely the killed-virus shot. The oral polio vaccine should only be used in “special circumstances” (several countries still use the live-virus, oral vaccine).

However, a fact sheet on polio published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services warns parents that the inactivated polio vaccine can cause “serious problems or even deaths.” One of the manufacturers of the IPV also admits that Guillain–Barré syndrome has been “temporarily linked to administration of another IPV.”

Yet, despite these “danger alerts,” medical authorities continue to assure parents that the currently available inactivated polio vaccine is both safe and effective. Now that we understand the dangers of Salk's early vaccine and the possibility of it actually infecting the recipient with serious cases of polio, it should come as no surprise that statistics confirm that the reported cases of polio following mass inoculations with the killed-virus vaccine may have more than doubled in the U.S. as a whole. [McBean, E. & Allen, H.]

For example, Vermont reported 15 cases of polio during the one-year report period ending August 30, 1954 (before mass inoculations), compared to 55 cases of polio during the one-year period ending August 30, 1955 (after mass inoculations)—a 266% increase.

Rhode Island reported 22 cases during the before inoculations period as compared to 122 cases during the after inoculations period—a 454% increase. In New Hampshire the figures increased from 38 to 129; in Connecticut they rose from 144 to 276; and in Massachusetts they swelled 273 to 2027—a whopping 642% increase.

Many NIH doctors and scientists at the NIH during the 1950s were aware that Salk's vaccine was causing polio.

Some frankly stated that it was “worthless as a preventive and dangerous to take.” They refused to vaccinate their own children. Health departments banned the inoculations.

Salk himself allegedly said: “When you inoculate children with a polio vaccine you don't sleep well for two or three weeks.” [As reported by Saul Pett in an Associated Press dispatch from Pittsburg (October 11, 1954)] The Idaho State Health Director angrily declared: “I hold the Salk vaccine and its manufacturers responsible” for a polio outbreak that killed several Idahoans and hospitalized dozens more.” [McBean, E. The Poisoned Needle (Mokelumne Hill, CA: Health Research, 1957): pp. 140-44]

But the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, and drug companies with large investments in the vaccine coerced the U.S. Public Health Service into falsely proclaiming the vaccine was safe and effective. [Ibid., pp. 142-45] Salk continued to worry. Despite its regulatory and statistical ‘success’, the reputation of his vaccine was plummeting. In June 1955 the British doctors’ union the Medical Practitioners’ Union wrote: “These misfortunes would be almost endurable if a whole new generation were to be rendered permanently immune to the disease. In fact, there is no evidence that any lasting immunity is achieved.” The following month Canada suspended its distribution of Salk’s vaccine. By November all European countries had suspended distribution plans, apart from Denmark. By January 1957 17 US states had stopped distributing the vaccine. The same year The New York Times reported that nearly 50% of cases of infantile paralysis in children between the ages of five and 14 had occurred after vaccination.

Local police and the U.S. military, by way of the National Guard, would enforce the law. Previous laws permitting medical, religious, or philosophical exemptions would be repealed.

In response to this legislation, Dawn Richardson of PROVE, a vaccine awareness organization, declared: Everyone who values our freedoms and rights in this country needs to commit to educating family and friends about the dangers of such an unchecked medical dictatorship.

Because there has been no research into the biological mechanisms that predispose people to vaccine reactions and there has been no effort to screen out these individuals, this type of action should be condemned; it will create unfathomable human suffering and sacrifice. [Richardson, D. “Danger: forced vaccination for all under CDC's proposal.” PROVE newsletter (November 2, 2001)]

This legislation also exempts the State, the police, and public health authorities from any liability. “If an individual opposes vaccines, is force-inoculated and dies, the perpetrators cannot be prosecuted.”

The ACLU also weighed in quite heavily against the MSEHPA. Because of the increasing number of reported side effects, Congressman Henry Waxman was forced to state the obvious: “The president has asked healthcare workers to volunteer to be immunized so that they can serve society. In turn, society should help them if they are hurt when they volunteer.” In response to these concerns, in 2006 the U.S. government published the “final rules” to the Smallpox Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. The goal was to provide “benefits to public health and medical response team members and others who are injured as a result of receiving the smallpox vaccine.” Also, “unvaccinated individuals injured after coming into contact with a vaccinated member of an emergency response plan, or with a person with whom the vaccinated person had contact, or their survivors may be eligible for the same program benefits.”

In conclusion, Neil Miller offers a crude, but damning, summary of this alternative perspective of the history of smallpox and the smallpox vaccine: 1 Being with unsanitary living conditions and poor nutritional awareness. This results in regional and self-limiting outbreaks of smallpox. 2 Conduct human experiments with variolation—the practice of inserting viral matter (infectious pus) from a smallpox victim into a deliberate cut on a healthy person. 3 When this fails, conduct human experiments with cowpox, horsepox, and horsegrease cowpox. 4 When this fails, deny it. 5 When this fails, blame it on “spurious” cowpox, improperly administered injections, or too few puncture marks...and recommend re-vaccination. 6 When this fails, manipulate statistics by altering medical records and falsifying death certificates...and mandates the smallpox vaccine. When people refuse the shot, vaccination rates drop, and cases of smallpox dwindle...take full credit for eradicating the disease!

Paralysis and the Politics of Polio Poliomyelitis, or polio, is a contagious disease caused by a virus that may attack nerve cells of the brain and spinal cord.

Fever, headache, sore throat, vomiting are some of the milder symptoms, and some victims develop neurological complications and paralysis of one or more limbs or respiratory muscles. In severe cases it can be fatal, due to respiratory paralysis.

Some people mistakenly believe that polio usually leads to paralysis, but this isn't the case.

95% of people exposed to the natural polio virus don't exhibit any symptoms, even under epidemic conditions, according to the Physicians' Desk Reference 2001 and Natural History of Infectious Disease by Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet and David O. White.

The Wikipedia article on polio initially cites the figure as 90%, but elsewhere on the page the “asymptomatic” outcome of poliovirus infection is listed as 90%-95%. According to the source used for these statistics, “Up to 95% of all polio infections are inapparent or asymptomatic.”

About 5% of infected people will experience mild symptoms such as a sore throat, stiff neck, headache, and fever—often diagnosed as a cold or flu. Muscular paralysis affects approximately one out of every 1,000 people who contract polio.

This has lead some scientific researchers to conclude that the small percentage of people who do develop paralytic polio may be anatomically susceptible to the disease. The vast remainder of the population may be naturally immune to the polio virus. [Moskowitz, R. “Immunizations: the other side.” Mothering (Spring 1984):36]

Usually there is a full recovery from paralytic polio—it rarely is permanent. Only a small percentage of cases will experience residual paralysis.

There are many serious questions about what factors contribute to increasing an individual's susceptibility to serious adverse reactions to the polio virus. Several studies have demonstrated that injections, either for vaccines or antibiotics, increase susceptibility to polio. It's been known since the early 1900s that paralytic poliomyelitis can start at the site of an injection. When diphtheria and pertussis vaccines were introduced in the 1940s, cases of paralytic poliomyelitis skyrocketed. This was documented in Lancet and other medical journals.

McCloskey, BP. “The relation of prophylactic inoculations to the onset of poliomyelitis.” Lancet (April 18, 1950):659-63 Geffen, DH “The incidence of paralysis occurring in London children within four weeks after immunization.” Med Officer 1950;83:137-40 Martin, JK. “Local paralysis in children after injections.” Arch Dis Child 1950;25:1-14

In 1949, the Medical Research Council in Great Britain set up a committee to investigate the matter and ultimately concluded that individuals are at increased risk of paralysis for 30 days following injections; injections alter the distribution of paralysis; and it did not matter whether the injections were subcutaneous or intramuscular.

In 1992, a study was published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases that again confirmed these results after documenting an outbreak of polio in Oman that was linked to the DTP (diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis) shot. They concluded, “Injections are an important cause of provocative poliomyelitis.”

In 1995, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study showing that children who received a single injection within one month after receiving a polio vaccine were 8 times more likely to contract polio than children who received no injections.

The risk jumped 27-fold when children received up to nine injections...and with ten or more injections, the likelihood of developing polio was 182 times greater than expected.

Why injections increase the risk of polio is unclear. Nevertheless, these studies and others indicate “injections must be avoided in countries with endemic poliomyelitis.” Health authorities believe that all “unnecessary” injections should be avoided as well.

A poor diet has been shown to raise one's susceptibility to polio. In 1948, during the height of the polio epidemics, Dr. Benjamin Sandler, a nutritional expert at the Oteen Veterans' Hospital, documented a link between polio and an excessive use of sugars and starches.

He compiled records showing that countries with the highest per capita consumption of sugar, such as the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada, and Sweden (with over 100 pounds per person per year) had the greatest incidence of polio. In contrast, polio was practically unheard of in China (with its sugar use of only 3 pounds per person per year).

Sandler claimed that sugars and starches lower blood sugar levels which leads to hypoglycemia.

Such food dehydrate the cells and leech calcium from the body. A serious calcium deficiency precedes polio. Researchers have always known that polio strikes with its greatest intensity during the hot summer months. Dr. Sandler observed that children consume greater amounts of ice cream, soft drinks, and artificially sweetened products in hot weather. In 1949, before the polio season began, he warned the residents of North Carolina, through the newspapers and radio, to decrease their consumption of these products. That summer, North Carolinians reduced their intake of sugar by 90%; polio decreased by the same amount! The North Carolina State Health Department reported 2,498 cases of polio in 1948 and 229 cases in 1949. [Data taken from North Carolina State Health Department figures]

One manufacturer shipped one million less gallons of ice cream during the first week alone following the publication of Dr. Sandler's anti-polio diet. Soft drink sales were down as well.

But powerful Rockefeller Milk Trust, which sold frozen products to North Carolinians, combined forces with soft drink business leaders and convinced the public that Sandler's findings were a myth and the polio figures a fluke. By the summer of 1950 sales were back to previous levels and polio cases returned to “normal.” [McBean, E., Allen, H.]

As can be seen by this graph of United States polio rates, polio epidemics became a serious problem in the late 1940s and early 1950s, although it never quite reached the levels of 1916 (when the epicenter of the epidemic was mere miles from a Rockefeller research lab that was experimenting with an extremely virulent strain of the polio virus).

By the early 1950s, Jonas Salk began experimenting with a possible polio vaccine.

In 1952, Salk combined three types of polio virus grown in cultures made from monkey kidneys. Using formaldehyde, he was able to “kill” or inactivate the viral matter so that it would trigger an antibody response without causing the disease. In 1955, the first polio immunization campaign was launched in the United States. Almost immediately, it became clear that something was very wrong with the vaccine. In the end, 70,000 school children became seriously ill from Salk's vaccine—the infamous “Cutter Incident.”

In June 2001, before the 9/11 attacks, a team of bioterrorism specialists led by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies conducted a smallpox epidemic exercise ominously called Dark Winter.

Within two months after the hypothetical epidemic started, three million people were infected. Dark Winter ended with the collapse of interstate commerce, crowds rioting in the streets, and the nation moving towards martial law. However, like any theoretical exercise, conclusions are predicated on the underlying assumptions. One key assumption was that each person with smallpox would infect at least 10 other people and that those 10 people would each infect at least 10 more people and so on.

But a recent study published in Emerging Infectious Diseases regards those infection rates as grossly unrealistic. The authors of the study looked at data from numerous smallpox outbreaks and reported that on average less than one person was infected per infectious person.

In all outbreaks, some infected persons did not transmit a single case of smallpox to another person. The CDC researchers concluded “the probability that the average transmission rate will be greater than two cannot be demonstrated reliably.”

Even though the Dark Winter simulation was severely flawed, Dr. Henderson, the “team leader” who also led WHO's global effort to eradicate smallpox, concluded that the threat was real and recommended 100 to 135 million doses.

Less than 10 days after 9/11, Dick Cheney was shown a video of the Dark Winter simulation and urged to increase the production of smallpox vaccine. On October 24, 2001, President Bush asked Congress for $509 million to develop and produce a new smallpox vaccine. He solicited bids for the job from several pharmaceutical companies, insisting on 300 million doses—one dose for every American—within the shortest possible time, not to exceed one year. The new vaccine was expected to be made from a “diploid cell substrate” (human embryo) or from animal tissue cell cultures, including those with “tumorigenic potential.”

Ideally, it would not cause adverse reactions, would not be dangerous to people with immune system deficiencies, and would have the capacity to defeat genetically altered strains of variola. But researchers provided no evidence that the new vaccine would cause fewer adverse reactions than the old vaccine. Furthermore, experts were very concerned about “the transmissibility of vaccinia virus from a recently vaccinated person to a susceptible host.” In other words, some people—no one knows how many—will develop smallpox by coming into contact with a recently vaccinated person. Franklin Top, a biotechnology expert and previous commander of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, declared that “reactogenicity” is going to be a problem.

Dr. Mark Buller, a virologist specializing in safer smallpox treatments at St. Louis University, boldly pronounced: “I would not even consider having my family vaccinated. I'm more likely to be hit riding my bike to work than be hit by a smallpox episode in my own life. [Stolberg, SG. “Immunization: vast uncertainty on smallpox vaccine.” New York Times (October 19, 2001)]

Potential vaccine recipients must also understand that scientists may never be able to create a vaccine that can protect against mutated strains of the virus. Dozens of strains already exist. New permutations of the variola microbe could be developed by bioterrorists rendering a new vaccine worthless, thus subjecting recipients of the shot to the inherent risk of serious adverse reactions without the expected benefit.

In 2002, the U.S. government tested their existing smallpox vaccine on 200 “fit and healthy” college students. Following vaccination, 75 had high fevers, one-third missed at least one day of work or school, and several were put on antibiotics because their blisters resembled a bacterial infection. Dr. Kathy Edwards, the physician overseeing the study, commented on the side effects: “I can read all day about it, but seeing it is quite impressive. The reactions we saw were really quite remarkable.”

In late 2002, smallpox vaccination was reinstated for U.S. military personnel. In early 2003, the program was expanded to include civilians considered at high risk during a smallpox outbreak (mostly healthcare and emergency service workers). Shortly thereafter, several vaccinated people experienced serious adverse reactions, including heart problems. For example, a Maryland woman died from a hearth attack after being injected with the shot.

These reports compelled the CDC to release a fact sheet on the smallpox vaccine to address the many concerns, admitting, “There is evidence suggesting that smallpox vaccination may cause cases of heart inflammation (myocarditis), inflammation of the membrane covering the heart (pericarditis), and a combination of these two problems....Heart pain (angina) and heart attack have also been reported after smallpox vaccination.”

In 2005, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study that assessed the safety of the government's program. The study documented nearly a thousand adverse events, including 85 hospitalizations (numerous cases of myocarditis or pericarditis), and three deaths. The report ends by suggesting: Additional reduction of overall vaccinia adverse events might be achievable through study of cardiac and dermatological risk factors, a better understanding of vaccinia host-pathogen interaction, and development of a less reactogenic vaccinia vaccine.

In 2007, a two-year-old and his mother were infected with “eczema vaccinatum” after the father, a U.S. army soldier, was recently vaccinated against smallpox. Also in 2007, an experimental smallpox vaccine called ACAM2000 (made by Acambis) was declared safe and effective by the FDA, despite the fact that clinical trials of this vaccine were halted three years earlier when several people developed myopericarditis after receiving the new vaccine.

According to the FDA, ACAM2000 is “nearly as effective” as the older smallpox vaccine, Dryvax, and poses “similar risks of serious side effects.” As for Dryvax, the listed adverse reactions include autoinoculation (transfer of the virus to other parts of the body) affecting the face, nose, mouth, genitalia and rectum; infection of the eye resulting in blindness; post-vaccinal encephalitis, encephalomyelitis, encephalopathy, progressive vaccinia, eczema vaccinatum, Stevens-Johnson syndrome, neurological sequelae, and death.

However, even while U.S. Homeland Security was contemplating mandating the smallpox vaccine, not every government official was convinced. For example, Tommy Thompson of Health and Human Services said his department had no plans for a mandatory vaccination program, citing horrendous side effects as the principal reason. [Neergaard, L. “Health officials review smallpox plan.” Associated Press (October 19, 2001)]

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, also opposed the idea, declaring that side effects were too numerous and too severe. [Stolberg, SG.]

Many pediatricians can't distinguish between smallpox and chickenpox, according to the results of a survey published in 2006 by Clinical Pediatrics. Fifty-nine percent of the responders were unable to differentiate chickenpox from smallpox, and the majority would not accept vaccination in the absence of an outbreak and would not recommend smallpox vaccine to their patients. Even in previously vaccinated pediatricians, willingness to receive smallpox vaccine is poor...

Despite the well-documented concerns about the safety of the smallpox vaccine and the threat (and loss of civil liberties) associated with mandatory vaccines, on October 23, 2001, the CDC unveiled new legislation, The Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, “giving public health officials and state governors the authority to arrest, vaccinate, medicate, and quarantine anyone they deem either unprotected from, or a threat to spread, infectious disease (see Section 504a—Vaccination and treatment).”

Another study determined that 47% of women who were vaccinated during their first trimester failed to give birth to a normal child. [McBean, E., pg. 82.] During the late 1950s and 1960s, several medical and scientific publications documented numerous cases of post-vaccinal encephalomyelitis following smallpox vaccination. Neurological reactions ranged from encephalitis to epilepsy, polyneuritis, multiple sclerosis, and death. In some regions of the world, 1 of every 63 people vaccinated was damaged by the shot. Extreme sensitivity to multiple shots was also observed. Subsequent inoculations were responsible for many of the post-vaccinal ailments. In fact, the death rate from vaccination appeared greatest in those who were vaccinated early in life and then re-vaccinated in later years. The morbidity and mortality rates were extremely high in babies as well.

These statements come from multiple sources, including: Miller, H. et al. “Multiple sclerosis and vaccination.” British Medical Journal (April 22, 1967): 210-213.

Neff, JM., et al. “Complications of smallpox vaccination, United States, 1963.” Pediatrics 1967;39:916-923.

Lane, MJ. “Complications of smallpox vaccination” New England Journal of Medicine 1968;281 (22):1201-08.

Spillane, JD., et al. “The neurology of Jennerian vaccination—a clinical account of the neurological complications which occurred during the smallpox epidemic in South Wales in 1962.”

Dick, GWA. “Scientific Proceedings; Symposium on Virus Diseases. 13th Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association, Belfast.” British Medical Journal, 1962;2:319.

Dixon, CW. Smallpox. (London: J & A Churchill, 1962).

Smallpox and AIDS

By the 1980's, a link between contracting AIDS after receiving the smallpox vaccination became apparent: “Primary smallpox immunization of persons with subclinical HIV disease poses a risk of vaccine-induced disease and multiple immunizations may accelerate the progress of HIV disease.” According to researchers, this raises “concern about the ultimate safety of vaccinia-based vaccine in developing countries where HIV infection is increasing.” [Redfield, R., et al. “Disseminated vaccinia in a military recruit with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease.” New England Journal of Medicine (March 12, 1987):673]

In 1987, shortly after the results of this study were released, the London Times published an incredible report that claimed “the AIDS epidemic may have been triggered by the mass vaccination campaign.” The campaign in question was conducted by the World Health Organization during the 1960s and 1970s, mainly in Africa.

The Times exposé was written in response to a tip from an advisor to the World Health Organization who was assigned by WHO to investigate the suspicion that its ambitious vaccination program in Africa had caused the AIDS epidemic. The WHO advisor did his study, concluded that the smallpox vaccine was a trigger for AIDS, and filed his report with WHO. When the report was buried, he contacted the Times.

The regions that received the most vaccinations coincided with the areas of the greatest outbreaks of AIDS, including Zaire, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawai, Ruanda, and Burundi. Brazil had the highest AIDS rates in South Africa, and they were the only country including in the smallpox vaccination campaign on the entire continent.

According to the WHO advisor, “I thought it was just a coincidence until we studied the latest findings about the reactions which can be caused by vaccinia. Now I believe the smallpox vaccination theory is the explanation of AIDS.” Dr. Robert Gallo, a pioneering AIDS/HIV researcher, when confronted with this disturbing scenario, did little to alleviate anyone's fears: “I have been saying for some years that the use of live vaccines such as that used for smallpox can activate a dormant infection such as HIV.”

Recent research has also shown that unsterile injections may have done a great deal in contributing to the HIV epidemic in Africa: “We conclude that increased unsterile injecting in Africa during the period 1950-1970 provided the agent for SIV human infections to emerge as epidemic HIV in the modern era.” Did an attempt to control one disease, smallpox, transform another disease, AIDS, “from a minor endemic illness of the Third World into the current pandemic?”

Monkeypox

Some researchers question whether smallpox was ever truly exterminated. After WHO launched its global vaccination campaign against variola in 1967, suspected cases of smallpox were labeled as monkeypox.

Lancet published a report in 1972 that stated that WHO's program to eradicate smallpox “can only be successful in the absence of a non-human reservoir for smallpox virus.”

However, the author of the report identified several poxviruses affecting both humans and animals, and conceded that the monkeypox virus can cause clinical smallpox in humans.

In 1976, monkeypox antibodies in humans were discovered in Nigeria and the Ivory Coast. The monkeypox virus was indistinguishable by laboratory methods from the smallpox virus.

Orthopoxviruses, the genera to which vaccinia, variola, cowpox, and monkeypox belong, have a high degree of similarity, with a “propensity for genetic recombination.” Monkeypox and smallpox produce exact clinical symptoms, with one insignificant difference: monkeypox also causes swelling of the cervical and inguinal (groin) lymph nodes.

In 1979, new research indicated that several animal species, including some rodents, may be carriers of variola-like viruses virtually identical to cowpox and monkeypox viruses. In fact, several poxviruses from animal sources were tested and shown to behave like variola/smallpox viruses.

Scientists are “wondering whether the specter of smallpox might be rising form the dead, perhaps reincarnated in its close relative monkeypox, which is alive, well, and spreading in Central Africa.” According to Dr. Peter Jahrling of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, for all practical purposes, smallpox is back. [Radio National. “The Health Report: Monkeypox.” Australian Broadcasting Corporation (September 1, 1997)]

Bioterrorism, Dark Winter and the New Smallpox Vaccine

During the 1970s experimentation with smallpox virus was conducted, and two medical researchers were even killed in England as a result. To reduce the risk of future accidents, all remaining known samples were moved to a CDC facility in Georgia and the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology in Novosibirsk, Siberia.

Numerous deadlines came and went to destroy the virus, with some scientists defending the need to preserve them...“for science!”

On November 15th, 2001, in the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration postponed indefinitely any decision to eliminate seed stocks of the microbe. Even though smallpox hadn't occurred in the U.S. since 1949, the government had stockpiled 15 million doses of the vaccine. However, the disgusting concoction was severely archaic: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta, has a reserve of roughly 15 million doses of smallpox vaccine. That vaccine, which is not available to the public, was manufactured using a method that dates from the 1700s. The method involves infecting calves with a related virus, vaccinia; the resulting pus is used in the making of the vaccine. That process is considered barely acceptable for human vaccine today.

Not only that, but the vaccine was known to cause inflammation of the brain as well as numerous other side effects, including smallpox itself and death. Sources: Greenberg, M. “Complications of vaccination against smallpox.” Am J Dis Child 1948;76:492-502

Cangemi, VF. “Acute pericarditis after smallpox vaccination.” *N Engl J Med 1958;258:1257-9.

Copeman, PWM., et al. “Eczema vaccinatum.” British Medical Journal 1964;2:906-8.

Neff, JM., et al. “Complications of smallpox vaccination. I. National survey in the United States, 1963. NEJM 1967;276:125–32.

Fulginiti VA., et al. “Progressive vaccinia in immunologically deficient individuals.” Birth Defects Original Article Series. 1968;4:129–145.

Marmelzat, WL. “Malignant tumors in smallpox vaccination scars.” Arch Dermatol 1968;97:406.

Lane, JM., et al. “Routine childhood vaccination against smallpox reconsidered.” NEJM 1969;281:1220-4. Lane, JM., et al. “Complications of smallpox vaccination, 1968. National surveillance in the U.S.” NEJM 1969;281:1220-4.

Holtzman, CM. “Postvaccination arthritis.” NEJM 1969;280:111-2.

Lane, JM., et al. “Deaths attributable to smallpox vaccination, 1959 to 1966, and 1968.” JAMA 1970;212:441-4.

In 1997, four years before the 2001 terrorist attacks, the Department of Defense contracted with DynPort Vaccine Company to produce a new smallpox vaccine. In September of 2000, one year before the terrorist attacks, the CDC contracted with OraVax (which changed its name to Acambis) to produce a new smallpox vaccine.

Some researchers were puzzled by these actions since smallpox was supposedly eradicated and authorities were debating whether to destroy all of the remaining seed stocks of the virus. According to Dr. Margaret Hamburg, of the Department of Health and Human Services, “A lot of people thought this was a crazy idea, to make a new vaccine when the disease didn't exist.”

I believed that vaccination prevented smallpox...and I believed that re-vaccination, if only frequently enough, gave absolute immunity. Experience has driven all that out of my head. —Dr. J. C. Ward, Royal College of Surgeons, England After collecting the particulars of 400,000 cases of smallpox, I am compelled to admit that my belief in vaccination is absolutely destroyed. —Professor A. Vogt, chair of Vita Statistics and Hygiene at Berne University

Many studies were conducted that confirmed that the smallpox was actually dangerous and largely ineffective. In 1915, the U.S. Department of Agriculture linked several foot-and-mouth disease epidemics to the smallpox vaccine. [U.S. Department of Agriculture. Farmer's Bulletin (April 22, 1915):15] In the mid-1920's, Great Britain authorized the Andrews and then the Rolleston Committee to study post-vaccinal encephalitis and deaths resulting from the smallpox vaccination.

The contents of this Report were of so damaging a character that it was deemed advisable to withhold it from publication. In this (the Rolleston) Report ninety-three cases of post-vaccinal encephalitis with fifty-one deaths are stated to have occurred between Nov., 1922, and Sept., 1927, and in a subsequent Report (Cmd. 3738), covering the three following years, there are recorded a further ninety cases with forty-two deaths.

Among the “damaging” results from these reports were that young adults vaccinated against smallpox were five times more likely to die from the disease than the un-vaccinated! It's no wonder that many respectable institutions were beginning to question Jenner and his legacy.

The indisposition of the authorities to admit any awkward facts telling against vaccination is a feature in the history of Jennerism. Thus, until 1911 it was the practice to tabulate deaths following vaccination under the heading—“Cowpox and other Effects of Vaccination.”

At the date referred to a new heading, “Vaccinia,” was introduced...five deaths, all of infants, which would in former years have been assigned to the effects of vaccination, appear under the respective headings of erysipelas, pyaemia, septicaemia, convulsions, and phlegmon.

Possibly the Registrar-General could offer some reason for altering the practice of thirty years, but the effect, none the less, is to exonerate vaccination by attributing death to secondary causes instead of to the primary cause—vaccination.

In May 1926, the New York State Journal of Medicine reported on several cases of encephalitis and meningitis that developed shortly after smallpox vaccinations. In July of that year, the Journal of American Medical Association found correlations between smallpox vaccinations and nervous disturbances. The authors noted: “In regions in which there is no organized vaccination of the population, general paralysis is rare. It is impossible to deny a connection between vaccination and the encephalitis which follows it.” In September 1926, Lancet published data confirming seven cases of encephalomyelitis following smallpox vaccinations. The authors, Turnbull and McIntosh, declared: “There can be no doubt that vaccination was a definite causal factor.”

The next month Lancet reported on 35 cases of encephalitis, including 15 deaths. The authors concluded: “Vaccination was a definite causal factor and no chance coincidence.”

In 1928, the League of Nations issued a report that noted, “The post-vaccinal encephalitis with which we are dealing has become a problem in itself...Their occurrence has led to the realization that a new, or at least a previously unsuspected or unrecognized, risk attaches to the practice of vaccination.” The Report also noted 139 recent cases of post-vaccinal encephalitis and 41 deaths in one country alone, Holland. Compulsory smallpox vaccinations were discontinued as a result. [Health Organization of the League of Nations: Geneva. “Report of the Commission of Smallpox and Vaccination,” (August 27, 1928)] In February 1930, Germany modified its compulsory vaccination law following numerous cases of post-vaccinal diseases: “Vaccinated people developed a cerebral inflammation which resulted in a number of deaths and several cases of mental derangement.” [The International News Service (February 27, 1930)] Later that year, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported on several fatal reactions among children following smallpox vaccination. They were described as having “encephalitic symptoms.” [J of the American Medical Association (April 5, 1930)]

From 1949 to 1951, in the United States, people died from complications of the smallpox vaccine—mainly from post-vaccinal encephalitis—at rates eight times greater than those who were not vaccinated.

In December of 1952, Lancet published a study documenting the reaction of a woman who was three months pregnant to the vaccine: “She developed a severe primary reaction and three months later she was spontaneously delivered of a feeble hydropic premature infant covered with a very severe generalized vaccinia. The child died 18 hours later.”

Prior to compulsory vaccine legislation, smallpox outbreaks were regional and self-limiting. The most severe epidemics occurred following mandatory shots. In England, from 1870 to 1872, after more than 15 years of forced immunizations—and a 98% vaccination rate—the largest epidemic of smallpox ever recorded maimed and killed thousands of people. Most of the population had been vaccinated and re-vaccinated. [Allen, H. Don't Get Stuck! The Case Against Vaccinations and Injections (Tampa, Florida: Natural Hygiene Press, 1975):32]

Dr. William Farr, Compiler of Statistics of the Registrar-General, London, noted that “Smallpox attained its maximum mortality after vaccination was introduced. The mean annual mortality to 10,000 population from 1850 to 1869 was at the rate of 2.04, whereas in 1871 the death rate was 10.24 and in 1872 the death rate was 8.33, and this after the most laudable efforts to extend vaccination by legislative enactments.” [McBean, E., pg. 27]

According to Sir Thomas chambers, a London health official: “Of the 155 persons admitted to the Smallpox hospital in the Parish of St. James, Piccadilly, 145 had been vaccinated.” At Marylevore hospital, 92% of the smallpox cases had been vaccinated. In 1871, officials at Highgate Hospital admitted that 92% had been vaccinated as well.

Figures were similar in many other countries where compulsory laws were established. For example, in 1870 and 1871 more than one million Germans contracted smallpox after Germany enforced mandatory shots; thousands died. 96% of the victims were vaccinated. [Ibid., pg. 13]

The German Chancellor himself opined, “The hopes placed in the efficacy of the cowpox virus as a preventative of smallpox have proved entirely deceptive.” From 1887 to 1889, countless Italian citizens contracted smallpox after Italy enforced mandatory shots; thousands died. According to Dr. Charles Dauta, Professor of Hygiene and Materia Medica at the University of Perugia, “Italy is one of the best vaccinated countries in the world....For 20 years before 1885, our nation was vaccinated in the proportion of 98.5%....The epidemics of smallpox that we have had [from 1887 to 1889] have been so frightful that nothing before the invention of vaccination could equal them.” [“Vaccination in Italy,” NY Med J (July 22, 1899)]

Over a twenty year period beginning in 1886, thousands of Japanese citizens died and hundreds of thousands were infected with smallpox after Japan enforced mandatory shots every five years. [Shelton, HM. Vaccine and Serum Evils (San Antonio Texas; Health research, 1966):20-21]

In 1918 and 1919, after the US took control of the Philippines, mandatory smallpox vaccination was enforced. Thousands died after the entire population was vaccinated. A 1920 Report of the Philippines Health Services declared, “The 1918 epidemic looks prima facie as a flagrant failure of the classic immunization.” [Ibid., pg. 22]

Once the connection between mass vaccination and the increase in epidemic became more apparent, several countries rescinded the mandatory vaccination laws and even outlawed the practice completely.

The Secretary of the Governing Board in Dublin, Ireland, declared, “Smallpox virus taken from the calf would communicate that disease to the human subject and be thereby a fertile source of propagating the disease, and would, moreover, render the operator liable to prosecution under the Act prohibiting inoculation with smallpox.” [White, W., pg. xxi.]

Australia abolished compulsory vaccinations in the late 1800's, and proceeded to report only 3 cases of smallpox in 15 years. Statistics from England and Wales show an inverse correlation between the percentage of babies vaccinated and the number of smallpox deaths: the greater the number vaccinated, the greater the loss. Deaths from smallpox tumbled after people refused the vaccine. [Official statistics from England and Wales, as reported by Shelton, HM., pg. 22] By the mid-1850's, a very large anti-vaccine movement had been established. After the 1870-1872 smallpox epidemic, thought to have been caused by mandatory shots, this movement gained credibility and became more organized in its efforts to resist compulsory laws and awaken others to the inherent dangers of smallpox vaccinations.

In 1878, Mary Catherine Hume published 150 Reasons for Disobeying the Vaccination Law by Persons Prosecuted Under It. Parents were being fined a jailed for refusing to submit their children to the shots. Before the Exemption Act was passed in 1907, every year thousands of parents were prosecuted for resisting vaccination. Many had their homes and property confiscated. Hume's book advocated civil disobedience despite the punitive efforts of pro-vaccinators.

In 1884, a massive collection of smallpox data was published by the London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination, containing “unbiased vaccine statistics, newspaper stories about people who were damaged by the shot, and legal briefs regarding compulsory laws.”

Despite harsh laws, many people refused to be vaccinated and would not allow their children to receive the shots. According to Lord Bramwell, “It is a most mischievous thing that there should be a law in existence which good people are tempted to disobey. It is a bad example to set, and it tends to bring laws into contempt which are of real importance.”

Even Mahatma Gandhi, although by no means a scientist, would eventually weigh in on the vaccine debate: “I am and have been for years, a confirmed anti-vaccinationist...I have not the least doubt in my mind that vaccination is a filthy process that is harmful in the end.” [Gandhi, MK. Gandhi an Autobiography: Story of My Experiments With Truth (Boston: Beacon PR., 1957)]

The following quotes are from late 18th and early 19th doctors and other health officials who were very vocally skeptical of the claims of the proponents of the smallpox vaccine. They are taken from these sources: Fatality Rates of Small-Pox in the Vaccinated and Unvaccinated by R.P. Garrow, Fatality Rates of Small-Pox in the Vaccinated and Unvaccinated by L.A. Parry, New York Press, (January 26th, 1909), and McBean, E., pp. 21-24; 42, 72.

Vaccination does not stay the spread of smallpox, nor even modify it in those who get it after vaccination. It does introduce in the system contamination and, therefore, contributes to the spread of tuberculosis, cancer, and even leprosy. It tends to make more virulent epidemics and to make them more extensive. —Dr. Walter M. James, Philadelphia practitioner

I have studied the question of vaccination conscientiously for 45 years. As for vaccination as a preventative of disease, there is not a scrap of evidence in its favor. The injection of virus into the pure bloodstream of the people does not prevent smallpox; rather, it tends to increase its epidemics and it makes the disease more deadly. —Dr. Charles E. Page, Boston practitioner

Cancer was practically unknown until cowpox vaccination began to be introduced. I have had to do with 200 cases of cancer and I never saw a case of cancer in an unvaccinated person. -Dr. W. B. Clark, New York practitioner Abolish vaccination and you will cut the cancer death rate in half. —Dr. F. P. Millard, Toronto practitioner

I am convinced that the increase of cancer is due to vaccination. —Dr. F. Laurie, Medical Director of the Metropolitan Cancer Hospital, London

It is my firm conviction that vaccination has been a curse instead of a blessing to the race. Every physician knows that cutaneous diseases (including cancer) have increased in frequency, severity, and variety to an alarming extent. To no medium of transmission is the widespread dissemination of this class of diseases so largely related as to vaccination. —B. F. Cornell, M.D., practitioner

I have removed cancer from vaccinated arms exactly where the poison was injected. —Dr. E. J. Post, Michigan practitioner

I have no hesitation in stating that in my judgment the most frequent disposing condition for cancerous development is infused into the blood by vaccination and re-vaccination. —Dr. Dennis Turnbull, 30 year cancer researcher.

Never in the history of medicine has there been produced so false a theory, and such fraudulent assumptions, such disastrous and damning results as have followed the practice of vaccination; it is the ultima Thule of learned quackery, and lacks, and has ever lacked, the faintest shadow of scientific basis. The fears of the people have been played upon as to the dangers of smallpox, and the promise of sure prevention by vaccination, until nearly the whole civilized world has become physically corrupted by its practice. —Dr. E. Ripley, Connecticut practitioner

Vaccination is the infusion of contaminating elements into the system, and after such contamination you can never be sure of regaining the former purity of the body. Consumption (tuberculosis) follows in the wake of vaccination just as surely as effect follows cause. —Dr. Alex Wilder, professor of pathology, Medical College of New York

How is it that smallpox is five time as likely to be fatal in the vaccinated as unvaccinated (referring to data published in the British Medical Journal, January 14th, 1928)? How is it that, as the number of people vaccinated has steadily fallen, the number of people attacked with variola has declined and the case mortality has progressively lessened? The years of least vaccination have been the years of least smallpox and least mortality. These are just a few points in connection with the subject which are puzzling me, and to which I want answers. —Dr. L. A. Parry

I now have very little faith in vaccination, even as to modifying the disease, and none at all as a protective in virulent epidemics. Personally, I contracted smallpox less than six months after a most severe vaccination. —Dr. R. Hall Bakewell, Vaccinator General of Trinidad

Jesty took diseased matter from cows and “vaccinated” his wife and sons (cowpox is also referred to as the vaccinia virus). Supposedly, no one in his family contracted smallpox during later epidemics, although his wife almost lost her arm as the result of a severe inflammation, rousing the ire of his peers for experimenting on his own family.

Enter Edward Jenner, an English physician whose work Wikipedia dubiously refers to as having “saved more lives than the work any other human.” Apparently, no credit is due to the 18th century milkmaids, or even Jesty, who “unlike Edward Jenner, a medical doctor who is given broad credit for developing the smallpox vaccine in 1796, did not publicize his findings made some twenty years earlier in 1774.”

Jenner made a deliberate cut on James Phipps, a healthy 8-year-old boy, and inserted cowpox matter into the open wound. The boy caught cowpox. Seven weeks later, Jenner injected smallpox matter into the boy and claimed he was immune to the disease.

Jenner's medical colleagues disputed his claim that cowpox protected against smallpox: “We know that it is untrue, for we know dairymaids who have had cowpox and afterwards had smallpox.” [White, W. The Story of a Great Delusion: In a Series of Matter-of-Fact Chapters (London: EW. Allen, 1885): xi.] Soon thereafter, even Jenner admitted: “There were were not wanting instances to prove that when the cowpox broke out among the cattle at a dairy, a person who had milked an infected animal and had thereby apparently gone through the disease in common with other, was liable to receive the smallpox afterwards.” [Harding Rains, AJ. Edward Jenner and Vaccination (East Hussex, England: Wayland Publishers, 1974):59]

Despite facing a good deal of opposition, Edward Jenner continued his experiments and in 1798 he published his Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, a “vulgar treatise” on horsegrease cowpox. He knew of men who milked cows soon after dressing the heels of horses afflicted with “the grease,” an oily and detestable horse disease. Jenner now insisted that these men were immune to smallpox, and that children would forever be protected from the disease if they were injected with cowpox after the cow was infected with the rancid secretions from horses' heels. Jenner published Inquiry in order to recommend horsegrease cowpox. He carefully discriminated it from plain cowpox, which, he admitted, had no protective virtue.

The public was appalled by Jenner's recommendations. Still, many attempts were made to verify Jenner's prescription for protecting children; every experiment ended in failure. Jenner's peers were pleased to learn of his failures. One commented: “The very name of horsegrease was like to have damned the whole practice of vaccinations.”

This may have been why, in 1806, when the esteemed Dr. Robert Willan published On Vaccine Inoculation, a treatise on the most recent developments in the field, Jenner was freely cited, yet neither horsegrease nor horsegrease cowpox was ever mentioned. Instead, plain cowpox was exalted as the true prophylactic.

Jenner continued to promote his nauseating treatment and as a result of his petitions to the House of Commons in 1802 and 1807, mass inoculation campaigns began.

Soon thereafter cases of smallpox among the vaccinated were reported. At first they were denied. When denial was no longer possible—because the vaccinated were obviously afflicted with the disease—Jenner and his supporters claimed that if vaccination did not prevent smallpox, it at least provoked milder forms of the disease.

But when the vaccinated caught the disease and died, new explanations became necessary. These deaths were attributed to “spurious” cowpox. [Miller, G., ed., *To Doctor Alexander J.G. Marcet, London, 11 November 1801, Letters of Edward Jenner and Other Documents concerning the Early History of Vaccination (London, England: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1983):13]

Jenner explained that “the disease produced upon the cows by the colt and from thence conveyed to those who milked them was the true and not the spurious cowpox.” According to Jenner, protection from smallpox is not possible “until a disease has been generated by the morbid matter from the horse on the nipple of the cow, and passed through that medium to the human subject.”

However, it was virtually impossible to discriminate between the apparently different forms of cowpox. Thus, when the vaccinated recovered from the ordeal, Jenner claimed the cowpox was genuine; otherwise it was spurious! Wikipedia's bold statement seems to be losing some of its bite, for Jenner even admitted that his “gift” caused disease and death: “The happy effects of inoculation...not very unfrequently produces deformity of the skin, and sometimes, under the best management, proves fatal.” He tried to blame the failures on improper inoculations, an excuse that would continue to be used in the years following his death in 1823.

By that time, three kinds of smallpox vaccination were being used, cowpox (promoted as “pure lymph from the calf”), horsepox (known as “the true and genuine life-preserving fluid”) and horsegrease cowpox, the “foul concoction” promoted in Jenner's Inquiry. All were known to cause disease and death. After Jenner's deaths, vaccine failures continued to be blamed on improperly administered inoculations. Soon, two or more punctures were recommended, with some doctors claiming that a “good vaccination” required four punctures. Even though there is no evidence that the number of puncture marks influenced the success of the practice, medical authorities at the time suggested that people be vaccinated again and again “until vesicles cease to respond to the insertion of the virus.” [White, W., pg. xxiii.]

To bolster their claim that smallpox inoculations were safe and effective, vaccine proponents often resorted to medical ploys. Hospital records were consistently “doctored.” For example, smallpox victims who were previously vaccinated and required hospital services were frequently registered as unvaccinated. According to Dr. Russell of the Glasgow Hospital, “Patients entered as unvaccinated showed excellent marks (vaccination scars) when detained for convalescence.” Vaccinated patients who died from either smallpox or the smallpox injection were often certified as unvaccinated as well, or had their death certificates falsified.

For example, according to Dr. Herbert Snow, senior staff surgeon of the London Cancer Hospital, “Of recent years, many men and women in prime of life have dropped dead suddenly. I am convinced that some 80% of these deaths are caused by the inoculations or vaccinations they have earlier undergone. The coroner always hushes it up as 'natural causes.' I have been trying to get these case referred to an independent commission of inquiry, but so far, in vain.” [McBean, E. The Poisoned Needle (Mokelumne Hill, CA: Health Research, 1957)]

Even the renowned playwright George Bernard Shaw was aware of the medical shenanigans used to hoodwink the public: “During the last epidemic at the turn of the century, I was a member of the Health Committee of London Borough Council. I learned how the credit of vaccination is kept up statistically by diagnosing all the re-vaccinated cases as pustular eczema, varioloid or whatnot—except smallpox.” [Ibid., pg. 64] By around 1850, several countries had enacted compulsory vaccination laws, including Bavaria, Denmark and England.

According to this study, “The peculiar age distribution of zoster may in part reflect the frequency with which the different age groups encounter cases of varicella.” Attacks of zoster are postponed when these periodic encounters occur. Also, even the CDC acknowledges that those who have been vaccinated against chickenpox are still susceptible to shingles.

Before widespread use of the chickenpox vaccine, there were estimated to be 500,000 shingles cases in the US each year. During the period of increasing varicella vaccination, beginning in 1998, HZ among adults increased by 90%.

According to a 2004 CDC report, the number of shingles cases in 2002 was 33% than in 2001 and 56% than 2000. This study, a review of the US universal varicella vaccination program, stated the problem quite clearly:

HZ morbidity costs have exceeded the cost savings from varicella-disease reductions. Universal varicella vaccination has not proven to be cost-effective as increased HZ morbidity has disproportionately offset cost savings associated with reductions in varicella disease. Universal varicella vaccination has failed to provide long-term protection from VZV disease.

Neil Miller summarizes the predicament:

Apparently, there is a societal benefit when chickenpox remains endemic. When the wild-type varicella virus is permitted to circulate naturally throughout society, adults receive beneficial periodic exposures to the virus boosting their immune systems and helping to suppress the reactivation of herpes zoster.

However, as more and more children are vaccinated with the synthetic or manufactured chickenpox virus, the natural virus becomes less pervasive and there are fewer opportunities for adults to receive these periodic boosts. This has led to much higher rates of shingles in Americans.

The FDA, CDC and vaccine manufacturers “traded” chickenpox, a relatively mild childhood disease, for a much more serious ailment that affects adults. Studies have shown the cost alone for this mistake may be astronomical:

We estimate universal varicella vaccination has the impact of an additional 14.6 million (42%) HZ cases among adults aged <50 years during a 50 year time span at a substantial cost burden of 4.1 billion US dollars or 80 million US dollars annually utilizing an estimated mean healthcare provider cost of 280 US dollars per HZ case. Dr. Gary Goldman, an expert on the varicella virus, was hired in 1995 by the CDC to monitor the new chickenpox vaccine. According to Goldman:

Due to the universal varicella vaccination program whereby every healthy child is vaccinated at age 12 months, there are no longer the seasonal outbreaks of varicella that occurred in schools and communities. These annuals outbreaks and exposures (called exogenous exposures) played a significant role in boosting cell-mediated immunity to help suppress the reactivation of herpes zoster among children and adults who had a previous history of natural or wild-type varicella.

Goldman continues:

The universal varicella vaccination program in the US...will leave our population vulnerable to shingles epidemics...there appears to be no way to avoid a mass epidemic of shingles lasting as long as several generations among adults.

According to Goldman, the CDC is more than aware about the problem, and that when he approached them with his concerns, they replied that “any possible shingles epidemic associated with the chickenpox vaccine can be offset by treating adults with a shingles vaccine.”

By 2006, the FDA had licensed Zostavax, a vaccine designed to reduce the risk of shingles. Incredibly, Merck, the same company that makes Varivax (the chickenpox vaccine), is also manufacturing Zostavax. Such an apparent conflict of interest is accepted without question, even though the very “success” of Varivax is contributing to the need for yet another product.

As a result of Goldman's research, it's quite clear how dangerous it is to create new vaccines to treat problems caused by old vaccines. He asserts:

The shingles vaccine serves as a vaccine to offset the initial deleterious effects associated with the similar and related varicella vaccine. It will be difficult to replicate the protection against shingles that existed naturally in the community when incidence of chickenpox was high.

Using a shingles vaccine to control shingles epidemics in adults would likely fail because adult vaccination programs have rarely proved successful. There appears to be no way to avoid a mass epidemic of shingles lasting as long as several generations among adults.

As for the vaccine's effectiveness when first released, even according to Merck, Zostavax was only 51% effective at “reducing the risk” of developing HZ in those aged 60-69. Efficacy drops to 41% in those 70-79, and is merely 18% above 80.

Several conflicts of interest also surround Merck and the HZ vaccine. Merck participated in the organization of oversight activities and monitored the progress of the primary study used to justify licensing the vaccine.

Several authors of the study received consultation fees, lecture fees, or honoraria from Merck. Others received grant support from Merck or owned stock in Merck—all while concurrently overseeing important aspects of the study requiring complete objectivity. Two of the researchers were actively involved in this study while having “partial interests in relevant patents.” Still others were employees of Merck.

A member of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), Dr. William Schaffner, even received financial payment from Merck to discuss Zostavax with reporters. Neil Miller notes how this truly should be considered unacceptable:

This questionable practice lowers public confidence in the high ethical standards that should be required and are expected from the custodians of our healthcare system. It also encourages public cynicism towards media coverage of all vaccine-related news.

How can we trust any claim pertaining to vaccine safety and efficacy when custodians of our healthcare system are receiving money from the drug companies they are commissioned to oversee? A functional system of healthcare checks and balances is imperative.

Smallpox Shenanigans

Smallpox is caused by the variola virus. You can catch smallpox through infected blankets or clothing, or by inhaling droplets discharged from the nose and mouth of an infected person.

Within 12 days after exposure, those infected will experience fever, nausea, vomiting, headache, backache, and muscle pains. This is soon followed by severe abdominal pain and a subsequent rash develops on the entire body. The rash then transforms into pus-filled sores, which eventually crust over and may leave scars. The disease almost always confers permanent immunity. There are different forms of smallpox (variola major, variola minor, fulminating, malignant, modified, etc.) and some are more serious than others. According to the WHO, case-fatality rate can reach 20% or higher. By 1980 the WHO declared that smallpox had been eradicated.

Although the WHO was quick to give credit to their own worldwide vaccination campaign begun in 1967, variola had already stopped infecting people in more than 8 out of 10 countries throughout the world. At that time, only 131,000 cases of smallpox were reported. According to Neil Miller: Some medical historians question the validity of [the WHO's] claim. Scarlet fever and the plague also infected millions of people. Vaccines were never developed for these diseases yet they disappeared as well. Several reputable historians credit multiple public health activities—sanitation and nutrition reforms—with reducing the incidence and severity of the early problematic diseases, including smallpox, scarlet fever, dysentery, typhoid, and cholera.

The history of smallpox inoculations is important to get an understanding of the history of vaccination, and not just because this story explains how the word “vaccine” was derived.

By the 1700s, it was known that contracting smallpox would give you immunity later in life. Some doctors even intentionally exposed people to smallpox hoping to provoke a less severe reaction and still confer immunity. Children were even exposed to pus extracted from “mild” cases of smallpox, a technique known as variolation.

In 1715, Peter Kennedy suggested collecting smallpox fluid and introducing it to the patient through a scratch in the skin. This technique would become the model for future applications and research.

It quickly became customary for the upper and middle classes to submit to the procedure. But it was an uncertain and hazardous practice. Often, smallpox by variolation was indistinguishable from an attack of ordinary smallpox. Moreover, it rarely conferred permanent immunity; the variolated could contract the disease more than once.

The trouble and risks of variolation were disliked and feared but were accepted in the name of duty. The variolated often died from the procedure, became the source of a new epidemic, or developed other illnesses from the lymph of the donor, such as syphilis hepatitis or tuberculosis. Variolation spread throughout England, Europe, Canada, and the American colonies. However, the primary side effect of the procedure was smallpox itself. This caused researchers to seek alternatives to the dangerous and uncertain medical technique.

In 1774, Benjamin Jesty set out to prove that cowpox infection protected against smallpox. Apparently, there was a rumor in England among 18th century dairymaids that when you catch cowpox, a relatively harmless disease, you would become immune to smallpox.

Babies who received SW-HT died at a rate that was 51% higher than those who received the standard vaccine...nearly 50 excess deaths for every 1000 babies vaccinated. EZ-HT was much more potent, contributing to a rate that was 80% higher, contributing to 75 excess deaths for every 1000.

Strikingly, according to the previously cited study published by Lancet in 1991, 1 in every 6 babies vaccinated with EZ-HT died within three years. Unfortunately, even this didn't deter enthusiasts of the high-titer shot.

Vaccine researchers were unwilling to abandon their deadly Edmonston-Zagreb high-titer measles vaccine. Instead, they set up a study base in Los Angeles, California. In 1990, three years after the Senegal study was initiated, the first american Black and Hispanic babies were injected with EZ-HT. [Awadu, KO. Outrage! How Babies Were Used as Guinea Pigs in an L.A. County Vaccines Experiment. (Long Beach, CA: Conscious Rasta Press, 1996)] Even though the WHO and the CDC knew about the high mortality rate already being associated with the vaccine, they still considered the data “preliminary.”

From 1989 to 1991, Kaiser Permanente along with the L.A. County Department of Health and the CDC, injected over 700 “mostly minority” babies with unlicensed experimental vaccines with fraudulently-obtained consent from the parents. Until Los Angeles county, this killer vaccine had only been used in the “Third World.”

Before the trials finished, nearly 1500 minority babies had been given the experimental vaccine, according to this 1996 LA Times article: ”A mistake was made,” said Dr. David Satcher, director of the Atlanta-based federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one of the study sponsors. “It shocked me.” Satcher said in an interview that the CDC plans to contact all the families involved. He said he was very concerned that the events not fuel suspicion in the minority community of government-sponsored medical research. We now know that the CDC lied about the study on numerous occasions.

1 The “informed consent” form provided to parents violated internationally accepted ethical codes of conduct regulating human experimentation. Parents were not informed that EZ-HT was unlicensed in the US.

2 Parents were told that millions of doses of EZ-HT had been used in Europe. But the LA babies were actually receiving a vaccine that was up to 500 times more potent.

3 The CDC said the communities targeted for the vaccine were those hit hardest by recent measles outbreaks. According to data obtained from the Los Angeles County Department of Health, these communities were not the hardest hit. Journalist Keidi Obi Awadu, in his Outrage!, documented that “three three regions chosen to receive the experimental shots were predominantly Black and Hispanic.” Furthermore, “several mixed-race and White communities harder hit by the recent outbreak of measles were not chosen to participate in the study.”

4 Although the CDC claimed no children were adversely affected, one baby did die from a rare bacterial disease. According to Awadu, several children “experienced what parents are describing as long-term immune system impairment, seizures and other acute conditions consistent with vaccine-induced injury.”

5 Stephen Hadler of the CDC claimed the babies died in earlier studies because they didn't have access to adequate health care. However, one of the more important findings of the Senegal study was “the three vaccine groups were comparable as regards various social, family, and health characteristics. Intensive medical care was provided during the project.”

In 1990, WHO requested 250 million doses of the deadly EZ-HT measles vaccine to be dispensed throughout the world. However, data from Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, and Haiti continued to confirm that EZ-HT doesn't save lives—it increases mortality. By June of 1992, the link was irrefutable; WHO called for a moratorium on use of the disputed vaccine. By some estimates, this may have prevented 18 million baby deaths. [Awadu]

The Chickenpox/Shingles Charade

Vaccines have been introduced to counteract problems caused by old vaccines. The chickenpox vaccine contributed to a herpes zoster (shingles) epidemic that may last for more than 50 years.

Herpes zoster (HZ) is a reactivation of varicella zoster, the chickenpox virus, and only affects those previously infected with chickenpox. Although most people recover completely from chickenpox, the virus never leaves the body, and especially as people age, the virus can become active again and reappear as “shingles.”

Shingles appears as a painful rash or group of blisters on one side of the body, and usually lasts for two to four weeks. Although shingles usually resolves on its own without intervention, some treatments exist to reduce the duration of the symptoms, as well as to prevent a possible severe complication known as postherpetic neuralgia.

Although you can't “catch” shingles from someone who is infected, you can come down with chickenpox if you've never had it before. Also, shingles is much more common in those over 50.

It was previously thought that the weaker immune systems of the elderly contributed to this higher rate of shingles, but recent evidence indicates that it's more likely because they have less contact with children affected with chickenpox.

When most adults (who have already had chickenpox) come into contact with children infected with the virus, their immunity is naturally and asymptomatically boosted, protecting them from shingles.

The EZ-HT Experiment

Another WHO/CDC catastrophe concerns the measles vaccine. Most infants under five months are protected from measles by maternal antibodies, and standard measles vaccines are ineffective in babies under nine months. Since measles death rates are higher in Third World countries, authorities decided to create a “high-titer” vaccine to target this 5-9 month age range.

Beginning in the 1980s, they tested the Edmonston-Zagreb (EZ-HT) strain on Mexican and Gambian babies 4-6 months old.

The same high-titer vaccine continued to be administered in Guinea-Bissau, Togo, Senegal, Bangladesh, Haiti, and impoverished minority communities in Los Angeles, California.

The public was told that EZ-HT “produces a better immunological response than standard vaccines,” but studies had been conducted that concluded the vaccine was unsafe for infants, including the following: Child mortality after high-titre measles vaccines: prospective study in Senegal.

The study concluded, quite unequivocally, that “The higher risk of death in the two high-titre vaccine groups remained significant in multivariate analyses. These findings suggest a need to reconsider the use of high-titre measles vaccines early in life in less developed countries.”

From 1987 to 1989, scientists set up a research center near 30 remote villages in central Senegal. Their stated primary objective was to study the clinical efficacy of two high-titer measles vaccines: Edmonston-Zagreb (EZ-HT) and Schwartz (SW-HT).

Researchers may have suspected the vaccine was dangerous when the results of earlier studies began to filter in. But they were probably reluctant to abandon their high-titer shot without testing it at least one more time to be sure. Senegal must have seemed ideal; the region was extremely remote, and less than 4% of the mothers who “consented” to the study were literate.

When the results were tabulated (using eight statistical procedures) it became clear that children who received the high-titer measles vaccines had significantly higher mortality rates at 41 months than children in the standard low-titer measles vaccine group. But they were not dying from measles. Most of the deaths were from other common childhood diseases. Apparently, the high-titer measles vaccines lowered overall immunity making the children fatally susceptible to diarrhea, dysentery, malaria, malnutrition, acute respiratory ailments, and other infectious diseases.

Birth Control Controversy and Measles Malpractice

One of the more frequent vaccine “conspiracy theories” that gets bandied about (and ridiculed) is that some vaccines have been nefariously used for anti-fertility purposes, particularly in Third World nations.

Although this claim is largely unsubstantiated, scientists affiliated with the World Health Organization did start experimenting with anti-fertility vaccines in the 1970s. Numerous studies throughout the 80's and 90's documented the progress of these experiments, including: “Phase 1 clinical trials of a World Health Organization birth control vaccine,” Lancet (June 11th, 1988): 1295-98.

“Vaccines for fertility regulation,” Research in Human Reproduction, Biennial Report: 1986-87 (Geneva: WHO Special Programme of Research, 1988); chapter 11, pp. 177-198.

“Anti-hCG vaccines are in clinical trials.” Scandinavian Journal of Immunology 1992;36:123-126.

hCG refers to Human chorionic gonadotropin, a hormone that stops menstruation and prepares the uterus for pregnancy. They theorized that if anti-hCG antibodies could be induced, then fertilization would remain incomplete.

In the mid 1990s, Human Life International (HLI) became suspicious of a WHO tetanus vaccination campaign in countries like the Philippines, Mexico and Nicaragua. WHO had developed a “neonatal tetanus” vaccine and began distributing it in numerous Third World countries in the early 1990s.

Neonatal tetanus is extremely rare in developing countries, but it continues to be a concern in Third World regions because of the lack of proper sanitation.

According to J.A. Miller, correspondent for Human Life International (HLI Reports, Human Life International, Gaithersburg, Maryland; June/July 1995, Volume 13, Number 8):

In October 1994, HLI received a communication from its Mexican affiliate, the Comite' Pro Vida de Mexico, regarding that country's anti-tetanus campaign. Suspicious of the campaign protocols, the Comite' obtained several vials of the vaccine and had them analyzed by chemists. Some of the vials were found to contain human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG), a naturally occurring hormone essential for maintaining a pregnancy.

When introduced into the body coupled with a tetanus toxoid carrier, antibodies will be formed not only against tetanus but also against hCG. In this case the body fails to recognize hCG as a friend and will produce anti-hCG antibodies. The antibodies will attack subsequent pregnancies by killing the hCG which naturally sustains a pregnancy; when a woman has sufficient anti-hCG antibodies in her system, she is rendered incapable of maintaining a pregnancy.

HLI reported the sketchy facts regarding the Mexican tetanus vaccines to its World Council members and affiliates in more than 60 countries. Soon additional reports of vaccines laced with hCG hormones began to drift in from the Philippines, where more than 3.4 million women were recently vaccinated. Similar reports came from Nicaragua, which had conducted its own vaccination campaign in 1993.

Here are several key points raised by HLI concerning the WHO tetanus vaccination program:

Only women between the ages of 15 and 45 were vaccinated (in Nicaragua the age range was 12-49). Young children and men were excluded.

Not only did the vaccines contain human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG), but the vaccination protocols called for multiple injections: three within three months and a total of five altogether. Tetanus vaccinations allegedly provide protection for ten years or more...why multiple injections?

Since the 1970's, WHO has been researching development of an anti-fertility vaccine utilizing hCG tied to tetanus toxoid as a carrier...the exact same coupling alleged to be found in the Mexican-Philippine-Nicaragua vaccines.

HLI cites numerous studies, many written by WHO researchers, that document WHO's attempts to create an anti-fertility vaccine utilizing tetanus toxoid as a carrier. [“Observations on the antigenicity and clinical effects of a candidate antipregnancy vaccine: B-subunit of human chorionic gonadotropin linked to tetanus toxoid,” Fertility and Sterility, October 1980, pp. 328-335.]

Naturally, when reports began surfacing in the Philippines of tetanus toxoid vaccine being laced with hCG hormones, the WHO and the Philippine Department of Health (DOH) immediately denied the allegations.

Confronted with the results of laboratory tests which detected its presence in three of the four vials of tetanus toxoid examined, the WHO and DOH scoffed at the evidence coming from “right-to-life and Catholic” sources. Four new vials of the tetanus vaccine were submitted by DOH to St. Luke's (Lutheran) Medical Center in Manila—and all four vials tested positive for hCG.

From outright denial the stories now shifted to the allegedly “insignificant” quantity of the hCG present; the volume of hCG present is insufficient to produce anti-hCG antibodies. But new tests designed to detect the presence of hCG antibodies in the blood sera of women vaccinated with the tetanus toxoid vaccine were undertaken by Philippine pro-life and Catholic groups.

Of thirty women tested subsequent to receiving tetanus toxoid vaccine, twenty-six tested positive for high levels of anti-hCG. Apparently, the WHO and the DOH didn't seriously respond to these results, instead trying to explain many of the findings as “false positives.” As for why one might use the tetanus vaccine for such a purpose:

The human body does not attack its own naturally occurring hormone hCG, the body has to be fooled into treating hCG as an invading enemy in order to develop a successful anti-fertility vaccine utilizing hCG antibodies. A paper delivered at the 4th International Congress of Reproductive Immunology (Kiel, West Germany, 26-29 July 1989) spelled it out: “Linkage to a carrier was done to overcome the immunological tolerance to hCG.”

After the vaccine controversy had reached a fever pitch, a new bombshell exploded; none of the three different brands of tetanus vaccine being used had ever been licensed for sale and distribution or registered with the Philippine Bureau of Food and Drugs (BFAD), as required by law.

The head of the BFAD lamely explained that the companies distributing these brands “did not apply for registration.” The companies in question are Connaught Laboratories Ltd. and Intervex, both from Canada, and CSL Laboratories from Australia.

It seemed that the BFAD might belatedly require re-testing, but the idea was quickly rejected when the Secretary of Health declared that, since the vaccines had been certified by the WHO...there was assurance enough that the “vaccines come from reputable manufacturers.”

Just how “reputable” one of the manufacturers might be is open to some question. In the mid-'80s Connaught Laboratories was found to be knowingly distributing vials of AIDS-contaminated blood products. [“Ottawa got blood tainted by HIV.” Ottawa Citizen, 4 April 1995.]

The HLI report concludes by stating that similar evidence was beginning to emerge from Africa. Despite the WHO's insistence upon “false positives,” many of the women who were vaccinated had painful reactions and even abortions.

According to Sr. Pilar Verzosa, the nun who headed the Philippine branch of HLI, the vaccinated women “started complaining of infected arms and then miscarriages or premature deliveries or even defective babies.”

Even more disturbing was that the HLI's investigation led them to numerous clandestine groups such as the World Bank, the Population Council, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the US National Institute of Health (NIH).

The NIH supplied the hCG hormone in some of the anti-fertility experiments. Moreover, the vaccine was never even licensed for sale and distribution. Authorities violated several internationally recognized laws and ethical standards, including the 1947 Nuremberg Code prohibiting medical experiments on human subjects without their knowledge or consent.

HLI has called for a congressional investigation. Yet, to date no public admission of wrongdoing or apology has been issued, and few details of this illicit, covert operation ever reached the general media.

Although it's unlikely that the current tetanus vaccine contains significant amounts of hCG, one manufacturer warns pregnant women that “animal reproductive studies have not been conducted.”

Furthermore, “it is also not known whether [the vaccine] can cause fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman or can affect reproductive capacity.” To nursing mothers they advise, “It is not known whether [the vaccine] is excreted in human milk...caution should be exercised when administered to a nursing woman.”

The Journal of the American Medical Association and the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal have both published data demonstrating that non-vaccine strains of pneumococcus are replacing the strains targeting by the vaccine. What's even more concerning is the new strains are more dangerous and drug-resistant. According to the study Pediatric Invasive Pneumococcal Disease in the United States in the Era of Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccines:

Through the widespread use of PCV7 in the United States, there has been a significant decrease in the incidence of IPD and nasopharyngeal carriage of vaccine serotypes in all age groups. However, the emergence of replacement pneumococcal serotypes (e.g., 19A, 1, 5, 15, and 33) is now having a significant impact on the success of PCV7.

These serotypes have become the most common causes of IPD in infants, children, and adults, with serotype 19A having emerged as the predominant replacement serotype associated with multidrug-resistant infections.

Another concern is when vaccines are given to one group with the hope of protecting another group. Miller explains:

Mass rubella vaccination campaigns were never intended to protect vaccine recipients; the disease is usually harmless when contracted by children. Instead, the goal has always been to protect the unborn fetuses of rubella-susceptible pregnant women.

When the hepatitis B vaccine was originally introduced, this same rationale was employed. Children rarely develop this disease. In the US, less that 1% of all cases occur in persons less than 15 years of age. The disease is even more uncommon in babies and toddlers. However, “because a vaccination strategy limited to high-risk individuals has failed,” and since children are “accessible,” they are compelled to receive the three-shot series beginning at birth.

Some studies show that hepatitis B vaccine recipients lose protective antibodies after 5 to 10 years. The vaccine that babies receive shortly after birth at the hospital will not be effective a few years later. “By 5 to 15 years after vaccination, some individuals have antibody levels below the protective threshold—and in some cases even undetectable.”

The necessity for multiple “booster” shots is disturbing. Initially, when a new vaccine is introduced, a single shot may be recommended, Later, when the artificial immunity wears off, vaccine manufacturers and the CDC recommend one or more additional shots.

With natural immunity, which is acquired by being exposed to the actual disease, protection is not meager and temporary, but rather complete and lifelong. The child will rarely contract the disease again. This is not true with vaccines. Isn't it odd that the vaccine industry's answer to an ineffective vaccine is to compel more of it?

Another example of the strange logic employed by the media and many vaccine enthusiasts is the hysteria surrounding blaming those who are unvaccinated when there are outbreaks of disease. Unvaccinated children are often sent home form school during outbreaks of measles, mumps and other contagious diseases. Ironically, these children are not sent home for their own protection. On the contrary, doctors claim that unvaccinated children will spread disease.

Of course, this does not make sense (unless we consider it a veiled confession of vaccine inefficacy). How is it possible for an unvaccinated child to imperil vaccinated children? If the shots are effective, then vaccinated children should be protected.

Miller continues by stressing that even members of the U.S. government are aware that the current vaccine program has many shortcomings, as well as the uncomfortable fact that some members of the FDA and CDC have extremely suspect financial interests.

Hearings are regularly held to highlight problems with individual vaccines as well as to investigate the integrity of the vaccine program itself...Members of the exclusive FDA and CDC committees that are responsible for licensing and recommending vaccines for all children in the US are permitted to have financial stakes in those vaccines.

For example, in 2000, a congressional hearing before the Committee on Government Reform was held called Conflicts of Interest in Vaccine Policy Making. The tone of the hearing was set in the opening statements, when it was announced that they needed to determine if “the entire process of licensing and recommending vaccines” has been polluted and the public trust has been violated. Recent revelations about questionable tactics to approve the first rotavirus vaccine prompted the hearing. It was suspected that members of the FDA and CDC knew about the dangers of the rotavirus vaccine before approving it and recommending it for every child in the country.

Dr. Kathryn Edwards, a physician on the FDA's committees that voted to recommend the vaccine, received $255,000 a year from Wyeth-Lederle, the making of the vaccine. This fact was also cited in the 2000 congressional hearing.

Dr. Paul Offit, who was on the CDC's committee that recommended the vaccine, also held a lucrative patent on another rotavirus vaccine under development. “In addition, [Offit] was paid by the drug industry to travel around the country and teach doctors that vaccines are safe.”

Indeed, even within the last few months, Offit has made appearances on numerous talk shows, both TV and radio, bemoaning those who dare to question vaccines. The vast majority of the time he specifically mentions only “autism” and how ignorant the “anti-vaxxers” are for being afraid of “autism.” Instead of educating, he is continuing to restrict the conversation by completely omitting all of the concerns outlined so far, among many others.

One of the more striking things revealed by this hearing was with regards to the FDA and CDC advisory committees that voted to recommend adding the rotavirus vaccine to the childhood vaccination schedule. A whopping 60% of the FDA advisory committee and 50% of the CDC committee had financial ties either to the drug company that produced the vaccine or to Merck and SmithKline Beecham, two other companies developing potentially lucrative rotavirus vaccines. During the hearing, Congressman Dan Burton had this to say: Families need to have confidence that the vaccines that their children take are safe, effective and very necessary. Doctors need to feel confident that when the FDA licenses a drug, that it's really safe and that the pharmaceutical industry has not influenced the decision-making process.

Maintaining the highest level of integrity over the entire spectrum of vaccine development and implementation is essential. No individual who stands to gain financially from the decisions regarding vaccines that may be mandated for use should be participating in the discussion or policymaking for vaccines.

One would think, in the face of waning public confidence in the entirety of the vaccine program, that the FDA and CDC would take the opportunity to agree with such a rational request and restore the confidence of Congress and the public. Sadly, the response was quite the opposite.

On August 24th, 2000, Reuters Medical News published an article called “Congressional report slams FDA, CDC policies on disclosing financial conflicts.” The article describes how Linda Suydam, the senior associate commissioner at the FDA, stated quite unequivocally that “Both the law and policies allow us to use people who have financial ties.” Both the CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were also unwilling to make any of the recommended changes.

The rotavirus vaccine saga continued when a 2006 study was used by the FDA and CDC as a basis for licensing and recommending a new vaccine called RotaTeq. Neil Miller explains the obvious conflict of interest:

Authors of the study included Paul Offit and H. Fred Clark, co-owners of the patent on this vaccine (along with Dr. Stanley Plotkin). In addition, several other members of the study team who were supposed to be objectively evaluating the safety and efficacy of this vaccine, were paid consulting fees, lecture fees, and/or provided grant support by Merck, the vaccine manufacturer, or by GlaxoSmithKline, the maker of another rotavirus vaccine soon to be approved as well.

Some study team members even owned stock in Merck, whose equity value would increase by positive evaluations of this vaccine. Apparently, such conflicts of interest were deemed irrelevant to the impartiality required to ensure the integrity of the entire vaccine approval process and the safety of millions of babies who would soon receive this new vaccine.

The vaccine market is shifting towards adolescents and adults as well. According to a June 17th, 2007 article published by Genetic Engineering and Biotech News, “at present, pediatric vaccines occupy a higher market share, but this trend will shift towards the adult vaccine segment.”

Naturally, the US is the largest market for vaccines because they are “more profitable than generic pharmaceutical drugs.”

In 1960 (before mass vaccines) the US had one of the best infant mortality rates in the world. By 1998, the US dropped to 28th place. By 2006 [the US] fell to 42nd place, worse than Cuba but ahead of Croatia.

Interesting that Croatia would be so low on that list as well, as their policy towards vaccinating infants was made very clear by recent legislation forcing all parents to vaccinate, a disturbing decision that was even more disturbingly lauded by those who think the vaccine debate is only about “autism.”

However, Miller is quite clear that vaccination does prevent disease...the tragedy is that greed and conspiracy have created a system that is becoming increasingly difficult to trust.

If you choose not to vaccinate, there are risks involved. Your child could contract a disease for which a vaccine has been developed. Your child may also experience complications form this disease, which could be permanently debilitating or life-threatening, depending on the particular condition and other factors, such as the child's physical constitution and its ability to reestablish health.

Not vaccinating is just one risk; vaccinating is another...diseases are described in frightening detail and their risks exaggerated beyond reality.

With vaccines (and many drugs as well) the “solution” is often developed prior to the marketing of fear. For example, before the chickenpox vaccine was licensed for general use in 1995, doctors would encourage parents to expose their children to the disease while they were young. Doctors recommended this course of action because they knew that chickenpox is relatively innocuous when contracted prior to the teenage years, but more dangerous in adolescents and adults.

It wasn't until after the vaccine was licensed that the CDC began warning parents about the dangers of chickenpox. Many doctors soon stopped encouraging parents to expose their children and instead receive the shot. The “solution”—a vaccine—preceded the apparent danger.

Vaccine efficacy can be specious.

For example, scientists presume that certain “surrogate markers” or “precancerous lesions” precede cervical cancer. With the HPV vaccine, they simply compared the numbers of these markers in women who received the vaccine to the numbers of these markers in women who received the placebo. However, no actual cases of cervical cancer were prevented in any of the test subjects in any of the clinical studies of the HPV vaccine.

The HPV vaccine was marketed deceptively as well when first introduced, being promoted as “100%” effective. However, the vaccine is only “100%” effective against two of numerous strains of HPV, not cervical cancer itself.

During prelicensure studies, 361 women who received at least one shot of Gardasil went on to develop precancerous lesions on their cervixes within three years.

According to the report HPV Vaccination – More Answers, More Questions: “cautious approach may be warranted in light of important unanswered questions about overall vaccine effectiveness, duration of protection, and adverse effects that may emerge over time.”

In this 2007 report commissioned by the NEJM, two studies were considered on the vaccine's effectiveness on cervical cancer. The report asked: “In these trials, called Females United to Unilaterally Reduce Endo/Ectocervical Disease (FUTURE) I and II, what is the efficacy of vaccination among all subjects, regardless of causal HPV types?”

The results were not promising, as it was determined that in FUTURE I that the vaccine had an efficacy of only 20%, and this was only against low-risk lesions: “no efficacy was demonstrable for higher-grade disease, but the trial may have lacked adequate power to detect a difference.”

However, the larger FUTURE II had more conclusive, and even less favorable, results, as the vaccine was only 17% effective, and again had no impact on preventing high-risk lesions. The report mentions the obvious shortcomings of the vaccine:

Another factor explaining the modest efficacy of the vaccine is the role of oncogenic HPV types not included in the vaccine. At least 15 oncogenic HPV types have been identified; so targeting only 2 types may not have had a great effect on overall rates of preinvasive lesions.

This concept of “strain replacement” is not limited to the HPV vaccine, and is an extremely important aspect of the vaccine debate that deserves more attention. Miller continues:

Gardasil is not the only vaccine that targets some strains of the disease while excluding others. The Hib and pneumococcal vaccines were also constructed in this manner, and have become problematic due to “strain replacement.”

Scientists have discovered that when vaccines only attack some strains of a disease, other strains gain prominence. The disease becomes more virulent and people who are normally not susceptible to the ailment are infected.

For example, there are several different types of haemophilus influenzae, including types a, b, c, d, e, and f. The “b” type is just one strain—the only one for which a vaccine was created—the Hib shot. Although this vaccine appears to have decreased cases of haemophilus influenzae type b in children, the overall rate of invasive haemophilus influenzae disease in adults increased.

Researchers don't consider this a failing of the Hib vaccine, rather “it raises the question whether a [new] vaccine will need to be developed.”

Prevnar, the pneumococcal vaccine, is only designed to protect against a few of the 90 different strains that can cause the disease. The vaccine is therefore still considered “effective” if the child is stricken with pneumococcus...just not from one of the strains included in the vaccine.

When vaccines are compared in this way, that is, to other substances that are capable of causing adverse reactions, the vaccine appears safer than it really is. Whenever this deceptive tactic is utilized, officially acknowledged adverse reactions to a vaccine may represent only a fraction of the true potential risks to the recipient.

However, not all studies are skewed, for example this 1999 study published by the British Medical Journal showed a strong correlation between the haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) vaccine to rising rates of type 1 diabetes, concluding that “the potential risk of the vaccine exceeds the potential benefit.”

Risks, Reactions and Revenue

Adverse reactions to vaccines are unacceptably common. Even the FDA admits that FluMist (the live-virus nasal spray vaccine) can cause pneumonia and “medically significant wheezing.” Neil Miller reports that “during pre-licensure clinical studies 3% of all children six months to one year of age who received the vaccine ended up in the hospital with respiratory problems!”

Before this vaccine was approved, a large study conducted in 31 clinics showed that it caused “a statistically significant increase in asthma or reactive airways disease” in children under five years of age. Nevertheless, in September 2007 the FDA licensed this vaccine for children as young as two years old.

With some vaccines, the number of people who experience systemic reactions, such as fever, headache, respiratory infection, muscle aches, nausea, abdominal pain, diarrhea, chills and fatigue, is very high.

For example, up to 10% of babies will vomit following their pneumococcal shots. A whopping 62% of 18-55 year-old recipients of the meningococcal vaccine had systemic reactions. Doctors consider most systemic reactions “normal.” Common systemic reactions are separate from severe and fatal reactions, including neurological, immunological and paralytic disorders such as Guillain–Barré syndrome, demyelinating diseases, arthritis, anaphylactic shock, and other life-threatening conditions.

Vaccine injuries can often be “disguised” by labeling the conditions as learning disabilities, hyperactivity, mental retardation, attention deficit, etc. Many parents are completely unaware at how common these adverse reactions can be, let alone that they can occur at all.

According to a study published by Pediatrics, when parents were specifically asked to observe changes in their baby's behavior after a shot, only 7% reported no reactions at all.

Because of the public's general ignorance of the various types of possible damage that can result from vaccines, the true number of vaccine injuries may be vastly underreported. According to this study:

In 1986, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (PL-99-660) requiring health care providers to report suspected vaccine reactions to a centralized reporting system. As a result, the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), cosponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), was established in 1990. VAERS is a postmarketing safety surveillance program that collects information about possible adverse reactions (side effects) that occur after the administration of vaccines licensed for use in the United States. Current and historic VAERS data are public access, available to health care providers, vaccine manufacturers, and the general public.

VAERS receives approximately 30,000 reports annually. Since 1990, VAERS has received over 350,000 reports, most of which describe mild side effects, such as fever and local reactions.

About 13% of all reactions are classified as serious, involving life-threatening conditions, hospitalization, permanent disability, or death. By monitoring such events, VAERS helps to identify unusual patterns of reports and important safety concerns.

Our findings show a positive correlation between the number of vaccine doses administered and the percentage of hospitalizations and deaths.

Since vaccines are given to millions of infants annually, it is imperative that health authorities have scientific data from synergistic toxicity studies on all combinations of vaccines that infants might receive. Finding ways to increase vaccine safety should be the highest priority.

However, the FDA estimates that 90% of doctors don't even report reactions. Continuing from the study on VAERS: Since VAERS is a passive system, it is inherently subject to underreporting. For example, a confidential study conducted by Connaught Laboratories, a vaccine manufacturer, indicated that “a fifty-fold underreporting of adverse events” is likely.

According to David Kessler, former commissioner of the FDA, “only about one percent of serious events [adverse drug reactions] are reported.”

According to Ottaviani et al., “Any case of sudden unexpected death occurring...in infancy, especially soon after a vaccination, should always undergo a full necropsy study,” otherwise a true association between vaccination and death may escape detection.

A recent study by Kuhnert et al. demonstrated a 16-fold increase in unexplained sudden unexpected death after the fourth dose of a penta- (5-in-1) or hexavalent (6-in-1) vaccine.

Similarly, Zinka et al. reported 6 cases of sudden infant death syndrome that occurred within 48 hours following the administration of a hexavalent vaccine. At postmortal examination, these cases showed “unusual findings in the brain” that appeared compatible with an association between hexavalent vaccination and sudden infant death syndrome.

These examples provide additional evidence that cases of vaccine-related mortality are likely underreported in VAERS.

According to Neil Miller, one of the authors of the aforementioned study, the federal government is aware of the unnecessarily high danger of many vaccines.

In fact, Congress established a “hazard” tax on childhood vaccines. When parents pay the doctor for requested shots, some of that money goes into a special fund to compensate them when their children are seriously damaged or die.

As of September 2009, nearly $2 billion was granted for thousands of injuries and deaths caused by mandated vaccines. Numerous cases are still pending. Awards were issued for permanent injuries such as learning disabilities, seizure disorders, mental retardations, paralysis, and numerous deaths, including many that were initially misclassified as sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

Parents need to understand that vaccines are drugs. Each one contains a proprietary blend of chemicals, pathogens and other foreign matter. That is the nature of a vaccine.

Today, children receive one vaccine at birth, eight vaccines at two months, eight vaccines at four months, nine vaccines a six months, and twelve additional vaccines between 12 and 18 months (DtaP and MMR are each given with a single injection but contain three vaccines).

The United States is the most vaccinated country in the world, yet it has a poor infant mortality rate. One would think that a country with more immunizations, which are explicitly promoted as life saving, especially for babies, would have an excellent infant death rate...as new vaccines are added to the recommended vaccine schedule, the US infant mortality rate worsens.