Mobile Phones And Brain Cancer
.... You Deserve The Facts
You Don't Deserve Brain Cancer - You Deserve The Facts
Some people appear to have an almost pathological emotional attachment to their
mobile phones and there is a fascinating suggestion that mobile radiation pulses might
actually be addictive to the human brain.. We can't save those who would rather die
than switch. But ethics compelled us to ensure that all reasonable people have
access to the basic scientific facts.
Your mobile phone is a microwave transmitter and it should bear a cancer warning!
Microwave energy oscillates at millions to billions of cycles per second. The
Journal of mobile ular Biochemistry reports that these frequencies cause cancer and
other diseases by interfering with mobile ular DNA and its repairmechanisms. Microwave
promotes rapid mobile aging. Italian scientists have recently demonstrated that mobile
phone radiation makes cancerous mobile s grow aggressively. Cordless phones marked 900
megahertz or 2.4 gigahertz emit the same dangerous microwave radiation as mobile
phones.
The connection between microwave exposure and cancer has been documented for
years. During the Cold War, the Soviets irradiated the U.S. Embassy in Moscow ,
Russia , with low level, twin-beam microwave radiation. Two successive ambassadors
developed leukemia. Other staffers also developed cancer, or their blood showed DNA
damage, which precedes cancer.
Research by University of Washington professor Dr. Henry Lai shows brain mobile s
are clearly damaged by microwave levels far below the U.S. government's "safety"
guidelines. Dr. Lai notes that even tiny doses of radio frequency can cumulate over
time and lead to harmful effects. He warns that public exposure to radiation from
wireless transmitters "should be limited to minimal.">
Motorola advises consumers to avoid pointing a mobile ular antenna toward exposed
parts of the body. But independent tests show that mobile phones can also leak huge
amounts of radiation from the keypad and mouthpiece. This radiation deeply
penetrates brain, ear and eye tissues, which are especially susceptible to
microwave damage. Belt clip cases allow mobile phones to deliver radiation to the
liver or kidney areas when a wired, hands-free earpiece is used.
Recent studies confirm that mobile and cordless phone microwave can:
- Damage nerves in the scalp
- Cause blood mobile s to leak hemoglobin
- Cause memory loss and mental confusion
- Cause headaches and induce extreme fatigue
- Create joint pain, muscle spasms and tremors
- Create burning sensation and rash on the skin
- Alter the brain's electrical activity during sleep
- Induce ringing ! in the ears, impair sense of smell
- Precipitate cataracts, retina damage and eye cancer
- Open the blood-brain barrier to viruses and toxins
- Reduce the number and efficiency of white blood mobile s
- Stimulate asthma by producing histamine in mast mobile s
- Cause digestive problems and raise bad cholesterol levels
- Stress the endocrine system, especially pancreas, thyroid, ovaries,
testes
In 1993, the telecom industry committed $25 million dollars for a series of
research projects designed to prove that mobile phones are safe. The studies proved
just the opposite! They proved that federal microwave exposure standards are
dangerously inadequate. mobile damage and tumors can be easily induced in the lab at
about one third of the FCC's exposure guidelines.
The telecom boys panicked. They and their lackey politicians and federal
regulators decided the only lucrative thing to do was to LIE and DENY. Despite
damning evidence, the FDA still prevaricates:>
"There is no reason to conclude that there are health risks posed by mobile phones
to consumers."
Meantime, the telecom industry has been pressing to INCREASE BY MORE THAN 10
TIMES the allowable human exposure to mobile phone radiation!
Luckily, Dr. George Carlo headed up the industry's study project. He presents
the shocking facts in his book, mobile Phones: Invisible Hazards in the Wireless Age:
An Insider's Alarming Discoveries About Cancer and Genetic Damage (Carroll and
Graf, 2001). A summary of Dr. Carlo's book is this: mobile phones are hot, adequate
protective regulations are naught, and Americans are being "fried" so that the
deceitful telecom industry can rake it in! It's dirty business as usual, and the
longer the industry can con the public, the more billions it collects.
On June 16, 2002 , CBS aired a Sixty Minutes segment which confirmed the telecom
industry is about as grungy as it gets. CBS producers accused major phone service
providers of cheating, scamming, forging signatures, switching phone service
without permission and lying about charges. The attorney general of Connecticut
stated that despite millions of dollars in fines each year, these companies remain
incorrigible. Should we be trusting this industry with our brain tissues and our
very lives?
Microwave to the head is extremely hazardous to children. Parents in some
European nations are now warned to keep children away from mobile phones. A
University of Utah researcher found the younger the child, the more radiation is
absorbed by the brain. Spanish researchers have shown that mobile phones can alter
electrical activity of a child's brain for hours, causing drastic mood changes and
possible behavior and learning disabilities. Scientists fear that mobile phone
radiation could damage human embryos. Pregnant women are advised to be wary.
A mobile phone must greatly increase its field strength to maintain communications
within the metallic cage of an auto. Thus, the effect of microwave radiation inside
a vehicle is especially intense. Volkswagen of Europe has warned that mobile phone
usage inside a car can be "injurious to health due to the extremely high
electromagnetic fields generated."
Insurance studies in England showed that an average driver talking on a mobile is
actually more impaired in function and reaction time than a drunk. Finland's
Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority reports that one hour of exposure to mobile
phone radiation can cause human mobile s to shrink. Researchers believe this is due to
increased protein activity, an indicator of mobile damage. What an unstable world
needs now is a global population afflicted with incredible shrinking brains.
Brain cancer rates in USA have increased by 25% since 1975. In 2001, 185,000
Americans were diagnosed with some form of brain cancer. A grade four brain tumor
can grow from the size of a grape to tennis ball size in just 4 months.
Brain tumors are almost always fatal and most people die within 6-12 months
after diagnosis. On April 7, 2002 , Sixty Minutes aired a fascinating report on
brain cancer, explaining that scientists are unsure why incidence of the disease is
growing so exponentially.
Ironically, the segment was followed by a Sprint ad, which advised parents that
the best way to keep track of teenagers is to connect them to a mobile phone. While
researchers say that radical damage to the brain can occur within the first few
minutes of conversation, telecom ads encourage customers to spend many hours on the
phone each month. Those blazing, full-page mobile phone ads in newspapers and
magazines must be the reason mobile phone dangers are almost never discussed in the
mainstream media.
An exmobile ent resource tool is Robert Kane's book mobile ular Telephone Russian
Roulette (Vantage Press, 2001). As a telecommunications expert, Kane presents an
impressive collection of studies showing that both government agencies and mobile
phone manufacturers KNEW YEARS AGO that mobile phone radiation at present exposure
levels is dangerous to human health. He notes that mobile ! phones would be rendered
useless if their RF emissions were reduced to safe levels.
Reports of illness from heavy mobile phone usage and from living or working close
to powerful RF transmitters are synchronous with numerous cancer-related lawsuits
now being filed against the mobile phone industry. The insurance industry sees big
trouble ahead. Underwriters for Lloyd's of London refuse to insure phone
manufacturers against damage to users' health. mobile phones are today what tobacco
was 40 years ago.
UPDATE:
How dangerous are mobile phones? "The risk is extremely high," declares Dr.
Cherry. "There are 66 epidemiological studies showing that electromagnetic
radiation across the spectrum increase brain tumors in human populations. Two of
those studies are for particular brain tumors from mobile phones."
Cherry says that because cancer takes decades to develop, it will be another 10
or 20 years before "mobiles" manifest a big bonanza in brain tumors. But he adds,
we're already seeing "acute effects that are noticed within minutes of using a mobile
phone."
After two minutes' conversation, a mobile phone's digitized impulses disable the
safety barrier that isolates the brain from destructive proteins and poisons in the
blood. Professor Leif Salford, the neurologist who carried out the research for
this finding, informed the Daily Mail: "It seems that molecules such as proteins
and toxins can pass out of the blood, while the phone is switched on, and enter the
brain. We need to bear in mind diseases such as MS and Alzheimer's which are linked
to proteins being found in the brain."
DANCING WITH THE TELECOMONSTER
If you must pack a mobile phone, treat it like a loaded pistol. Keep it turned
off. Don't carry it near ovaries, testicles, or the heart. For partial protection,
buy an antenna shield. Limit calls to one-minute, six to 10 minutes a month. Never
fire off a mobile phone with children anywhere in sight.
A better bet is to facilitate the growth of organic telephone networks with lots
of fibre. Instead of more microwave towers, "We should be wiring up our cities with
fibre-optic cables to provide Internet, fax, telephone, radio and television at
very high quality," Cherry urges, "rather than saturating our cities with the
microwave, radiowave and low frequency signals all the time."
When it comes to mobile s, consciousness and mobile phones, every call is collect.
How can convenience count more than cancer? What is gained by being in constant
contact with disembodied voices, while being "out of touch" with the friends and
neighbours around us? Are we comfortable having our location traced by monitoring
authorities?
Unless we start voting with our wallets, consumer complacency could prove as
species-limiting as corporate cynicism. "Microwave frequencies are the same as
those used in radar and your microwave oven," says Florida mobile phone tower opponent
Joe Chwick. "You wouldn't think of sticking your head in the oven, but there is no
hesitation to putting the mobile phone to your ear."
Having somehow survived three-million years of evolution without them, many
contemporary hominids claim they cannot live without them. But can exquisitely
sensitive electromagnetic beings live with mobile phones - and the mobile phone towers
their signals ride in on? Like polyethylene food and water containers, plastic
cookers and coffeemakers, microwave ovens and petroleum-powered brilliantly
beguiling inventions we have to let go. Would hanging up on such an intrusive and
hazardous addiction be so terrible?
Exmobile ent web sites offering up-to-date scientific data on microwave and other
radiation issues are:
- http://www.energyfields.org
- http://www.microwavenews.com
- http://www.emrnetwork.org
- http://www.wave-guide.org
Although the cell phone industry continues to claim that their products are safe, there is still no scientific data available to prove this. Evidence to the contrary, however, is mounting every day. EMFs which cell phones emit are similar to the ones that are emitted by a microwave oven.
A Tool to Reduce Your Brain's Exposure to Cell Phone Radiation
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Eat Your Vegetables
EATING vegetables like broccoli and spinach may help older women retain some
memory abilities later on, while avoiding obesity in middle age lowers the risk of
later Alzheimer's disease in both sexes, new studies suggest.
The work mirrors prior evidence that people may help keep their brains healthy by
following standard health advice, including things like staying active and keeping
cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure under control.
In fact, one of the new studies found evidence that obesity, high cholesterol and
high blood pressure in middle age each added substantially to the risk of
developing Alzheimer's or other dementia later on.
Each problem roughly doubled the risk, and study participants with all three
traits ran six times the risk of somebody without any of those problems, said
researcher Dr. Miia Kivipelto of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
Kivipelto said the findings are encouraging because they suggest that lifestyle
changes can help many people reduce their risk of dementia. She spoke in a
telephone interview before presenting the work Monday in Philadelphia at the Ninth
International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders.
Her study included 1,449 Finns whose body-mass index, which signals obesity, was
calculated when they were around 50 years old. When examined an average of 21 years
later, 61 had developed dementia, mostly Alzheimer's. Results showed the risk of
any dementia or Alzheimer's in particular roughly doubled with a BMI of more than
30 (considered obese), cholesterol of more than 250 or a blood pressure reading in
which one of the numbers exceeded 140.
The effect appeared in both sexes, though the obesity factor was slightly stronger
in women, Kivipelto said.
The findings make sense, commented Deborah Gustafson of the Medical College of
Wisconsin. Gustafson had reported evidence that women who are overweight in their
70s had an increased risk of getting Alzheimer's, while the new work extends the
finding back into middle age, she noted.
The other new study found that women in their 60s who habitually ate more
cruciferous and green leafy vegetables than other women went on to show less
overall decline on a bundle of tests measuring memory, verbal ability and attention
when they were in their 70s. Such foods include broccoli, cauliflower, romaine
lettuce and spinach.
The federally funded study didn't include men, but the effect would probably
appear in them too, said Jae Hee Kang, an instructor at Harvard's Brigham and
Women's Hospital in Boston who presented the work. She stressed that the findings
need to be confirmed by further studies.
Researchers focused on drop-offs in abilities like remembering word lists after 15
minutes, naming as many animals as possible in one minute, and reciting a list of
numbers backward. A pronounced decline may foreshadow Alzheimer's.
Kang and colleagues studied 13,388 nurses participating in a long-running health
study. They compared the participants' questionnaires on long-term eating habits
over a span of 10 years, when they were in their 60s, to their performance in two
test sessions when they were in their 70s. Researchers noted how much the scores
declined in the two years between sessions.
While most women in the study showed some decline, those who had habitually eaten
the most cruciferous and green leafy vegetables showed less decline than those who
ate the least, Kang said.
"It was almost like they were younger by one or two years in terms of their
cognitive declining," Kang said in a telephone interview.
The contrasts appeared between those who ate about eight servings versus three
servings of green leafy vegetables a week, and those who ate about five servings
versus two servings of cruciferous vegetables a week.
The effect of the vegetables probably comes from the antioxidants and B vitamins
they contain, Kang said.
Organic and vegan eating spawn good health, sustainable environment
Carrie Packwood Freeman
April 19, 2005
At the April 20 Earth Day festival, you will likely be overwhelmed by the major
environmental issues confronting us: preserving wilderness, stopping species
extinction, and maintaining clean air and water. Yet, there is one thing little ol'
you can do every day to help each of these environmental problems. Drumroll please:
Eating plant-based foods, especially organic and those locally grown, and choosing
vegan proteins instead of meat, eggs, and dairy, is even more powerful than our
current healthy habits of recycling, biking and turning off the water when we brush
our teeth. So why not do all these responsible things?
Following the eco-mantra, "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle," eating vegan proteins like
nuts, soy, whole grains, peas and beans is all about Reduction. Veganism reduces
the waste of land, forests, plant crops, water, fuel and wildlife, as well as the
pollution of water, soil and air. The simplest way to explain it is that animal
agribusiness uses the majority of our nation's farmland to raise crops for feeding
farm animals. These pesticide-ridden crops use many resources, like fertile soil,
water and energy and leave deforestation and desertification in their wake. For the
resources we put into raising these crops and the additional water and energy
invested in raising, killing and processing animals, we don't get nearly as much in
calories or protein out of the resulting animal products. It's an irresponsibly
poor return on an investment.
Thousands of people worldwide die daily of hunger-related causes, while we feed
over 60 percent of our grains and plants to farm animals. It makes more sense to
instead feed people directly with those grains and vegetables.
Compassion in World Farming reports that the world now consumes five times as
much meat as it did in the first half of the 20th century. Our current excesses of
meat and dairy aren't normal and certainly cannot be sustained. To keep America
eating all this excess meat and dairy, factory farms are required. By intensively
farming over 10 billion animals annually and consolidating their urine and feces,
we are fouling our air and water and ruining our potential for a healthy future. In
fact, animal agribusiness is the largest polluter of America's rivers and streams.
What's more, big money agribusiness lobbyists are ensuring that the government
thinks of its short-term interests and not what's best for the public. Since we
live in a market-based economy, that means we as individual consumers need to pick
up the slack and financially support more sustainable, plant-based organic foods
instead of animal agribusiness. It's up to us.
So next time you're wondering what to get for lunch on campus, bypass Subway and
go organic at Holy Cow. Most campuses aren't lucky enough to have such a place.
When waiting for the bus, skip the hot dog stand and hit the falafel pita stand
instead. Your fork is your most powerful tool for change. How will you wield
it?
Eat Your Veggies To Fight Cancer
By Daniel J. DeNoon
Reviewed by Brunilda Nazario, MD
© 2005, WebMD Inc. All rights reserved.
Nov. 1, 2005
Quote:
"The idea of having more fruits and vegetables in the diet has more and more
evidence to support it." William G. Nelson, MD, PhD, Johns Hopkins University
(WebMD) Simple foods carry the most scientifically advanced anticancer
compounds, scientists say.
The reports come from the fourth annual Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research
meeting, held by the American Association for Cancer Research.
At the cutting edge of these new frontiers is the finding that, well, that your
mother was right. You really should eat your vegetables. They're full of newly
discovered cancer-fighting compounds, says conference program chairman William G.
Nelson, MD, PhD, of Johns Hopkins University.
"Basic research is discovering more and more about the cancer-preventing
properties of things we are eating," Nelson said at a news conference. "The idea of
having more fruits and vegetables in the diet has more and more evidence to support
it."
This year a Nobel Prize went to the scientists who in 1982 discovered H. pylori,
the bacterium that causes most stomach ulcers. But stomach ulcers aren't all this
nasty bug does to us.
H. pylori causes a condition called gastritis, in which the walls of the stomach
become red and swollen. Gastritis enormously increases a person's risk of stomach
cancer. A compound called sulforaphane protects cells from injury. It also happens
to kill H. pylori. As it turns out, there is a natural source bursting with
sulforaphane: broccoli sprouts. Yes, the compound can be found in small amounts in
regular, mature broccoli. But broccoli sprouts are by far the best source, says
Akinori Yanaka, MD, PhD, of the University of Tsukuba, Japan.
Broccoli Sprouts: Eat Them
Yanaka's team first fed the sprouts to H. pylori-infected mice. As long as the
mice kept eating the sprouts, they kept the ulcer bug at bay. Then they studied 50
people with H. pylori infection. Half ate about 3.5 ounces of broccoli sprouts
every day for two months. The other half ate alfalfa sprouts, which have almost
exactly the same nutrients but totally lack sulforaphane.
"Only the broccoli-sprout group had significantly decreased H. pylori activity,"
Yanaka said at the news conference. "Only those who ate broccoli sprouts showed
decreased gastritis. We concluded that eating broccoli sprouts offers a rich source
of sulforaphane, which may be useful as a chemoprotection against gastric
cancer."
The broccoli sprouts did not cure H. pylori infection, however. The bug roared
back two months after patients stopped eating the sprouts.
Broccoli Sprouts: Rub Them On Your Skin
Broccoli sprouts aren't just good for your insides. They're good for your
outside, too, reports Johns Hopkins researcher Albena T. Dinkova-Kostova, PhD.
Dinkova-Kostova and colleagues found that an extract made from broccoli sprouts
protects the skin of hairless mice exposed to cancer-causing ultraviolet light.
The skin rub isn't a sunscreen. Treated mice got just as much UV light as
untreated mice. But while all the untreated mice got cancer from the simulated sun
exposure, half the mice rubbed with broccoli-sprout extract remained cancer free.
Those that did get cancer had half as many tumors as untreated mice.
"Broccoli-sprout extract could possibly be used as a preventive treatment for
skin cancer after exposure to UV light," Dinkova-Kostova said at the news
conference.
Cabbage: Eat It Raw
Polish women are more likely to get breast cancer if they emigrate to the U.S.
Why, wondered Dorothy Rybaczyk-Pathak, PhD, of the University of New Mexico. She
guessed it must have something to do with changing dietary habits.
A likely suspect: cabbage. Polish women traditionally consume 30 pounds of
cabbage a year -- much of it in the form of raw sauerkraut, in salads, or in
short-cooked side dishes. When they emigrate to America, they eat only 10 pounds of
cabbage a year.
Cabbage -- like broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, and
cauliflower -- is a cruciferous vegetable. When broken down by chewing, cabbage
releases several biologically active products including compounds called
glucosinolates and an enzyme called myrosinase. These products have anticancer
properties.
For the greatest benefit, timing seems to be crucial. Rybaczyk-Pathak found that
women who as teenagers ate the most raw cabbage were least likely to get breast
cancer. But even women who didn't eat much cabbage as teens had a lower breast
cancer risk if they ate a lot of raw cabbage as adults.
How much cabbage need a woman eat? Three or more servings a week of raw or
short-cooked cabbage puts a woman in the lowest risk category.
Unfortunately, traditional long-cooked Polish dishes such as hunter's stew,
pierogi, and cabbage rolls did not lower cancer risk.
Garlic Wards Off Cancer
Vegetables fight cancer. But meats cooked at high temperatures -- as in grilling
or frying -- contain a cancer-causing chemical called PhIP.
A compound called diallyl sulfide or DAS is one of the things that gives garlic
its pungent flavor. Now researchers led by Ronald D. Thomas, PhD, of Florida
A&M University, Tallahassee, report that DAS counteracts the cancer-causing
actions of PhIP.
In the lab, Thomas and colleagues added PhIP, DAS, or both to human breast
cells. Sure enough, PhIP made the cells secrete high amounts of cancer-causing
enzymes. But PhIP completely protected cells from this effect.
It's a long way from the test tube to the human diet. But if garlic protected
humans at the same dose at which it protected cell cultures, Thomas says garlic
would have to make up one one-thousandth of your diet.
Sources:
Meeting of Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research, American Association for
Cancer Research, Baltimore, Oct. 30-Nov. 2, 2005. ACR news conference: William G.
Nelson, MD, PhD, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore; Akinori Yanaka, MD, PhD,
University of Tsukuba, Japan; Albena T. Dinkova-Kostova, PhD, Johns Hopkins
University, Baltimore; Dorothy Rybaczyk-Pathak, PhD, University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque; and Ronald D. Thomas, PhD, Florida A&M University,
Tallahassee.
Vegan lifestyle lessens effects of factory farms
By Megan McGowan
2005 04 06
As soon as people find out that I’m vegan the first thing
out of their mouths is always, “Really; why?” This seems like such a
simple question, but I’m always overwhelmed by it. How do I explain the
reasons for my decision in a succinct one or two sentence rationalization when
there are so many complex justifications for it? I usually end up giving some lame
explanation like, “The animals are treated so horribly,” which doesn't
even begin to convey my reasons.
More than 25 billion animals are killed by the meat industry each year. Chickens,
highly social creatures who form very important social relationships in natural
conditions, are kept with at least four or five other chickens in a wire cage
roughly the size of folded newspaper. The chickens are so stressed by these
artificial environments that they take to pecking each other, sometimes to death.
Since dead chickens are not profitable to the factory farming business, the
situation is remedied not by placing the chickens in more humane conditions, but by
cutting their beaks off to prevent injuries from the pecking. This extremely
painful operation is done to young chicks without any anesthesia. This is only the
beginning of what chickens in the factory farming industry go through. I could go
on, but chickens are not the only animals undergoing such torture.
Cows are victims of similar conditions. To begin with, young cows are taken from
their mothers very soon after they’re born, which is extremely traumatic for
both the mother and calf because of the maternal bond they share. Male calves are
then taken to veal crates, which are so small they cannot even turn around. These
calves are kept immobile so they don't form muscles because muscles make tougher
meat. On top of that, they're fed an iron-deficient diet so that they will become
anemic. Why? So the meat will be a lighter color. It seems barbaric to even suggest
making an animal sick for such a reason.
Although the way animals are mistreated is the main reason I first became a
vegetarian and then a vegan, there are several other reasons that support such
dietary choices. Producing meat is extremely detrimental to the environment. It
takes just 25 gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat, and 2,500 gallons of
water to produce a pound of meat. McDonald’s destroys 55 square feet of
rainforest to produce just one "quarter-pounder." In addition to the water and land
wasted to produce meat, animals raised for food are a huge source of waste. They
produce 86,000 pounds of excrement every second. This is excrement laced with
antibiotics and growth hormones and this waste drains off of the land and pollutes
our waterways. The meat industry causes more water pollution in the United States
than all other industries combined.
But maybe some people don't care. After all, it’s just the earth and
animals. But what about the effect people’s meat-eating diet has on other
humans? Forty percent of the world’s grain production is used to feed animals
to support meat-eating diets. At the same time, someone in the world is dying of
starvation every 3.6 seconds. In the time it takes you to watch “The
O.C.” 1,000 people have died and millions of animals are being fattened up to
go to slaughter. People always claim that animal rights groups are trying to put
the interest of animals before those of people, but in reality adopting a
plant-based diet would save countless numbers of lives. If Americans reduced their
meat consumption by just 10 percent, which would mean less than one meatless day
per week, 60 million people could be fed on the saved grain and over 1.5 trillion
gallons of water could be saved.
Maybe you're saying to yourself, "these are great reasons but they don’t
affect me." But they do. A vegetarian or vegan diet is one of the healthiest things
you can do for yourself. Studies of societies that consume high-fat, meat-based
diets consistently have the highest rates of every type of cancer. Not only have
lung, stomach, breast, colon, prostate and pancreas cancer been linked to an
animal-based diet but so have high cholesterol, heart disease and obesity. I
don’t mean to say that adopting a plant-based diet is a cure-all for
everything, but how many other simple choices can have such a beneficial effect on
your life and the lives of others?
After going through all these reasons, the question to ask yourself isn’t
"Why should I be vegan?" but instead, "Why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I
adopt a diet that saves animals' lives, the environment, other people and my
health?" To learn more about this topic and factory farms please come and see Erica
Meier from Compassion over Killing speak tonight at 7 p.m. in Squires Student
Center in room 150.
Vegetables Without Vitamins
Imagine the surprise of going online and discovering that the vitamin and
mineral content of vegetables has drastically dropped.
That’s what happened to nutritionist, Alex Jack, when he went to check out
the latest US Department of Agriculture food tables. The stunning revelation came
after Jack compared recently published nutrient values with an old USDA handbook he
had lying around. Some of the differences in vitamin and mineral content were
enormous-a 50% drop in the amount of calcium in broccoli, for example. Watercress
down 88% in iron content; cauliflower down 40% in vitamin C content-all since
1975.
Jack took his findings to the USDA, hoping
for a reasonable explanation. That was two years ago. He’s still waiting. So
is Organic Gardening magazine, which published an open letter, seeking an
explanation from Dan Glickman, Secretary of Agriculture. Glickman didn’t
respond, but USDA employee, Phyllis E. Johnson did. Johnson (who is head of the
Beltsville area office), suggested to Organic Gardeningthat the nutrient drain
should be put in context. According to her, the 78% decrease in calcium content of
corn is not significant because no one eats corn for
calcium. She further explains that the problem may not even exist at all; that the
apparent nutrient dips could be due to the testing procedures. For example,
“changes in the public’s perception of what the edible portion is may
determine what parts have been analyzed over time.” In other words, back when
the old food tables were made up, people may have been eating the cobb too, so they
got more nutrients.
The vitamin drain
We decided to look into this further. Jack
had used a 1975 version of the food tables for his research. We dredged up a 1963
version. After comparing the nutrient values for over a dozen fruits and
vegetables, it was clear that the nutrient value of many foods has dropped, in some
cases drastically. For example, the amount of vitamin C in sweet peppers has
plummeted from 128 mg to 89 mg.= The vitamin A in apples has dropped from 90 mg to
53 mg. The fall-offs seem to be limited mostly to vegetables, and some
fruits.
Some vegetables appear to be gaining vitamins-at least vitamin A. Carrots, for
example, have more of the vitamin now than they did in 1963. Why is a mystery. But
the phenomenon has apparently occurred just in the nick of time. The National
Academy of Sciences has issued an alert that it takes twice as many vegetables to
get the daily requirement of vitamin A as previously thought. Carrots and pumpkin
are exempt from the caveat.
Despite the apparent increase of vitamin A
in carrots, most vegetables are losing their vitamins and minerals. Nearly half the
calcium and vitamin A in broccoli, for example, have disappeared. Collards are not
the greens they used to be. If you're eating them for minerals and vitamin A, be
aware that the vitamin A content has fallen from 6500 IUs to 3800 IUs. Their
potassium has dropped from from 400 mg to 170 mg. Magnesium has fallen sharply-57
mg to 9. Cauliflower has lost almost half its vitamin C, along with its thiamin and
riboflavin. Most of the calcium in pineapple is gone-from 17 mg (per 100 grams raw)
to 7. And the list goes on and on.
The USDA refuses to act
What’s the deal on this nutrient drain? We decided to ask USDA ourselves, so
we contacted the head of the USDA Agricultural Research Service, whose job it is to
track the vitamins in food, among other things. Mr. Edward B. Knipling responded to
our inquiry with a restatement of Ms. Johnson’s letter to Organic
Gardeningmagazine. So we pressed for a better answer. Isn’t the agency
concerned that Americans may not be
getting the vitamins they think they are? What about the food pyramid? Won’t
a nutrient drain upset the pyramid? Already the National Academy of Sciences is
telling us our vegetables don't have as many vitamins as they're supposed to. Will
the USDA double the required servings of vegetables to make up for the vitamin
loss? So far, no answer from the agency.
The question is, what is the nature and
extent of the problem? Vegetables are a major source of nutrition. Without them,
humans miss out on important vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients. Many nutrients
(such as folate) weren’t measured in the past. If they are also disappearing,
the extent is unknown. What about more exotic nutrients such as flavonoids, or
compounds like I3C? These aren’t tracked by the USDA. Are they disappearing
also?
What’s for dinner
The USDA advises that we should be eating 3 to 5 servings of vegetables plus 2
to 4 servings of fruit a day to maintain health. (A serving is one cup of something
raw and leafy or one-half a cup of something either not leafy or cooked-or 3/4 cup
of vegetable juice). That is potentially 9 cups of vegetables and fruit a day.
That’s a lot of lettuce. Are people doing this?
Harry Balzer is vice president of NPD Group, a firm that gathers information on
the eating habits of Americans. His data says no way. According to him, the
preferred American meal is one-dish, already prepared. Unless a vegetable can be
squirted out of a bottle, it’s a nonentity. Why? We’re in a hurry.
Vegetables are considered side dishes, and Americans don’t have time for such
frivolity. The decline is relentless. Within the last 15 years, the percentage of
all dinners including a vegetable (other than salad or potatoes) dropped 10%.
It’s now 41%.
This raises a big question. If people are not eating their vegetables, how are
they getting their vitamins? The answer is they’re not. Study-after-study
show that Americans don’t meet the RDAs for many nutrients. That’s not
good considering that RDAs are probably too low to keep most people in optimal
health to begin with.
Americans know what they should be eating. They’re just not doing it. And
they’re not likely to. According to Balzer, for example, pizza is one of
America’s favorite meals. It fulfills, he says, the American ideal of being
easy and fast, liked by old and young, and easy to clean up. If you blot it with a
paper towel, throw on some pineapple, and use your imagination, it even seems to
fit with the food pyramid. What else are people eating? Bread, doughnuts, pasta,
cheese, beef and milk. Without fortified cereal, Americans would not come close to
meeting RDAs.
Yes, but what about the produce section? Isn’t it filled with resealable
bags full of wholesome, scrubbed little carrots, prewashed salad greens and
spinach? Somebody must be buying them, or they wouldn’t be there, right?
According to Balzer, those puppies are highly successful, raking in a billion
dollars in sales ($100M is considered successful for a new food product). But the
fact that people are buying them doesn’t mean they’re eating them. The
reality is that onions are most-often served vegetable in America. Tomatoes
(including ketchup) are second.
According to one study, less than one-third of Americans get the minimum five
servings of fruits and vegetables a day, let alone the recommended nine. According
to Balzer’s data, the percentage of Americans who buy healthy groceries is
about 10%. The other 90% relies on ketchup, onions, fat-free snacks, ice cream,
cheese and Sweet Tarts™ as their source of nutrition. Now we find out that
even if a person accidentally eats a vegetable, it may not contain the nutrients
it’s supposed to. What can a person do?
Vitamin supplements work
"...the nutritional content of produce is not as important as things like
appearance and big yield. In other words, the view of commercial growers is that
food is a product in the same way that running shoes are a product. Looks are
more important than substance."
Supplements have proven their worth in scientific studies. Cancer, heart
attacks, bone loss, stroke and macular degeneration-most any degenerative disease
you can think of can either be prevented by, or ameliorated by, the right nutrients
given in supplement form. Over the long term, the benefits can really add up. For
example, nurses who took multi-vitamins containing folic acid for fifteen years
slashed their risk of colon cancer by 75%. Folate from food didn’t work as
well. No one knows why, although bioavailability problems may be to blame.
It’s estimated that about 90% of the population gets less folate per day than
necessary for health (400 micrograms).
In the same study, nurses who took multi-vitamins containing vitamin B6 reduced
their risk of heart disease by 30%. The more B6 they took, the lower the risk.
Could a high potency, high quality supplement reduce risk even more? We don’t
know, but a study from Norway shows that a combination of vitamin B6 and folate
reduces homocysteine 32% within five weeks in healthy individuals. This has the
potential to significantly lower the risk of heart attack and stroke. Other studies
show that for every decade of life, plasma concentrations of B6 decrease, and that
people who take supplements have a much greater chance of meeting RDAs than those
who don’t.
There are good reasons to take supplements. The bioavailability of the nutrients
in supplements (assuming you buy high-quality) is 100% compared to food which is
very unpredictible when it comes to bioavailability. Nutrient content also appears
unpredictible. If the vitamin drain is confirmed, it will mean that people cannot
count on vegetables and fruit to be the packages of concentrated nutrients
they’re supposed to be. In a time when most people aren’t coming close
to getting five, let alone nine, servings of fruits and vegetables, it seems
pointless to ask them to eat more to get the same nutrients.
The USDA is apparently unconcerned and not interested in the vitamin drain,
despite its mandate to ensure high quality safe foods. In her letter to Organic
Gardening, Ms. Johnson said that the nutritional content of produce is not as
important as things like appearance and big yield. In other words, Ms. Johnson
espouses the view of commercial growers that food is a product in the same way that
running shoes are a product. Looks are more important than substance. That view of
vegetables and fruits reduces your spinach salad to pretty roughage, and your
chances of meeting RDAs to slim.
References
“90% of women and 71% of men get less than the RDA for vitamin B6.”
Dietary vitamin B-6 intake and food sources in the US population: NHANES II,
1976-1980. Kant AK, et al. 1990.
“Men with the lowest amount of vitamin C have a 62% increased risk of
cancer and a 57% increased risk of dying from any cause.“ Vitamin C status
and mortality in US adults.Loria CM, et al. Am J Clin Nutr 72:139-45, 2000.
“Lutein and zeaxanthin reduce the incidence of cataract by 22%.” A
prospective study of carotenoid and vitamin A intakes and risk of cataract
extraction in US women. Chasan-Taber L, et al. Am J Clin Nutr 70:509-16, 1999.
“People with low levels of retinol, beta-carotene, vitamin E and selenium
are more likely to get cancer.” Serum retinol, beta-carotene, vitamin E and
selenium as related to subsequent cancer of specific sites. Comstock GW, et al. Am
J Epidemiol 135:115-21, 1992.
“Supplemental vitamin D reduces the risk of colon cancer by half compared
to dietary vitamin D which reduces it 12%.” Calcium, vitamin D, and dairy
foods and the occurrence of colon cancer in men. Kearney J, et al. Am J Epidemiol
143:907-17, 1996.
“The area of China with the lowest micronutrient intake has the highest
rate of cancer. Supplementation with vitamin E, selenium and beta-carotene lowers
the rate.” Vitamin/mineral supplementation and cancer risk: internationaal
chemoprevention trials.Blot WJ. Proc Soc Exp Biol Med 216:291-6, 1997.
“American children have inadequate levels of vitamin E.“ Vitamin E
status of US children. Bendich A. J Am Coll Nutr 11:441-4, 1992.
“Flavonoids protect against stroke.” Dietary flavnoids, antioxidant
vitamins, and incidence of stroke: the Zutphen study. Keli SO, et al. Arch Intern
Med 156:637-42, 1996.
Cleveland LE, et al. 2000. Dietary intake of whole grains. J Am Coll Nutr19 (3
Suppl):331S-38S.
Composition of Foods (Raw, Processed, Prepared): Agriculture Handbook No. 8.
USDA Agricultural Research Service. 1963.
Cuskelly GJ, et al. 1996. Effect of increasing dietary folate on red-cell
folate: implications for prevention of neural tube defects. Lancet
347:657-9.
Giovannucci E, et al. 1998. Multivitamin use, folate and colon cancer in women
in the nurses’ health study. Ann Intern Med129:517-24.
Manore MM, et al. 1989. Plasma pyridoxal 5’-phosphate concentration and
dietary vitamin B-6 intake in free-living, low-income elderly people. Am J Clin
Nutr50:339-45.
Mansoor MA, et al. 1999. Plasma total homocysteine response to oral doses of
folic acid and pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B6) in healthy individuals. Oral
doses of vitamin B6 reduce concentrations of serum folate. Scand J Clin Lab
Invest59:139-46.
NPD Group, Inc. has a website at www.npd.com. Highlights from the 15th Annual
Report on Eating Patterns in America are available online.
Organic Gardening’s letter to Dan Glickman, and the response of Phyllis E.
Johnson of the USDA - see www.organicgardening.com.
Rimm EB, et al. 1998. Folate and Vitamin B6 from diet and supplements in
relation to risk of coronary heart disease among women. JAMA 279:359-64.
Rose CS, et al. 1976. Age differences in vitamin B6 status of 617 men. Am J Clin
Nutr 29:847-53.
Subar AF, et al. 1998. Dietary sources of nutrients among US adults, 1989 to
1991. J Am Diet Assoc98:537-47.
Subar AF, et al. 1989. Folate intake and food sources in the US population. Am J
Clin Nutr50:508-16.
PageTOP ^
Disclaimer
Vaccines
Why You Should Avoid Taking Vaccines.
Dr. James R. Shannon, former director of the National institute of health
declared, "the only safe vaccine is one that is never used."
Cowpox vaccine was believed able to immunize people against smallpox. At the
time this vaccine was introduced, there was already a decline in the number of
cases of smallpox. Japan introduced compulsory vaccination in 1872. In 1892 there
were 165,774 cases of smallpox with 29,979 deaths despite the vaccination program.
A stringent compulsory smallpox vaccine program, which prosecuted those refusing
the vaccine, was instituted in England in 1867. Within 4 years 97.5 % of persons
between 2 and 50 had been vaccinated. The following year England experienced the
worst smallpox epidemic [1] in its history with 44,840 deaths.
Between 1871 and 1880 the incidence of smallpox escalated from 28 to 46 per
100,000. The smallpox vaccine does not work.
Much of the success attributed to vaccination programs may actually have been
due to improvement in public health related to water quality and sanitation, less
crowded living conditions, better nutrition, and higher standards of living.
Typically the incidence of a disease was clearly declining before the vaccine for
that disease was introduced. In England the incidence of polio had decreased by 82
% before the polio vaccine was introduced in 1956.
In the early 1900s an astute Indiana physician, Dr. W.B. Clarke, stated "Cancer
was practically unknown until compulsory vaccination with cowpox vaccine began to
be introduced. I have had to deal with two hundred cases of cancer, and I never saw
a case of cancer in an unvaccinated [2] person."
There is a widely held belief that vaccines should not be criticized because the
public might refuse to take them. This is valid only if the benefits exceed the
known risks of the vaccines.
Do Vaccines Actually Prevent Disease?
This important question does not appear to have ever been adequately studied.
Vaccines are enormously profitable for drug companies and recent legislation in the
U.S. has exempted lawsuits against pharmaceutical firms in the event of adverse
reactions to vaccines which are very common. In 1975 Germany stopped requiring
pertussis (whooping cough) vaccination. Today less than 10 % of German children are
vaccinated against pertussis. The number of cases of pertussis has steadily
decreased [3] even though far fewer children are receiving
pertussis vaccine .
Measles outbreaks have occurred in schools with vaccination rates over 98 % in
all parts of the U.S. including areas that had reported no cases of measles for
years . As measles immunization rates rise to high levels measles becomes a disease
seen only in vaccinated persons. An outbreak of measles occurred in a school where
100 % of the children had been vaccinated. Measles mortality rates had declined by
97 % in England before measles vaccination was instituted .
In 1986 there were 1300 cases of pertussis in Kansas and 90 % of these cases
occurred in children who had been adequately vaccinated . Similar vaccine failures
have been reported from Nova Scotia where pertussis continues to be occurring
despite universal vaccination. Pertussis remains endemic[4] in
the Netherlands where for more than 20 years 96 % of children have received 3
pertussis shots by age 12 months.
After institution of diptheria vaccination in England and Wales in 1894 the
number of deaths from diptheria rose by 20 % in the subsequent 15 years . Germany
had compulsory vaccination in 1939. The rate of diptheria spiraled to 150,000 cases
that year whereas, Norway which did not have compulsory vaccination, had only 50
cases of diptheria the same year.
The continued presence of these infectious diseases in children who have
received vaccines proves that life long immunity which follows natural infection
does not occur in persons receiving vaccines . The injection process places the
viral particles into the blood without providing any clear way to eliminate these
foreign substances.
Why Do Vaccines Fail To Protect Against Diseases?
Walene James, author of Immunization: the Reality Behind The Myth , states that
the full[5] inflammatory response is necessary to create real
immunity. Prior to the introduction of measles and mumps vaccines children got
measles and mumps and in the great majority of cases these diseases were benign.
Vaccines "trick" the body so it does not mount a complete inflammatory response to
the injected virus.
Vaccines and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome SIDS
The incidence of Sudden Infant Death syndrome SIDS has grown from .55 per 1000
live births in 1953 to 12.8 per 1000 in 1992 in Olmstead County, Minnesota. The
peak incidence for SIDS is age 2 to 4 months the exact time most vaccines are being
given to children. 85 % of cases of SIDS occur in the first 6 months of infancy.
The increase in SIDS as a percentage of total infant deaths has risen from 2.5 per
1000 in 1953 to 17.9 per 1000 in 1992. This rise in SIDS deaths has occurred during
a period when nearly every childhood disease was declining due to improved
sanitation and medical progress except SIDS. These deaths from SIDS did increase
during a period when the number of vaccines given a child was steadily rising to 36
per child .
Dr. W. Torch was able to document 12 deaths in infants which appeared within
3½ and 19 hours of a DPT immunization. He later reported 11 new cases of
SIDS death and one near miss which had occurred within 24 hours of a DPT injection.
When he studied 70 cases of SIDS two thirds of these victims[6] had been vaccinated from one half day to 3 weeks prior to
their deaths. None of these deaths was attributed to vaccines. Vaccines are a
sacred cow and nothing against them appears in the mass media because they are so
profitable to pharmaceutical firms.
There is valid reason to think that not only are vaccines worthless in
preventing disease they are counterproductive because they injure the immune system
permitting cancer, auto-immune diseases and SIDS to cause much disability and
death.
Are Vaccines Sterile?
Dr. Robert Strecker claimed that the department of defense DOD was given
$10,000,000 in 1969 to create the AIDS virus to be used as a population-reducing[7] weapon against blacks. By use of the Freedom of Information
Act Dr. Strecker was able to learn that the DOD secured funds from Congress to
perform studies on immune destroying agents for germ warfare .
Once produced, the vaccine was given in two locations. Smallpox vaccine
containing HIV was given to 100,000,000 Africans in 1977. Over 2000 young white
homosexual males in New York City were given Hepatitis B vaccine that contained HIV
virus in 1978. This vaccine was given at New York City Blood Center. The Hepatitis
B vaccine containing the HIV virus was also administered to homosexual males in San
Francisco, Los Angeles, St.Louis, Houston and Chicago in 1978 and 1979. U.S. Public
Health epidemiology studies have disclosed that these same 6 cities had the highest
incidence of AIDS, Aids related Complex (ARC) and deaths rates from HIV, when
compared to other U.S. cities.
When a new virus is introduced into a community. It takes 20 years for the
number of cases to double. If the fabricated story that green monkey bites of
pygmies led to the HIV epidemic, the alleged monkey bites in the 1940s should have
produced a peak in the incidence of HIV in the 1960s at which time HIV was non
existent in Africa . The World Health Organization (WHO) began a African smallpox
vaccination campaign in 1977 that targeted urban population centers and avoided
pygmies. If the green monkey bites of pygmies truly caused the HIV epidemic the
incidence of HIV in pygmies should have been higher than in urban citizens.
However, the opposite was true .
In 1954 Dr. Bernice Eddy (bacteriologist) discovered live monkey viruses in
supposedly sterile inactivated polio vaccine[8] developed by
Dr. Jonas Salk. This discovery was not well received at the NIH and Dr. Eddy was
demoted. Later Dr. Eddy, working with Sarah Stewart, discovered SE polyoma virus.
This virus was quite important because it caused cancer in every animal receiving
it. Yellow fever vaccine had previously been found to contain avian (bird) leukemia
virus. Later Dr. Hilleman isolated SV 40 virus from both the Salk and Sabin polio
vaccines. There were 40 different viruses [9] in these polio vaccines they were trying to eradicate. They
were never able to get rid of these viruses ontaminating the polio vaccines. The SV
40 virus causes malignancies. It has now been identified in 43 % of cases of
non-Hodgekin lymphoma [10] , 36 % of
brain tumors [11] , 18 % of healthy
blood samples, and 22 % of healthy semen samples, mesothiolomas and other
malignancies. By the time of this discovery SV 40 had already been injected into
10,000,000 people in Salk vaccine. Gastric digestion inactivtes some of SV 40 in
Sabin vaccine. However, the isolation of strains of Sabin polio vaccine from all 38
cases of Guillan Barre Syndrome [12]
GBS in Brazil suggests that significant numbers of persons are able to be infected
from this vaccine . All 38 of these patients had received Sabin polio vaccine
months to years before the onset of GBS. The incidence of non-Hodgekin lymphoma
has"mysteriouly" doubled since the 1970s .
Dr. John Martin, Professor of Pathology at the Univ. of Southern California, was
employed by the Viral Oncology Branch of the Bureau of Biologics (FDA) from 1976 to
1980. While employed there he identified foreign DNA in the live polio vaccine
Orimune Lederle that suggested serious vaccine contamination. He warned his
supervisors about this problem and was told to discontinue his work as it was
outside the scope of testing required for polio vaccine .
Later Dr. Martin learned that all eleven of the African green monkeys used to
grow the Lederle polio virus Orimune had grown simian cytomegalovirus from kidney
cell cultures. Lederle was aware of this viral contamination as their
Cytomegaloviral Contamination Plan [13] clearly showed in 1972. The Bureau of Biologics decided not
to pursue the matter so production of infected polio vaccine continued .
In 1955 Dr. Martin identified unique cell destroying viruses termed stealth
viruses in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome. These viruses lacked genes that
would enable the immune system to recognize them. Thus they were protected by the
body's failure to develop antiviral antibodies. In March of 1995, Dr. Martin
learned that some of these stealth viruses had originated from African green monkey
simian cytomegalovirus of a type known to infect man .
The Lederle vaccine experience suggests that the higher-ups are not concerned
about sloppy and dangerous preparation of vaccines. Animal cross infection is a
huge unsolved current problem for all vaccine manufacturing. If this vaccine
production sounds like an unbelievable mess to you, you are right .
The influential Club of Rome has a position paper in which they state that the
world population is too large and needs to be reduced by 90 %. This means that 6
billion people must be reduced to 500 to 600 million. Obviously, creating famines
and genocidal wars such as wrecked havoc in Africa, and loosing new
laboratory-created diseases (HIV, Ebola, Marburg[14] , and
probably West Nile virus and SARS) can help reduce the population. Other elitist
groups (Trilaterals, Bildenbergers) have expressed similar concerns about excess
people on planet Earth.
The company that was projected to produce the new smallpox vaccine in the U.S.
was in serious trouble in England because of unsatisfactory quality of operations
before setting up their facility in the U.S. Why would their performance here be
any better than it was in England?
If there are important powerful groups of people that are determined to reduce
the world population, what could be a more diabolically clever way to eliminate
people than to inject them with a cancer-causing vaccine? The person receiving the
injection would never suspect that the vaccine taken 10 to 15 years earlier had
caused the cancer to appear .
Other Dangers From Vaccines
In the March 4, 1977 issue of Science Jonas and Darrell Salk warn, "Live virus
vaccines against influenza or poliomyelitis may in each instance produce the
disease it intended to prevent. The live virus against measles and mumps may
produce such side effects as encephalitis (brain damage) .
The swine flu vaccine was administered to the American public even though there
had never been a case of swine flu identified in a human. Farmers refused to use
the vaccine because it killed too many animals. Within a few months of use in
humans this vaccine caused many cases of serious nerve injury (Guillan Barre
syndrome).
An article in the Washington Post on Jan. 26, 1988 mentioned that all cases of
polio since 1979 had been caused by the polio vaccine with no known cases of polio
from a wild strain since 1979. This might have created a perfect situation to
discontinue the vaccine, but the vaccine is still given. Vaccines are a wonderful
source of profits with no risks to the drug companies since vaccine injuries are
now recompensed by the government.
The steady escalation in the number of vaccines administered has been followed
by an identical rise in the incidence of auto-immune diseases (rheumatoid
arthritis, subacute lupus erythematosus, psoriasis, multiple sclerosis, asthma)
seen in children. While there is a genetic transmission of some of these diseases
many are probably due to the injury from foreign protein particles, mercury,
aluminum, formaldehyde and other toxic agents injected in vaccines.
In 1999, the rotavirus vaccine was recommended by the Center for Disease Control
for all infants. When this vaccine program was instituted several infants died and
many had life endangering bowel obstructions. Prelicensure trials[15] of the rotavirus vaccine had demonstrated an increased
incidence of intussusception 30 times greater than normal but the vaccine was
released anyway without special warnings to practitioners to be on the lookout for
bowel problems. Children's vaccines are often not studied for toxicity possibly
because such study might eliminate them from being used .
A large study from Australia showed that the risk of developing encephalitis
from the pertussis vaccine was 5 times greater than the risk of developing
encephalitis by contacting pertussis by natural methods .
Naturally acquired immunity by illness evolves by spread of a virus from the
respiratory tract to the liver, thymus, spleen, and bone marrow. When symptoms
begin, the entire immune response has been mobilized to repel the invading virus.
This complex immune system response creates antibodies that confer life long
immunity against that invading virus and prepares the child to respond promptly to
an infection by the same virus in the future.
Vaccination, in contrast, results in the persisting of live virus or other
foreign antigens within the cells of the body, a situation that may provoke
auto-immune reactions as the body attempts to destroy its own infected cells. There
is no surprise that the incidence of auto-immune diseases (rheumatoid arthritis,
subacute lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis, asthma, psoriasis) has risen
sharply in this era of multiple vaccine immunization.
Vaccine Induced Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus
Dr. John Classen has published 29 articles on vaccine-induced[16] diabetes. At least 8 of 10 children with Type 1 (insulin
needing) diabetes have this disease as a result of vaccination. These children may
have avoided measles, mumps, and whooping cough but they have received something
far worse: an illness that shortens life expectancy by 10 to 15 years and results
in a life requiring constant medical care .
Dr. Classen has shown in Finland, the introduction of hemophilus type b vaccine
caused three times as many cases of type 1 diabetes as the number of deaths and
brain damage from hemophilus influenza type b it might have prevented .
In New Zealand, the incidence of Type 1 diabetes in children rose by 61 % after
an aggressive vaccine program against hepatitis B .. This same program has been
started in the U.S.A. so we can now look forward to many cases of Type 1 diabetes
in children. Similar rises in Type 1 diabetes have been seen in England, Italy,
Sweden, and Denmark after immunization programs against Hepatitis B.
Toxic Substances Are Needed To Make Vaccines.
Vaccines contain many toxic substances that are needed to prevent the vaccines
from becoming infected or to improve the performance of the vaccine. Among these
substances are mercury, formaldehyde and aluminum.[17]
In the past 10 years, the number of autistic children has risen from between 200
and 500 percent in every state in the U.S. This sharp rise in autism followed the
introduction of measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in 1975.
Representative Dan Burton's healthy grandson was given injections for 9 diseases
in one day. These injections were instantly followed by autism . These injections
contain a preservative of mercury called thimerosal. The boy received 41 times the
amount of mercury which is capable of harm to the body. Mercury is a neurotoxin
that can injure the brain and nervous system. And tragically, it did.
In the United States the number of compulsory vaccine injections has increased
from 10 to 36 in the last 25 years. During this period, there has been a
simultaneous increase in the number of children suffering learning disabilities and
attention deficit disorder. Some of these childhood disabilities are related to
intrauterine cerebral damage from maternal cocaine use, but probably vaccines cause
many of the others.
Many vaccines contain aluminum. A new disease called macrophagic myofasciitis
causes pain in muscles, bones and joints. All persons with this disease have
received aluminum containing vaccines. Deposits of aluminum are able to remain as
an irritant in tissues and disturb the immune and nervous system for a lifetime
.
Nearly all vaccines contain aluminum and mercury. These metals appear to play an
important role in the etiology of Alzheimer's Disease. An expert at the 1997
International Vaccine Conference related that a person who takes 5 or more annual
flu vaccine shots has increased the likelihood of developing Alzheimer's Disease by
a factor of 10 over the person who has had 2 or fewer flu shots .
When we take vaccines we are playing a modern version of Russian Roulette. We
not only get exposed to aluminum, mercury, formaldehyde and foreign cell proteins
but we may get simian virus 40 and other dangerous viruses which can cause cancer,
leukemia and other severe health problems because the vaccine pool is contaminated
due to careless animal isolation techniques. Congress has protected the
manufacturers from lawsuits, so dangerous vaccines simply increase profits at no
risk to the drug companies .
U.S. children aged 2 months began receiving hepatitis B vaccine in December
2000.No peer-reviewed studies of the safety of hepatitis B in this age bracket had
been done. Over 36,000 adverse reactions with 440 deaths were soon reported but the
true incidence is much higher as reporting is voluntary so only approximately 10 %
of adverse reactions get reported . This means that about 5000 infants are dying
annually from the hepatitis B vaccine. The CDC's Chief of Epidemiology admits that
the frequency of serious reactions to hepatitis B vaccine is 10 times higher than
other vaccines . Hepatitis B is transmitted sexually and by contaminated blood, so
the incidence of this disease must be near zero in this age bracket. A vaccine
expert, Dr. Philip Incao, states that "the conclusion is obvious that the risks [18] of hepatitis B vaccination far outweigh the benefits. Once
a vaccine is mandated the vaccine manufacturer is no longer liable for adverse
reactions .
Dr. W.B. Clarke's important observation that cancer was not found in
unvaccinated individuals demands an explanation and one now appears forthcoming.
All vaccines given over a short period of time to an immature immune system deplete
the thymus gland (the primary gland involved in immune reactions) of irreplaceable
immature immune cells . Each of these cells could have multiplied and developed
into an army of valuable cells to combat infection and growth of abnormal cells.
When these immune cells have been used up, permanent immunity may not appear. The
Arthur Research Foundation in Tucson, Arizona estimates that up to 60 % of our
immune system may be exhausted [19] by multiple mass vaccines
(36 are now required for children). Only 10 % of immune cells are permanently lost
when a child is permitted to develop natural immunity from disease . There needs to
be grave concern about these immune system injuring vaccinations! Could the persons
who approve these mass vaccinations know that they are impairing the health of
these children, many of whom are being doomed to requiring much medical care in the
future?
Compelling evidence is available that the development of the immune system after
contracting the usual childhood diseases matures and renders it capable to fight
infection and malignant cells in the future.
The use of multiple vaccines, which prevents natural immunity, promotes the
development of allergies and asthma. A New Zealand study disclosed that 23 % of
vaccinated children develop asthma , as compared to zero in unvaccinated children
.
Cancer was a very rare illness in the 1890's. This evidence about immune system
injury from vaccinating affords a plausible explanation for Dr. Clarke's finding
that only vaccinated individuals got cancer. Some radical adverse change in health
occurred in the early 1900s to permit cancer to explode and vaccinating appears to
be the reason.
Vaccines are an unnatural phenomena.
My guess is that if enough persons said no to immunizations there would be a
striking improvement in general health with nature back in the immunizing business
instead of man. Having a child vaccinated should be a choice not a requirement.
Medical and religious exemptions are permitted by most states.
When governmental policies require vaccinations before children enter schools
coercion has overruled the lack of evidence of vaccine efficacy and safety. There
is no proof that vaccines work and they are never studied for safety before release
. My opinion is that there is overwhelming evidence that vaccines are dangerous and
the only reason for their existence is to increase profits of pharmaceutical
firms.
If you are forced to immunize your children so they can enter school, obtain a
notarized statement from the director of the facility that they will accept full
financial responsibility for any adverse reaction from the vaccine. Since there is
at least a 2 percent risk of a serious adverse reaction they may be smart enough to
permit your child to escape a dangerous procedure. Recent legislation passed by
Congress gives the government the power to imprison persons refusing to take
vaccines (smallpox, anthrax, etc). This would be troublesome to enforce if large
numbers of citizens declined to be vaccinated at the same time.
Footnotes:
1 Null Gary Vaccination: An Analysis of
the Health Risks- Part Townsend Letter for Doctors & Patients Dec. 2003 pg
78 Back to Top
2 Mullins Eustace Murder by Injection pg
132 The National Council for Medical Research, P. O. Box 1105, Staunton, Virginia
24401 Back to
Top
3 Gary Null Interview with Dr. Dean Black
April 7, 1995 Back to
Top
4 de Melker HE, et al Pertussis in the
Netherlands: an outbreak despite high levels of immunization with whole-cell
vaccine Emerging Infectious Diseases 1997; 3(2): 175-8 Centers for Disease
Control Back to
Top
5 Gary Null Interview with Walene James,
April 6, 1995 Back to
Top
6 Torch WS Diptheria-pertussis-tetanus
(DPT) immunizations: a potential cause of the sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)
Neurology 1982; 32-4 A169 abstract. Back to Top
7 Collin Jonathan The Townsend Letter for
Doctors & Patients 1988 abstracted in Horowitz L. Emerging Viruses Aids &
Ebola pg 1-5 Back to
Top
8 Harris RJ et al Contaminant viruses in
two live vaccines produced in chick cells.J Hyg (London) 1966 Mar:64(1) :
1-7 Back to
Top
9 Horowitz Leonard G. Emerging Viruses AIDS
& Ebola pg 484 Back
to Top
10 Vilchez RA et al Association between
simian virus 40 and non-Hodgekin lymphoma Lancet 2002 Mar
9;359(9309):817-823 Back
to Top
11 Bu X A study of simian virus 40
infection and its origin in human brain tumors Zhonghu Liu Xing Bing Xue Zhi 2000
Feb;21 (1):19-21 Back to
Top
12 Friedrich F. et al temporal
association between the isolation of Sabin-related poliovirus vaccine strains and
the Guillan-Barre syndrome Rev Inst Med Trop Sao Paulo 1996 Jan-Feb;
38(1):55-8 Back to
Top
13 Horowitz Leonard Emerging Viruses:
Aids and Ebola pg 492 Back to Top
14 Horowitz Leonard G Emerging Viruses:
Aids & Ebola pg 378-88 Tetrahedron Inc. Suite 147, 206 North 4th Ave.
Sandpoint, Idaho 83864 1-888-508-4787
tetra@tetrahedron.org Back to Top
15 Null, Gary Vaccination: An Anatysis of
the health risks-Part 3 Townsend letter for doctors & patients Dec. 2003 pg
78 Back to Top
16 Classen, JB et al. Association between
type 1 diabetes and Hib vaccine BMJ 1999; 319:1133 Back to Top
17 Brain 9/01 Back to Top
18 Incao, philip M.D. Letter to
representative Dale Van Vyven, Ohio House of Representatives March 1, 1999 provided
to www.garynull.com by The Natural Immunity Information
Network Back to
Top
19 Rowen Robert Your first consultation
with Dr. Rowen pg 20
HISTORICAL FACTS EXPOSING THE DANGERS AND INEFFECTIVENESS OF VACCINES
In 1871-2, England, with 98% of the population aged between 2 and 50 vaccinated
against smallpox, it experienced its worst ever smallpox outbreak with 45,000
deaths. During the same period in Germany, with a vaccination rate of 96%, there
were over 125,000 deaths from smallpox. (
The Hadwen Documents)
In Germany, compulsory mass vaccination against diphtheria commenced in 1940 and
by 1945 diphtheria cases were up from 40,000 to 250,000. (Don't Get Stuck, Hannah
Allen)
In the USA in 1960, two virologists discovered that both polio vaccines were
contaminated with the SV 40 virus which causes cancer in animals as well as changes
in human cell tissue cultures. Millions of children had been injected with these
vaccines. (Med Jnl of Australia 17/3/1973 p555)
In 1967, Ghana was declared measles free by the World Health Organisation after
96% of its population was vaccinated. In 1972, Ghana experienced one of its worst
measles outbreaks with its highest ever mortality rate. (Dr H Albonico, MMR Vaccine
Campaign in Switzerland, March 1990)
In the UK between 1970 and 1990, over 200,000 cases of whooping cough occurred
in fully vaccinated children. (Community Disease Surveillance Centre, UK)
In the 1970's a tuberculosis vaccine trial in India involving 260,000 people
revealed that more cases of TB occurred in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated.
(The Lancet 12/1/80 p73)
In 1977, Dr Jonas Salk who developed the first polio vaccine, testified along
with other scientists, that mass inoculation against polio was the cause of most
polio cases throughout the USA since 1961. (Science 4/4/77 "Abstracts" )
In 1978, a survey of 30 States in the US revealed that more than half of the
children who contracted measles had been adequately vaccinated. (The People's
Doctor, Dr R Mendelsohn)
In 1979, Sweden abandoned the whooping cough vaccine due to its ineffectiveness.
Out of 5,140 cases in 1978, it was found that 84% had been vaccinated three times!
(BMJ 283:696-697, 1981)
The February 1981 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association found
that 90% of obstetricians and 66% of pediatricians refused to take the rubella
vaccine.
In the USA, the cost of a single DPT shot had risen from 11 cents in 1982 to
$11.40 in 1987. The manufacturers of the vaccine were putting aside $8 per shot to
cover legal costs and damages they were paying out to parents of brain damaged
children and children who died after vaccination. (The Vine, Issue 7, January 1994,
Nambour, Qld)
In Oman between 1988 and 1989, a polio outbreak occurred amongst thousands of
fully vaccinated children. The region with the highest attack rate had the highest
vaccine coverage. The region with the lowest attack rate had the lowest vaccine
coverage. (The Lancet, 21/9/91)
In 1990, a UK survey involving 598 doctors revealed that over 50% of them
refused to have the Hepatitis B vaccine despite belonging to the high risk group
urged to be vaccinated. (British Med Jnl, 27/1/1990)
In 1990, the Journal of the American Medical Association had an article on
measles which stated " Although more than 95% of school-aged children in the US
are vaccinated against measles, large measles outbreaks continue to occur in
schools and most cases in this setting occur among previously vaccinated
children." (JAMA, 21/11/90)
In the USA, from July 1990 to November 1993, the US Food and Drug Administration
counted a total of 54,072 adverse reactions following vaccination. The FDA admitted
that this number represented only 10% of the real total, because most doctors were
refusing to report vaccine injuries. In other words, adverse reactions for this
period exceeded half a million! (National Vaccine Information Centre, March 2,
1994)
In the New England Journal of Medicine July 1994 issue a study found that over
80% of children under 5 years of age who had contracted whooping cough had been
fully vaccinated.
On November 2nd, 2000, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
(AAPS) announced that its members voted at their 57th annual meeting in St Louis to
pass a resolution calling for an end to mandatory childhood vaccines. The
resolution passed without a single "no" vote. (Report
by Michael Devitt)
GRAPHICAL EVIDENCE SHOWS VACCINES
DIDN'T SAVE US
HISTORICAL FACTS EXPOSING THE
DANGERS AND INEFFECTIVENESS OF VACCINES
DOCTORS
AND SCIENTISTS CONDEMN VACCINATION
WHY
VACCINES ARE INEFFECTIVE
WHY
VACCINES ARE HARMFUL
WHY
VACCINATION CONTINUES
THE
BENEFICIAL NATURE OF CHILDHOOD INFECTION
HEALTH -
THE ONLY IMMUNITY
THE
HOPEWOOD CHILDREN - AUSTRALIA'S HEALTHIEST KIDS
Deadly Immunity
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. investigates the government cover-up of a mercury/autism scandal
2005 11 18
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr. | rollingstone.com
In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health
officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center
in Norcross, Georgia. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in
wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy. The
agency had issued no public announcement of the session -- only private
invitations to fifty-two attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC
and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine specialist from the World
Health Organization in Geneva and representatives of every major vaccine
manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. All
of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the
participants, was strictly "embargoed." There would be no making photocopies of
documents, no taking papers with them when they left.
The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a
disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host
of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children.
According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the
agency's massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a
mercury-based preservative in the vaccines -- thimerosal -- appeared to be
responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological
disorders among children. "I was actually stunned by what I saw," Verstraeten
told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier
studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and speech delays,
attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism. Since 1991, when the CDC
and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the
preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of
birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from
one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.
Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting issues of life and
death, the findings were frightening. "You can play with this all you want," Dr.
Bill Weil, a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the group.
The results "are statistically significant." Dr. Richard Johnston, an
immunologist and pediatrician from the University of Colorado whose grandson had
been born early on the morning of the meeting's first day, was even more
alarmed. "My gut feeling?" he said. "Forgive this personal comment -- I do not
want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better
what is going on."
But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine
supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of
the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to
transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting
were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect
the vaccine industry's bottom line. "We are in a bad position from the
standpoint of defending any lawsuits," said Dr. Robert Brent, a pediatrician at
the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Delaware. "This will be a resource
to our very busy plaintiff attorneys in this country." Dr. Bob Chen, head of
vaccine safety for the CDC, expressed relief that "given the sensitivity of the
information, we have been able to keep it out of the hands of, let's say, less
responsible hands." Dr. John Clements, vaccines adviser at the World Health
Organization, declared flatly that the study "should not have been done at all"
and warned that the results "will be taken by others and will be used in ways
beyond the control of this group. The research results have to be handled."
In fact, the government has proved to be far more adept at handling the
damage than at protecting children's health. The CDC paid the Institute of
Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal, ordering
researchers to "rule out" the chemical's link to autism. It withheld
Verstraeten's findings, even though they had been slated for immediate
publication, and told other scientists that his original data had been "lost"
and could not be replicated. And to thwart the Freedom of Information Act, it
handed its giant database of vaccine records over to a private company,
declaring it off-limits to researchers. By the time Verstraeten finally
published his study in 2003, he had gone to work for GlaxoSmithKline and
reworked his data to bury the link between thimerosal and autism.
Vaccine manufacturers had already begun to phase thimerosal out of injections
given to American infants -- but they continued to sell off their mercury-based
supplies of vaccines until last year. The CDC and FDA gave them a hand, buying
up the tainted vaccines for export to developing countries and allowing drug
companies to continue using the preservative in some American vaccines --
including several pediatric flu shots as well as tetanus boosters routinely
given to eleven-year-olds.
The drug companies are also getting help from powerful lawmakers in
Washington. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $873,000 in
contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, has been working to immunize
vaccine makers from liability in 4,200 lawsuits that have been filed by the
parents of injured children. On five separate occasions, Frist has tried to seal
all of the government's vaccine-related documents -- including the Simpsonwood
transcripts -- and shield Eli Lilly, the developer of thimerosal, from
subpoenas. In 2002, the day after Frist quietly slipped a rider known as the
"Eli Lilly Protection Act" into a homeland security bill, the company
contributed $10,000 to his campaign and bought 5,000 copies of his book on
bioterrorism. The measure was repealed by Congress in 2003 -- but earlier this
year, Frist slipped another provision into an anti-terrorism bill that would
deny compensation to children suffering from vaccine-related brain disorders.
"The lawsuits are of such magnitude that they could put vaccine producers out of
business and limit our capacity to deal with a biological attack by terrorists,"
says Andy Olsen, a legislative assistant to Frist.
Even many conservatives are shocked by the government's effort to cover up
the dangers of thimerosal. Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana, oversaw a
three-year investigation of thimerosal after his grandson was diagnosed with
autism. "Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is directly related to
the autism epidemic," his House Government Reform Committee concluded in its
final report. "This epidemic in all probability may have been prevented or
curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at the switch regarding a lack of safety
data regarding injected thimerosal, a known neurotoxin." The FDA and other
public-health agencies failed to act, the committee added, out of "institutional
malfeasance for self protection" and "misplaced protectionism of the
pharmaceutical industry."
The story of how government health agencies colluded with Big Pharma to hide
the risks of thimerosal from the public is a chilling case study of
institutional arrogance, power and greed. I was drawn into the controversy only
reluctantly. As an attorney and environmentalist who has spent years working on
issues of mercury toxicity, I frequently met mothers of autistic children who
were absolutely convinced that their kids had been injured by vaccines.
Privately, I was skeptical.
I doubted that autism could be blamed on a single source, and I certainly
understood the government's need to reassure parents that vaccinations are safe;
the eradication of deadly childhood diseases depends on it. I tended to agree
with skeptics like Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California, who criticized
his colleagues on the House Government Reform Committee for leaping to
conclusions about autism and vaccinations. "Why should we scare people about
immunization," Waxman pointed out at one hearing, "until we know the facts?"
It was only after reading the Simpsonwood transcripts, studying the leading
scientific research and talking with many of the nation's pre-eminent
authorities on mercury that I became convinced that the link between thimerosal
and the epidemic of childhood neurological disorders is real. Five of my own
children are members of the Thimerosal Generation -- those born between 1989 and
2003 -- who received heavy doses of mercury from vaccines. "The elementary
grades are overwhelmed with children who have symptoms of neurological or
immune-system damage," Patti White, a school nurse, told the House Government
Reform Committee in 1999. "Vaccines are supposed to be making us healthier;
however, in twenty-five years of nursing I have never seen so many damaged, sick
kids. Something very, very wrong is happening to our children."
More than 500,000 kids currently suffer from autism, and pediatricians
diagnose more than 40,000 new cases every year. The disease was unknown until
1943, when it was identified and diagnosed among eleven children born in the
months after thimerosal was first added to baby vaccines in 1931.
Some skeptics dispute that the rise in autism is caused by thimerosal-tainted
vaccinations. They argue that the increase is a result of better diagnosis -- a
theory that seems questionable at best, given that most of the new cases of
autism are clustered within a single generation of children. "If the epidemic is
truly an artifact of poor diagnosis," scoffs Dr. Boyd Haley, one of the world's
authorities on mercury toxicity, "then where are all the twenty-year-old
autistics?" Other researchers point out that Americans are exposed to a greater
cumulative "load" of mercury than ever before, from contaminated fish to dental
fillings, and suggest that thimerosal in vaccines may be only part of a much
larger problem. It's a concern that certainly deserves far more attention than
it has received -- but it overlooks the fact that the mercury concentrations in
vaccines dwarf other sources of exposure to our children.
What is most striking is the lengths to which many of the leading detectives
have gone to ignore -- and cover up -- the evidence against thimerosal. From the
very beginning, the scientific case against the mercury additive has been
overwhelming. The preservative, which is used to stem fungi and bacterial growth
in vaccines, contains ethylmercury, a potent neurotoxin. Truckloads of studies
have shown that mercury tends to accumulate in the brains of primates and other
animals after they are injected with vaccines -- and that the developing brains
of infants are particularly susceptible. In 1977, a Russian study found that
adults exposed to much lower concentrations of ethylmercury than those given to
American children still suffered brain damage years later. Russia banned
thimerosal from children's vaccines twenty years ago, and Denmark, Austria,
Japan, Great Britain and all the Scandinavian countries have since followed
suit.
"You couldn't even construct a study that shows thimerosal is safe," says
Haley, who heads the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky. "It's
just too darn toxic. If you inject thimerosal into an animal, its brain will
sicken. If you apply it to living tissue, the cells die. If you put it in a
petri dish, the culture dies. Knowing these things, it would be shocking if one
could inject it into an infant without causing damage."
Internal documents reveal that Eli Lilly, which first developed thimerosal,
knew from the start that its product could cause damage -- and even death -- in
both animals and humans. In 1930, the company tested thimerosal by administering
it to twenty-two patients with terminal meningitis, all of whom died within
weeks of being injected -- a fact Lilly didn't bother to report in its study
declaring thimerosal safe. In 1935, researchers at another vaccine manufacturer,
Pittman-Moore, warned Lilly that its claims about thimerosal's safety "did not
check with ours." Half the dogs Pittman injected with thimerosal-based vaccines
became sick, leading researchers there to declare the preservative
"unsatisfactory as a serum intended for use on dogs."
In the decades that followed, the evidence against thimerosal continued to
mount. During the Second World War, when the Department of Defense used the
preservative in vaccines on soldiers, it required Lilly to label it "poison." In
1967, a study in Applied Microbiology found that thimerosal killed mice
when added to injected vaccines. Four years later, Lilly's own studies discerned
that thimerosal was "toxic to tissue cells" in concentrations as low as one part
per million -- 100 times weaker than the concentration in a typical vaccine.
Even so, the company continued to promote thimerosal as "nontoxic" and also
incorporated it into topical disinfectants. In 1977, ten babies at a Toronto
hospital died when an antiseptic preserved with thimerosal was dabbed onto their
umbilical cords.
In 1982, the FDA proposed a ban on over-the-counter products that contained
thimerosal, and in 1991 the agency considered banning it from animal vaccines.
But tragically, that same year, the CDC recommended that infants be injected
with a series of mercury-laced vaccines. Newborns would be vaccinated for
hepatitis B within twenty-four hours of birth, and two-month-old infants would
be immunized for haemophilus influenzae B and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis.
The drug industry knew the additional vaccines posed a danger. The same year
that the CDC approved the new vaccines, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the fathers
of Merck's vaccine programs, warned the company that six-month-olds who were
administered the shots would suffer dangerous exposure to mercury. He
recommended that thimerosal be discontinued, "especially when used on infants
and children," noting that the industry knew of nontoxic alternatives. "The best
way to go," he added, "is to switch to dispensing the actual vaccines without
adding preservatives."
For Merck and other drug companies, however, the obstacle was money.
Thimerosal enables the pharmaceutical industry to package vaccines in vials that
contain multiple doses, which require additional protection because they are
more easily contaminated by multiple needle entries. The larger vials cost half
as much to produce as smaller, single-dose vials, making it cheaper for
international agencies to distribute them to impoverished regions at risk of
epidemics. Faced with this "cost consideration," Merck ignored Hilleman's
warnings, and government officials continued to push more and more
thimerosal-based vaccines for children. Before 1989, American preschoolers
received eleven vaccinations -- for polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and
measles-mumps-rubella. A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations,
children were receiving a total of twenty-two immunizations by the time they
reached first grade. Under the expanded schedule of vaccinations, multiple shots
were often administered on a single day: At two months, when the infant brain is
still at a critical stage of development, children routinely received three
innoculations that delivered 99 times the approved limit of mercury.
As the number of vaccines increased, the rate of autism among children
exploded. During the 1990s, 40 million children were injected with
thimerosal-based vaccines, receiving unprecedented levels of mercury during a
period critical for brain development. Despite the well-documented dangers of
thimerosal, it appears that no one bothered to add up the cumulative dose of
mercury that children would receive from the mandated vaccines. "What took the
FDA so long to do the calculations?" Peter Patriarca, director of viral products
for the agency, asked in an e-mail to the CDC in 1999. "Why didn't CDC and the
advisory bodies do these calculations when they rapidly expanded the childhood
immunization schedule?"
But by that time, the damage was done. Infants who received all their
vaccines, plus boosters, by the age of six months were being injected with a
total of 187 micrograms of ethylmercury - a level forty percent greater than the
EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury, a related neurotoxin. Although
the vaccine industry insists that ethylmercury poses little danger because it
breaks down rapidly and is removed by the body, several studies -- including one
published in April by the National Institutes of Health -- suggest that
ethylmercury is actually more toxic to developing brains and stays in
the brain longer than methylmercury.
Officials responsible for childhood immunizations insist that the additional
vaccines were necessary to protect infants from disease and that thimerosal is
still essential in developing nations, which, they often claim, cannot afford
the single-dose vials that don't require a preservative. Dr. Paul Offit, one of
CDC's top vaccine advisers, told me, "I think if we really have an influenza
pandemic -- and certainly we will in the next twenty years, because we always do
-- there's no way on God's earth that we immunize 280 million people with
single-dose vials. There has to be multidose vials."
But while public-health officials may have been well-intentioned, many of
those on the CDC advisory committee who backed the additional vaccines had close
ties to the industry. Dr. Sam Katz, the committee's chair, was a paid consultant
for most of the major vaccine makers and shares a patent on a measles vaccine
with Merck, which also manufactures the hepatitis B vaccine. Dr. Neal Halsey,
another committee member, worked as a researcher for the vaccine companies and
received honoraria from Abbott Labs for his research on the hepatitis B vaccine.
Indeed, in the tight circle of scientists who work on vaccines, such
conflicts of interest are common. Rep. Burton says that the CDC "routinely
allows scientists with blatant conflicts of interest to serve on intellectual
advisory committees that make recommendations on new vaccines," even though they
have "interests in the products and companies for which they are supposed to be
providing unbiased oversight." The House Government Reform Committee discovered
that four of the eight CDC advisers who approved guidelines for a rotavirus
vaccine "had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing
different versions of the vaccine."
Offit, who shares a patent on one of the vaccines, acknowledged to me that he
"would make money" if his vote eventually leads to a marketable product. But he
dismissed my suggestion that a scientist's direct financial stake in CDC
approval might bias his judgment. "It provides no conflict for me," he insists.
"I have simply been informed by the process, not corrupted by it. When I sat
around that table, my sole intent was trying to make recommendations that best
benefited the children in this country. It's offensive to say that physicians
and public-health people are in the pocket of industry and thus are making
decisions that they know are unsafe for children. It's just not the way it
works."
Other vaccine scientists and regulators gave me similar assurances. Like
Offit, they view themselves as enlightened guardians of children's health, proud
of their "partnerships" with pharmaceutical companies, immune to the seductions
of personal profit, besieged by irrational activists whose anti-vaccine
campaigns are endangering children's health. They are often resentful of
questioning. "Science," says Offit, "is best left to scientists."
Still, some government officials were alarmed by the apparent conflicts of
interest. In his e-mail to CDC administrators in 1999, Paul Patriarca of the FDA
blasted federal regulators for failing to adequately scrutinize the danger posed
by the added baby vaccines. "I'm not sure there will be an easy way out of the
potential perception that the FDA, CDC and immunization-policy bodies may have
been asleep at the switch re: thimerosal until now," Patriarca wrote. The close
ties between regulatory officials and the pharmaceutical industry, he added,
"will also raise questions about various advisory bodies regarding aggressive
recommendations for use" of thimerosal in child vaccines.
If federal regulators and government scientists failed to grasp the potential
risks of thimerosal over the years, no one could claim ignorance after the
secret meeting at Simpsonwood. But rather than conduct more studies to test the
link to autism and other forms of brain damage, the CDC placed politics over
science. The agency turned its database on childhood vaccines -- which had been
developed largely at taxpayer expense -- over to a private agency, America's
Health Insurance Plans, ensuring that it could not be used for additional
research. It also instructed the Institute of Medicine, an advisory organization
that is part of the National Academy of Sciences, to produce a study debunking
the link between thimerosal and brain disorders. The CDC "wants us to declare,
well, that these things are pretty safe," Dr. Marie McCormick, who chaired the
IOM's Immunization Safety Review Committee, told her fellow researchers when
they first met in January 2001. "We are not ever going to come down that
[autism] is a true side effect" of thimerosal exposure. According to transcripts
of the meeting, the committee's chief staffer, Kathleen Stratton, predicted that
the IOM would conclude that the evidence was "inadequate to accept or reject a
causal relation" between thimerosal and autism. That, she added, was the result
"Walt wants" -- a reference to Dr. Walter Orenstein, director of the National
Immunization Program for the CDC.
For those who had devoted their lives to promoting vaccination, the
revelations about thimerosal threatened to undermine everything they had worked
for. "We've got a dragon by the tail here," said Dr. Michael Kaback, another
committee member. "The more negative that [our] presentation is, the less likely
people are to use vaccination, immunization -- and we know what the results of
that will be. We are kind of caught in a trap. How we work our way out of the
trap, I think is the charge."
Even in public, federal officials made it clear that their primary goal in
studying thimerosal was to dispel doubts about vaccines. "Four current studies
are taking place to rule out the proposed link between autism and thimerosal,"
Dr. Gordon Douglas, then-director of strategic planning for vaccine research at
the National Institutes of Health, assured a Princeton University gathering in
May 2001. "In order to undo the harmful effects of research claiming to link the
[measles] vaccine to an elevated risk of autism, we need to conduct and
publicize additional studies to assure parents of safety." Douglas formerly
served as president of vaccinations for Merck, where he ignored warnings about
thimerosal's risks.
In May of last year, the Institute of Medicine issued its final report. Its
conclusion: There is no proven link between autism and thimerosal in vaccines.
Rather than reviewing the large body of literature describing the toxicity of
thimerosal, the report relied on four disastrously flawed epidemiological
studies examining European countries, where children received much smaller doses
of thimerosal than American kids. It also cited a new version of the Verstraeten
study, published in the journal Pediatrics, that had been reworked to
reduce the link between thimerosal and autism. The new study included children
too young to have been diagnosed with autism and overlooked others who showed
signs of the disease. The IOM declared the case closed and -- in a startling
position for a scientific body -- recommended that no further research be
conducted.
The report may have satisfied the CDC, but it convinced no one. Rep. David
Weldon, a Republican physician from Florida who serves on the House Government
Reform Committee, attacked the Institute of Medicine, saying it relied on a
handful of studies that were "fatally flawed" by "poor design" and failed to
represent "all the available scientific and medical research." CDC officials are
not interested in an honest search for the truth, Weldon told me, because "an
association between vaccines and autism would force them to admit that their
policies irreparably damaged thousands of children. Who would want to make that
conclusion about themselves?"
Under pressure from congress, parents and a few of its own panel members, the
Institute of Medicine reluctantly convened a second panel to review the findings
of the first. In February, the new panel, composed of different scientists,
criticized the earlier panel for its lack of transparency and urged the CDC to
make its vaccine database available to the public.
So far, though, only two scientists have managed to gain access. Dr. Mark
Geier, president of the Genetics Center of America, and his son, David, spent a
year battling to obtain the medical records from the CDC. Since August 2002,
when members of Congress pressured the agency to turn over the data, the Geiers
have completed six studies that demonstrate a powerful correlation between
thimerosal and neurological damage in children. One study, which compares the
cumulative dose of mercury received by children born between 1981 and 1985 with
those born between 1990 and 1996, found a "very significant relationship"
between autism and vaccines. Another study of educational performance found that
kids who received higher doses of thimerosal in vaccines were nearly three times
as likely to be diagnosed with autism and more than three times as likely to
suffer from speech disorders and mental retardation. Another soon-to-be
published study shows that autism rates are in decline following the recent
elimination of thimerosal from most vaccines.
As the federal government worked to prevent scientists from studying
vaccines, others have stepped in to study the link to autism. In April, reporter
Dan Olmsted of UPI undertook one of the more interesting studies himself.
Searching for children who had not been exposed to mercury in vaccines -- the
kind of population that scientists typically use as a "control" in experiments
-- Olmsted scoured the Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, who refuse to
immunize their infants. Given the national rate of autism, Olmsted calculated
that there should be 130 autistics among the Amish. He found only four. One had
been exposed to high levels of mercury from a power plant. The other three --
including one child adopted from outside the Amish community -- had received
their vaccines.
At the state level, many officials have also conducted in-depth reviews of
thimerosal. While the Institute of Medicine was busy whitewashing the risks, the
Iowa legislature was carefully combing through all of the available scientific
and biological data. "After three years of review, I became convinced there was
sufficient credible research to show a link between mercury and the increased
incidences in autism," says state Sen. Ken Veenstra, a Republican who oversaw
the investigation. "The fact that Iowa's 700 percent increase in autism began in
the 1990s, right after more and more vaccines were added to the children's
vaccine schedules, is solid evidence alone." Last year, Iowa became the first
state to ban mercury in vaccines, followed by California. Similar bans are now
under consideration in thirty-two other states.
But instead of following suit, the FDA continues to allow manufacturers to
include thimerosal in scores of over-the-counter medications as well as steroids
and injected collagen. Even more alarming, the government continues to ship
vaccines preserved with thimerosal to developing countries -- some of which are
now experiencing a sudden explosion in autism rates. In China, where the disease
was virtually unknown prior to the introduction of thimerosal by U.S. drug
manufacturers in 1999, news reports indicate that there are now more than 1.8
million autistics. Although reliable numbers are hard to come by, autistic
disorders also appear to be soaring in India, Argentina, Nicaragua and other
developing countries that are now using thimerosal-laced vaccines. The World
Health Organization continues to insist thimerosal is safe, but it promises to
keep the possibility that it is linked to neurological disorders "under review."
I devoted time to study this issue because I believe that this is a moral
crisis that must be addressed. If, as the evidence suggests, our public-health
authorities knowingly allowed the pharmaceutical industry to poison an entire
generation of American children, their actions arguably constitute one of the
biggest scandals in the annals of American medicine. "The CDC is guilty of
incompetence and gross negligence," says Mark Blaxill, vice president of Safe
Minds, a nonprofit organization concerned about the role of mercury in
medicines. "The damage caused by vaccine exposure is massive. It's bigger than
asbestos, bigger than tobacco, bigger than anything you've ever seen."
It's hard to calculate the damage to our country -- and to the international
efforts to eradicate epidemic diseases -- if Third World nations come to believe
that America's most heralded foreign-aid initiative is poisoning their children.
It's not difficult to predict how this scenario will be interpreted by America's
enemies abroad. The scientists and researchers -- many of them sincere, even
idealistic -- who are participating in efforts to hide the science on thimerosal
claim that they are trying to advance the lofty goal of protecting children in
developing nations from disease pandemics. They are badly misguided. Their
failure to come clean on thimerosal will come back horribly to haunt our country
and the world's poorest populations.
NOTE: This story has been updated to correct several inaccuracies in the
original, published version. As originally reported, American preschoolers
received only three vaccinations before 1989, but the article failed to note
that they were innoculated a total of eleven times with those vaccines,
including boosters. The article also misstated the level of ethylmercury
received by infants injected with all their shots by the age of six months. It
was 187 micrograms - an amount forty percent, not 187 times, greater than the
EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury. Finally, because of an editing
error, the article misstated the contents of the rotavirus vaccine approved by
the CDC. It did not contain thimerosal. Salon and Rolling Stone regret the
errors.
Article from: http://www.whale.to/vaccine/kennedy.html
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