Today I am very pleased to be bringing you a guest post by Wendy Lydall, author of the book Raising A Vaccine Free Child. BUY NOW here: Raising a Vaccine Free Child (edition 2).
On Sunday the 14th of June 2015 the Australian population was treated to a blast of the terrifying “news” that measles cases were increasing and some people could die or become brain damaged because not every parent was vaccinating.
The chief protagonist of this scare campaign was Professor Robert Booy of the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance. Professor Booy had chosen to not learn something from me when we both appeared on a TV morning show in May 2013. The news anchor had introduced me as someone who claims, “… that diseases like the measles are beneficial for a child’s development.”
Professor Booy’s response to this was, “… hoping that you’ll get some kind of boost to your immune system has never been proved for measles. It’s a theory that’s been around for decades and there’s no proof for it.”
I interjected with, “I beg to differ. There is proof. There are studies in the medical literature which show that it is beneficial. For instance, a person who has had measles as a child is less likely to get chronic diseases in their adult life. And that is in the medical literature.”
“Is that right Robert?” asked the anchor.
Professor Booy avoided admitting that he had not read the medical literature on this topic by changing the subject. “I think the focus of this debate is being lost on the fact that thousands and millions of children have died from measles and we need to protect children against measles by the most effective and the safest way. Immunisation is second only to clean water, sanitation, in protecting babies’ lives.”
In this short interchange four of the issues that confound health-conscious parents were raised; that measles is beneficial, that measles can kill, that vaccines are claimed to be safe, and that vaccines are claimed to be effective.
Benefits
Professor Booy is partially correct in saying that the idea that measles is beneficial has been around for decades. The idea has actually been around for centuries. It can be observed that children take a jump in development during the course of measles.
Some people refer to the self-resolving childhood diseases as “developmental diseases” because they bring about a jump in development. It is sometimes seen that measles or another of the self-resolving childhood diseases makes a chronic condition clear up, and a few reports of chronic diseases being permanently cured by chicken pox, measles, or rubella have been published in medical journals.
Measles, mumps, rubella, and chicken pox are all self-resolving diseases, and under natural conditions they usually occur during childhood. They do not need any action to be taken to make them come to an end. They automatically come to an end by themselves.
They cannot be prevented by good nutrition, but the level of nutrition affects the way that the child copes with the disease. A natural infection of one of the self-resolving infectious diseases creates life-long immunity, unlike the infectious diseases that do not automatically come to an end without intervention.
The age-old theory that the self-resolving childhood diseases are beneficial extends to the conviction that people who have had these diseases are less likely to experience chronic diseases in adulthood.
In more recent times evidence that supports this conviction has been published in medical journals. The age-old theory has focused mainly on conditions like cancer and arthritis, as well as skin conditions like eczema and psoriasis, but surprisingly there is now evidence that these diseases also protect against heart disease. When properly managed to avoid complications, the self-resolving childhood diseases have profound long-term benefits.
Complications
However, children who die from measles, or suffer complications that result in permanent damage, are not healthier after measles. Children who are severely malnourished before they get measles are at risk of dying from measles. Usually their immune systems are so damaged by malnutrition that they cannot raise a fever to protect their brains from the measles virus.(1)
Severely malnourished children who survive measles often suffer from worsened malnutrition, even to the point that if they did not have full blown kwashiorkor (severe protein malnutrition) before measles, they have it afterwards.(2) For children who have long-standing malnutrition there is usually insufficient food available during the recuperation phase after measles.
Children lose their appetite during the acute phase of measles, which is the phase when they lie down, have a fever, and are covered in spots. But once the acute phase is over, they become extremely hungry, and if sufficient food is available they undergo a growth spurt. Children who cannot obtain sufficient food during the recuperation phase end up shorter as adults than their genetic predisposition programmed them to be.(1)
While non-government organisations are working hard to end world poverty, the World Health Organisation is trying to jab every child in poor communities with MMR vaccine. Epidemics of autism are now appearing in these communities. African languages use the term “the absent disease” for this new condition.
Children in affluent communities can also die or suffer permanent damage from measles. They are vulnerable if they have a pre-existing condition like cancer or pneumonia, or are taking immune-suppressing drugs.
Harmful treatments
There are also borderline children who are not constitutionally strong enough to cope with the harmful treatments that doctors and nurses use for measles. Doctors and nurses are trained to treat all the self-resolving childhood diseases with chilling, and with drugs that suppress fever.
These harmful treatments, which go against all the scientific studies that are published in medical journals, cause complications like encephalitis, pneumonia, and death. Medical journals are brimming with studies which show that suppressing fever in a patient with an infectious disease increases the risk of death, yet doctors and nurses are trained to treat measles with chilling and drugs that suppress fever. This is not surprising, as BigPharma controls what they are taught, and BigPharma makes billions out of drugs that suppress fever.
A shallow cough is normal with measles, but bronchitis and pneumonia are complications. Pneumonia is the most common severe complication of measles, and it is also the most common cause of death during measles.(3) It boggles the mind that medically trained personnel want to chill a child with measles when they should know that this causes pneumonia.
Fear campaign
The fear campaign about measles of June 2015 lasted only one day, and then the media lost interest. If the aim was to cause the level of hysteria that was generated by the Disneyland measles outbreak, the attempt fell flat.
The outbreak of measles that started in Disneyland in December 2014 resulted in 189 cases being officially reported in the US, and there were also a few cases reported in Mexico and Canada. Of those that were reported in the US, 45% were in the unvaccinated. There would have been other cases among unvaccinated children that were not reported to the authorities because the parents wisely kept their children at home, and managed the disease properly, with bedrest, warmth, and liquids.
In November 2012 a measles outbreak started in Britain. This was a great opportunity for the vaccine promoters to create fear and hysteria about measles, and to promote MMR vaccine. As is always the case, both vaccinated and unvaccinated people got measles while the measles virus was having this episode of virulence.
One thing that struck me as odd was that some parents whose children got measles were shocked to discover that measles makes their children become covered in a rash, have a high fever, and want to lie down. In previous generations people knew that tiredness, fever, and spots are to be expected with measles.
A measles death
Five months into the outbreak in Britain a 25-year-old man who had measles died from pneumonia. The unfortunate man had all the risk factors for dying while he had measles; he was an adult, not a child, he had pneumonia, he was severely malnourished (which is unusual in Britain), and he had two serious chronic diseases before he caught measles.
He was also taking a variety of prescription drugs, which may or may not have weakened his immune system. On top of all this he was given paracetamol, which is known to cripple the immune system.(4) The day before he died his mother had taken him to a medical centre because he had a measles rash, a high fever, an infected chest, and he was in a state of collapse.
Even though there was hysteria in the community about measles, it did not occur to the three GPs who examined him that he might have measles and that his chest infection might be pneumonia. They told his mother to take him home and give him paracetamol. She obeyed, and he died during the night. Because he was an unhealthy person he might have died from the pneumonia without the extra burden of paracetamol, but it did not help that the paracetamol made his immune system less able to fight the pneumonia.
If he had been put in a hospital bed with an electrolyte drip, been given an antibiotic for the pneumonia, and been given vitamin A because he was severely malnourished, he would have had a good chance of survival, even though they would have given him paracetamol as well.
The official cause of death was given as pneumonia. The medicrats who used the poor man’s death to create fear about measles and to promote MMR vaccine failed to mention the factors that led to his death. The doctors whose negligence resulted in this man’s death have not been held accountable.
Vaccine safety testing
Vaccine promoters frequently use the word “safe” to describe vaccines. Another favourite word is “rigorous”, used when they are describing the process of trialling vaccines before they are licensed. The reality is that the process of pre-licensure trialling is quite the opposite of rigorous.
Ten years before the MMR controversy appeared on the scene I had correspondence with the two institutions in Britain that were supposed to ensure that measles vaccine was safe before it was put on the schedule. At that time the institutions were called the Committee on the Safety of Medicines and the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control.
I started correspondence with them in 1989, asking them questions about how the vaccine was tested for safety. The replies I received were evasive. Their inability to provide me with the information made me realise that they had not tested the vaccine for safety before putting it on the schedule.
Kangaroo court
When mumps and rubella were added to measles vaccine, creating MMR vaccine, public disquiet about adverse reactions began to rumble. Some parents were saying that MMR vaccine had made their children develop autism. The mindless mainstream media continually repeats the non-truth that it was Dr. Andrew Wakefield who started the disquiet.
What actually happened is that when Dr. Wakefield added his voice to the disquiet, the Murdoch Empire targeted him and some other doctors who had expressed the opinion that there was a need for the possible relationship between MMR and autism to be properly investigated. The Murdoch Empire set up a kangaroo court which found Dr. Wakefield and Dr. John Walker-Smith guilty of serious professional misconduct.
Dr. Walker-Smith had the financial resources to take the matter to the British High Court, which found that the ruling of the kangaroo court had been inadequate, had used superficial reasoning, and had come to a wrong conclusion. It quashed the kangaroo court’s finding, but despite that, mainstream journalists continually repeat defamatory statements about Dr. Wakefield, and refrain from mentioning the High Court ruling.
Lack of MMR safety studies
When measles cases started happening in Britain in 2012, the government and the vaccine fanatics escalated their vendetta against Dr. Wakefield, and the mindless mainstream media did not allow him to defend himself against the false allegations. So he posted a video online, and this is what he said about the trialling of MMR vaccine:
Such was my concern about the safety of that vaccine that I went back and reviewed every safety study, every pre-licensing study of the MMR vaccine and other measles containing vaccines before they were put into children and after. And I was appalled with the quality of that science. It really was totally below par and that has been reiterated by other authoritative sources since.
The mainstream media continually repeats the fiction that it has been scientifically proven that MMR does not cause autism. There are no studies that show that MMR or any other vaccines do not cause autism. The vaccine industry has churned out a variety of shonky studies, none of which compare the rate of autism in the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.
Anecdotal evidence
The vaccine defenders scorn the anecdotal evidence that MMR vaccine causes autism in some children, saying that anecdotal evidence is “not scientific”. If they truly believed in science, they would want the anecdotal evidence to be followed up with methodologically sound scientific studies.
Anecdotal evidence is not enough to draw scientific conclusions, but it is an indicator that proper scientific research needs to be done, and while the industry is refusing to do proper studies on the possible relationship between MMR and autism, they have no right to dismiss the anecdotal evidence.
An example of anecdotal evidence is the toddler who was using some words at 18 months and was “chatting” in the morning before his MMR vaccination. He suffered a violent reaction to the vaccination and lost the use of words. At ten years old he still has no language, and the doctors and government are denying that his loss of language, and all of the other problems that started with the injection, were caused by the injection. They say that it is all just a coincidence.
What these vaccine defenders are saying is that if that boy had not been injected with MMR that morning, he still would have screamed while clutching his head all afternoon, banged his head and jerked his limbs all night, lain on his bed and stared at the ceiling the whole of the next day, never made eye contact again, and never spoken again. They are saying that all of these things would have happened without the injection.
The vaccinators are also saying that it is a complete coincidence that similar reactions with similar long term outcomes have presented in millions of other toddlers soon after injection with MMR. They defend themselves from facing up to reality by claiming that they believe in “science”, not in anecdotal reports.
But the “science” to which they are referring is a raft of warped studies that do not compare the rate of autism in the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. Dr. Paul Offit is the world’s most prominent vaccine defender, even going so far as to say that aluminium is a nutrient, not a neurotoxin.
He did not serve his masters well when he made the admission that the lack of studies that compare vaccinated with unvaccinated means that there is, “limited ability to assess associations between vaccination and adverse events with delayed or insidious onset (eg, autism).”(5)
Excuses
The vaccine industry has a variety of excuses for not doing studies that compare the rate of chronic disease in the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, the most ridiculous of which is that it would be unethical to do these studies.
The makers of this excuse range from hysterical bloggers to the sedate pharma shills at the Institute of Medicine. In its 2013 report, the Institute of Medicine admits that comparing vaccinated children with unvaccinated children would be the best kind of study, and it admits that the existing research about vaccine safety is not adequate, but it then goes on to say it would be unethical and too expensive to do comparative studies.(6)
Another reason given by them for not doing comparative studies is that, “There are very low observed rates of adverse events with vaccination”.(7)
Wrong. Very high rates of adverse effects have been observed, but most adverse effects are not recorded as such, and are dismissed as “just a coincidence”.
So high rates of adverse effects are observed, but very low rates of adverse effects are acknowledged. Ironically, by talking about “observed rates of adverse events with vaccination”, the Institute of Medicine is basing its stance on anecdotal evidence. They are saying that there is not the anecdotal evidence to warrant scientific studies.
Wrong again. Even the tiny fraction of adverse reactions that are reported to official channels are enough to warrant proper scientific studies that compare the rate of autism in the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.
Journalists
Some vaccine defenders claim that a study done in Denmark(8) compared autism in the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, but it did not.
Whenever a new autism/MMR study appears in the armoury of the vaccinators, journalists around the world report that another study comparing the vaccinated with the unvaccinated has been done, proving yet again that MMR vaccine does not cause autism.
Journalists do not read the studies before reporting on them, they only read a press release about the study and repeat what it says. An investigative journalist would read the actual study instead of just assuming that the study has been done properly.
In Australia
The vaccine industry has been skilful at manipulating the narrative about vaccines, so that politicians, all the way from Hillary Clinton down to Daniel Andrews, chant the mantra, “The science is in”. Daniel Andrews is the premier of Victoria, Australia, a state that has introduced a law forbidding any child who is not “up to date” with all 39 vaccines that are on the preschool schedule from attending any kind of preschool institution.
Conscientious and religious exemption have been abolished, and medical exemption has been tightened considerably. Any institution found harbouring a child who is not “up to date” will be fined $20,000. This is in line with a global crusade by BigPharma to make as many countries as possible force vaccines onto their reluctant citizens.
Britain is unlikely to follow suit because policy makers are aware of the strife that resulted from vaccination being made compulsory for infants in 1853. They also know that the vaccination rate increased after the law was repealed in 1898.
On 21 October 2015, the day that the draconian law was passed by the Victorian parliament, Premier Daniel Andrews posted this on his Facebook page,
No jab, no play – and no apologies from me. If your child isn’t vaccinated you aren’t just putting them at risk. You’re putting every other child in the playground at risk. We won’t stand for it in Victoria. Your health matters more than your opinions.
The irony of his contempt for health-conscious parents is that he thinks his opinion is based on science. He does not realise that he has been manipulated by the vaccine industry into believing their false narrative.
References
1. Ebrahim, G.J., The Problems of Undernutrition, in, Jarrett, R.J., (ed), Nutrition and Disease. Croom Helm, London, 1979
2. Axton, J.H., Measles: a protein-losing enteropathy. Br Med J. 1975 Jul 12; 3(5975):79-80.
3. Hussey, G.D., Clements, C.J., Clinical problems in measles case management. Ann Trop Paediatr. 1996;16(307):17.
4. Shalabi, E.A., Acetaminophen inhibits the human polymorphonuclear leukocyte function in vitro. Immunopharmacology. 1992 Jul-Aug;24(1):37-45.
5. Offit, P.A., DeStefano, F., Vaccine Safety, in Plotkin, S.A., Orenstein, W., Offit, P.A., (eds.) Vaccines, 6th Edition. Elsevier Saunders, 2013, printed in China.
6. Institute of Medicine, Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies. January 16, 2013.
7. Ibid., 133.
8. Madsen, K.M., Hviid, A., et al., A Population-Based Study of Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccination and Autism. New Engl J Med. 2002;347(19):1477-82.
– by Wendy Lydall
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Thanks very much Wendy!
If you would like to purchase Wendy’s book Raising a Vaccine Free Child 2nd edition, head to her website www.vaccinefreechild.com.
Wendy and I would love to hear from you, if you would like to leave a comment or question in one of the comment areas below.
Robin
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