punditman says...
Yep, dear reader, you may have noticed that Peacenik is absent from the blog these past few days. You would be correct. He's off at his summer cottage preparing for whatever it is you prepare for at your summer cottage. Personally I drink beer and prepare for nothing when I am on vacation, but I expect a full report in the near future from Peacenik's survivalist compound. He does have lots of beer, so I assume Peacenik is in a fine mood as he prepares for the end of whatever it is that is ending.In the meantime, Punditman says that Punditman has noticed yet another article about the dangers of vaccines and yet another Big Pharma/government cover-up. This 2005 article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shows the depth of collusion between Big Parma and the US government. Punditman thinks this is highly relevant because of the current "debate" on the swine flu virus, plans to develop a vaccine and make you and your loved ones get jabbed either through mandatory vaccinations under emergency powers or through intense social pressure. Yep, that's what I predict at this juncture. Actually, I've noticed that there's no debate at all going on in the mainstream media. All is well in the corporate-media-medical matrix. It's just online wingnuts like me that are raising eyebrows and sounding alarms.
When your views run contrary to accepted wisdom, the usual progression goes something like this: First, skeptics and critics are ignored. That's the pure censorship phase and this is where we are currently with swine flu. Contrary opinion is 100% absent from mainstream discourse. It is sort of how punditman feels when he mentions the 1976 swine flu vaccine fiasco that led to crippling disease and death for thousands and ensuing lawsuits. He gets that "eyes glazed over" look from unaware, frivolous-TV-viewing folk who pass themselves off as thinking monkeys. Then, if we skeptics get louder, we'll be labeled wingnuts. That's the next step. Then, with enough pressure, perhaps the powers that be will listen to our legitimate concerns. I think.
Of course by then it could be too late and the damage could be done, with untold numbers maimed by an unsafe vaccine for a threat that may have originated in a lab.
And of course, punditman could be completly wrong too.Robert F. Kennedy Jr. investigates the government cover-up of a mercury/autism scandal ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.
(June 20, 2005)
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 advisor at the World Health Organization, declared that "perhaps this study should not have been done at all." He added that "the research results have to be handled," warning that the study "will be taken by others and will be used in other ways beyond the control of this group."
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.
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