What are the ingredients of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine? | Technology Review

By Antonio Regalado

Here, for instance, is what the US Food and Drug Administration says is in Pfizer’s vaccine:

  • Active Ingredient
    • nucleoside-modified messenger RNA (modRNA) encoding the viral spike glycoprotein (S) of SARS-CoV-2
  • Lipids
    • (4-hydroxybutyl)azanediyl)bis(hexane-6,1-diyl)bis (ALC-3015)
    • (2- hexyldecanoate),2-[(polyethylene glycol)-2000]-N,N-ditetradecylacetamide (ALC-0159)
    • 1,2-distearoyl-snglycero-3-phosphocholine (DPSC)
    • cholesterol
  • Salts
    • potassium chloride
    • monobasic potassium phosphate
    • sodium chloride
    • basic sodium phosphate dihydrate 
  • Other
    • sucrose

Reading the ingredient list is like looking at the side of a cereal box, except that you need a degree in organic chemistry to understand it. We got help from various scientists and biotech entrepreneurs to understand what each of the ingredients does and make some educated guesses about others.

The mRNA

Pfizer’s vaccine is the first on the market that consists of actual genetic information from a virus in the form of messenger RNA, or mRNA, a type of molecule whose usual job is to transport copies of genetic instructions around a cell to guide the assembly of proteins. Imagine an mRNA as a long ticker tape carrying instructions. It’s fairly delicate stuff, and that’s why Pfizer’s vaccine needs to be kept at around -100 °F (-73 °C) until it’s used.

The new vaccine, delivered as a shot in the arm muscle, contains an RNA sequence taken from the virus itself; it causes cells to manufacture the big “spike” protein of the coronavirus, which the pathogen uses to glom onto a person’s cells and gain entry. On its own, without the rest of the virus, the spike is pretty harmless. But your body still reacts to it. This is what leaves you immunized and ready to repel the real virus if it turns up.

The mRNA in the vaccine, to be sure, isn’t quite the same as the stuff in your body. That’s good, because a cell is full of defenses ready to chop up RNA, especially any that doesn’t belong there. To avoid that, what’s known as “modified nucleosides” have been substituted for some of the mRNA building blocks.

But Pfizer is holding back a little. The spike gene sequence can be tweaked in small ways for better performance, by means that include swapping letters. We don’t think Pfizer has said exactly what sequence it is using, or what modified nucleosides. That means the content of the shot may not be 100% public.

The lipids

The Pfizer vaccine, like one from Moderna, uses lipid nanoparticles to encase the RNA. The nanoparticles are, basically, tiny greasy spheres that protect the mRNA and help it slide inside cells.

These particles are probably around 100 nanometers across. Curiously, that’s about the same size as the coronavirus itself.

Pfizer says it uses four different lipids in a “defined ratio.” The lipid ALC-0315 is the primary ingredient in the formulation. That’s because it’s ionizable—it can be given a positive charge, and since the RNA has a negative one, they stick together. It’s also a component that can cause side-effects or allergic reactions. The other lipids, one of which is the familiar molecule cholesterol, are “helpers” that give structural integrity to the nanoparticles or stop them from clumping. During manufacturing, the RNA and the lipids are stirred into a bubbly mix to form what the FDA describes as a “white to off-white” frozen liquid.

Salts

The Pfizer vaccine contains four salts, one of which is ordinary table salt. Together, these salts are better known as phosphate-buffered saline, or PBS, a very common ingredient that keeps the pH, or acidity, of the vaccine close to that of a person’s body. You’ll understand how important that is if you’ve ever squeezed lemon juice on a cut. Substances with the wrong acidity can injure cells or get quickly degraded.

Sugar

The vaccine includes plain old sugar, also called sucrose. It’s acting here as a cryoprotectant to safeguard the nanoparticles when they’re frozen and stop them from sticking together.

Saline solution

Before injection, the vaccine is mixed with water containing sodium chloride, or ordinary salt, just as many intravenously delivered drugs are. Again, the idea is that the injection should more or less match the salt content of the blood.

No preservatives

Pfizer makes a point of saying its mixture of lipid nanoparticles and mRNA is “preservative-free.” That’s because a preservative that’s been used in other vaccines, thimerosal (which contains mercury and is there to kill any bacteria that might contaminate a vial), has been at the center of worries around over whether vaccines cause autism. The US Centers for Disease Control says thimerosal is safe; despite that, its use is being phased out. There is no thimerosal—or any other preservative—in the Pfizer vaccine. No microchips, either.

The vaccine is still known by the code name BNT162b, but once it’s authorized, expect Pfizer to give it a new, commercial name that conveys something about what’s in it and what it promises for the world.

Source: Technology Review

Why You Can’t Trust the FDA, the WHO, the CDC, the AAP, Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi or Pfizer | Duluth Reader

NotAboutHealthBy Gary G. Kohls, M.D.

“The FDA receives 45% of its annual budget from the pharmaceutical industry. The World Health Organization (WHO) gets roughly 50% of its budget from private sources, including Big Pharma and its allied foundations. And the CDC, frankly, is a vaccine company; it owns 56 vaccine patents and buys and (very profitably) distributes $4.6 billion in vaccines annually through the Vaccines for Children program, which represents over 40% of its total budget.” — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr  

“The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) derives a majority of its outside contributions – estimated at more than $25 million per year – from pharmaceutical companies that make vaccines. The pediatricians that the AAP represents derive the majority of their annual revenues from the administration of vaccines to their pediatric patients.) — J.B. Handley  

“Perhaps the most infamous example of corruption at the CDC is how the head of the CDC from 2002 to 2009, Julie Gerberding, left her government job to become president of Merck’s $5 billion dollar/year Vaccine Division. Merck’s CEO understandably described Gerberding as an “ideal choice”. She held that position until 2014 and currently holds the Merck job title of “Executive Vice President & Chief Patent Officer, Strategic Communications, Global Public Policy and Population Health”. That is to say, the former CDC director is now in charge of Merck’s propaganda efforts. One might say she’s basically doing the same job now that she did for the CDC, but even more lucratively. Apart from her salary, in 2015, Gerberding sold shares of Merck worth over $2.3 million. While at the CDC Gerberding shepherded Merck’s highly controversial and highly profitable Gardasil vaccine through the regulatory maize” — From http://www.collective-evolution.com  

“The majority of studies that authorities point to as (contrived) proof that vaccines do not cause autism have been published in a journal called Pediatrics, the official journal of the AAP. As we know, the AAP is a trade union for pediatricians.” – J.B. Handley   “Since vaccines are liability-free – and effectively compulsory to a captive market of 76 million children – there is meager market incentive for companies to make them safe. The public must rely on the moral scruples of Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, and Pfizer. But these companies have a long history of operating recklessly and dishonestly, even with (the many drug) products for which they can be sued for injuries. The four companies that make virtually all of the recommended vaccines are all convicted felons.  Collectively they have paid over $35 billion since 2009 for defrauding regulators, lying to and bribing government officials and physicians, falsifying science, and leaving a trail of (incurable chronic illnesses) injuries and deaths from products they knew to be dangerous and still sold under pretense of safety and efficacy.” – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr  

“I ate breakfast last week with the president of a network news division at CBS, and he told me that during non-election years, 70% of the advertising revenues for his news division come from pharmaceutical ads.  And if you go on TV any night and watch the network news, you’ll see they become just a vehicle for selling pharmaceuticals. He also told me that he would fire a host who brought onto his station a guest who lost him a pharmaceutical account.” — Robert F. Kennedy Jr  “Fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported. The CDC’s entire vaccination propaganda campaign rests on their claim that side effects from vaccination are exceedingly rare, but according to the blatantly pro-over-vaccination, and Big Pharma-funded CDC, in 2016 alone, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) received 59,117 vaccine adverse event reports. Among those reports were 432 vaccine-related deaths, 1,091 permanent vaccine-related disabilities, 4,132 vaccine-related hospitalizations, and 10,274 vaccine-related emergency room visits. What if these numbers actually represent less than 1% of the total as this report asserts? You multiply those numbers by 100.” – William Christenson  

Please study immediately below the following quotes about the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil, which Merck’s propaganda/lobbying department has very successfully marketed, even acquiring fast-track status from the FDA that eliminated the need for long-term safety or efficacy studies.

Gardasil has been heavily marketed even prior to its FDA-approval in 2006 (for the Gardasil-4 vaccine – and again in 2014 for the Gardasil-9 vaccine) for the theoretical prevention of cancer of the cervix for young healthy adolescent females 30 – 40 years into the future that will require periodic vaccination booster shots that contain aluminum adjuvants for life – the exact frequency of which has yet to be determined, since the long-term efficacy and safety studies haven’t been performed!!

Incidentally, the following vaccines contain aluminum:  

“Anthrax, DT, DTaP (Infanrix), DTaP-IPV, DTaP-HepB-IPV (Pediarix), DTaP –IPV/Hib, Hep A, Hep B, HepA/Hep B (Twinrix), HIB (PedvaxHIB), HPV (Gardasil and Cervarix), Japanese encephalitis, MenB (Bexsero), Pneumococcal (Prevnar 13), Td, TDaP.”  

The following few quotes about the unacknowledged dangers of any aluminum-saturated vaccine (which applies to both HPV vaccines, including GlaxoSmithKline’s (Cervarix, approved by the FDA in 2009) come from Canadian research physician Dr Lucija Tomljenovic.   These important quotes were excerpted from Dr Tomljenovic’s alarming medical journal article that revealed the histologic findings of the cerebral vasculitis (toxic inflammation of the blood vessels in the brain) from two previously healthy young women following their deaths after their routine Gardasil vaccinations: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2206/800bfd13e511f433af71cabb8bef431cb913.pdf 

Here are more important quotes: “Gardasil is a recombinant vaccine and contains virus-like particles (VLPs) of HPV types 6, 11, 16, and 18 as active substances…The VLPs are adsorbed on amorphous aluminum hydroxyphosphate sulfate (AAHP) adjuvant nanoparticles. Animal models show that aluminum adjuvant nanoparticles are taken up by monocytes after injection, translocate to lymph nodes, then travel across the blood-brain barrier and eventually accumulate in the brain where they can cause significant immune-inflammatory adverse reactions. Thus, the presence of VLP particles in cerebral vasculature in the brain tissue specimens from young women who have died following vaccination with Gardasil may be explained by a “Trojan horse” mechanism that is dependent on circulating macrophages by which these particles adsorbed to aluminum adjuvant to gain access to brain tissue.”  

“Circulating immune complexes can result from either

  1. normal responses to infection,
  2. tissue injury or
  3. artificial responses to vaccination.

The fact that vaccines are designed to hyper-stimulate antibody production (thus producing much higher antibody levels than what occurs following natural infection), suggests that vaccination may carry a much higher risk for immune vasculopathies (and other autoimmune disorders). Gardasil injections induce sustained antibody titers (for HPV-16) that are more than 10-fold higher than natural HPV infection titers.”  

“Vaccine-induced cerebral vasculitis is a serious disease which typically results in fatal outcomes when undiagnosed and left untreated. The fact that many of the symptoms reported to vaccine safety surveillance databases following HPV vaccination are indicative of cerebral vasculitis, but are unrecognized as such (i.e., intense persistent migraines, syncope, seizures, tremors, tingling, myalgia, locomotor abnormalities, psychotic symptoms and cognitive deficits, etc), is a serious concern…It thus appears that in some cases vaccination may be the triggering factor of fatal autoimmune/neurological events. Physicians should be aware of this association.” – Dr Lucija Tomljenovic  

And here is what widely-published Canadian researcher Dr Christopher Shaw has to say about aluminum adjuvants in vaccines:  

“…our current results are consistent with the existing evidence on the toxicology and pharmacokinetics of Aluminum adjuvants which altogether strongly implicate these compounds as contributors to the rising prevalence of neurobehavioral disorders in children. Given that autism has devastating consequences in a life of a child, and that currently in the developed world over 1% of children suffer from some form of Autism Spectrum Disorder, it would seem wise to make efforts towards reducing infant exposure to aluminum from vaccines.“ — C A Shaw, PhD  

“There is a serious problem with vaccine safety. Vaccine aluminum adjuvant has adverse neurological effects, at dosages that are recommended by the US CDC. Vaccine critics are supported by the science. Parents refusing to vaccinate according to the recommended CDC schedule are supported by the science. Use aluminum-containing vaccines with great caution, or not at all.” – Chris Shaw, PhD

http://vaccinepapers.org/category/aluminum/  

And here is what Dr Christopher Exeley, the world-renowned British aluminum toxicologist reported recently about Alzheimers Disease (widely reported to be of “unknown origin”) which seems to affect mostly fully-vaccinated, fully-drugged older people:  

“We have made the first ever measurements of aluminium in brain tissue from 12 donors diagnosed with…Alzheimer’s disease. The concentrations of aluminium were extremely high, for example, there were values in excess of 10 μg/g tissue dry wt. in 5 of the 12 individuals. Overall, the concentrations were higher than all previous measurements of brain aluminium except cases of known aluminium-induced encephalopathy.” – Dr Christopher Exeley

Scandalously, for the volunteer patients that were included in the seven separate pre-clinical studies that Merck researchers performed, the researchers did NOT do any questioning of any of the study participants beyond 15 days after each of the series of 3 intramuscular vaccinations had been completed!! Therefore no safety studies beyond the exceedingly short-term were done and thus the “vaccine/industrial complex” has no justification in insisting that Gardasil is safe!!

Scandalously, the study participants were actually not questioned, but were simply told to fill out Vaccine Report Cards (VRCs) and send them in at 15 days following the most recent of the 3 injections!!

Scandalously, 5 of the 7 clinical trials used an aluminum adjuvant – instead of a saline control – as a “placebo”!!

Scandalously, only one of the 7 studies was properly controlled with a true saline placebo.

Scandalously, the seventh trial was totally uncontrolled!!

Scandalously, the seven groups of active vs. “placebo” were lumped together in the study’s conclusions, which made adequate interpretation of efficacy essentially impossible!!

Scandalously, the so-called “placebo” that was used in the vast majority of the trials was the known neurotoxin, Amorphous Aluminum Hydroxyphosphate Sulfate (AAHS), which was the very same adjuvant that was – and still is – in the active Gardasil shot!!

Scandalously, aluminum-containing AAHS, the highly neurotoxic and autoimmunity-inducing adjuvant, is in many other childhood and adult vaccines and is known to accumulate in the body with each injection!!

Scandalously, no mention was made by Merck that aluminum was in the so-called “placebo” shots until page 12 of the 28-page product information insert – and the amount of aluminum was only mentioned once!!

Scandalously, the participants that did not complete the entire series of 3 vaccinations were dropped from the final tabulations, meaning that those who died or had any of the most serious adverse outcomes (the reason for dropping out) were not included in the final statistics, deceptively minimizing negative outcomes!!

Scandalously, any trial drop-outs that died, had a stroke, developed seizure disorders, had a heart attack or had other serious adverse outcomes such as one of the many autoimmune disorders were not listed in the literature or product inserts if the victim did not receive all three shots!!

The following information is taken directly from Merck’s Gardasil product insert that accompanies each vial of vaccine and is to be made available to prospective patients before they give their consent:

The High Incidence of Headaches Following the Gardasil Vaccine Experiment is Likely Due to the Aluminum Adjuvant

The incidence of new-onset headaches in this healthy, previously headache-free population, for example, was the most commonly-reported systemic adverse reaction – with an incidence of 28% in both active and “placebo” treatment groups!!

(Note that Gardasil recipients experienced an incidence of > 28.2% and the aluminum-adjuvanted [AAHS] “placebo controls” had a headache incidence of > 28.4%!!)

This high incidence of serious headaches was highly likely a sign of cerebral vasculitis, which could then cause many of the other adverse effects commonly seen in these previously well patients including chronic fatigue syndrome, seizure disorders, narcolepsy, psychological illnesses or death!!

Among the causes of death listed in the product insert from 2010, there was printed the following Gardasil-associated deaths among the scrupulously-screened, exceptionally healthy study participants that completed the series of 3 shots: 2 deaths from sepsis,

  • 1 death from pancreatic cancer,
  • 1 fatal arrhythmia,
  • 1 death from pulmonary tuberculosis, 1 death from hyperthyroidism,
  • 1 death from post-operative pulmonary embolism and acute renal failure,
  • 1 death from cardiac arrest and resultant traumatic brain injury, 1 death from systemic lupus erythematosus,
  • 1 death because of a stroke,
  • 1 death from breast cancer, and 1 death from nasopharyngeal cancer.
  • In the AAHS/aluminum adjuvant-containing, alleged “placebo” group there was reported: 1 death from “asphyxia”,
  • 1 death from acute lymphocytic leukemia,
  • 1 death from “chemical poisoning” and
  • 1 death from myocardial infarction.
  • Significantly, zero deaths occurred in the true saline placebo group.

Fully-informed Consent to Potentially-Risky Medical Treatments Used to be a Part of Medical Ethics

The following Patient Counseling Information comes from the FDA-approved, Merck-generated 2010 Product Information Insert that licensed health practitioners (or the individuals delegated by them to inject the Gardasil) were advised to inform prospective vaccinees (or their parents or guardians) prior to proceeding with the potentially-dangerous, possibly even less-than-useless Gardasil vaccination protocol. (No Gardasil recipient has yet lived long enough to know if the vaccine will have actually prevented cervical cancer!)

It is highly likely that Merck’s legal advice below is not being followed by the vast majority of America’s medical professionals, whose clinics are profiting heavily by promoting Gardasil vaccinations (HPV vaccines are the most expensive vaccines in the history of the world) for their previously healthy adolescent female patients, who won’t know if it was worth all the shots and costs and risks of chronic illnesses until their reach their mid-40s – the peak age at which the diagnosis of cancer of the uterine cervix is made.

No matter, for patients harmed or killed by ANY vaccine – whether or not they were warned about adverse effects – cannot sue vaccine manufacturers, marketers or the vaccine-injecting medical profession for injuries or deaths. Scandalous!!

Most of the following excerpts are verbatim quotes from the product insert:

PATIENT COUNSELING INFORMATION for Gardasil Vaccinations

  1. Vaccination does not eliminate the necessity for women to continue to undergo recommended cervical cancer screening.
  2. Women who receive GARDASIL should continue to undergo cervical cancer screening per standard of care.
  3. Recipients of GARDASIL should not discontinue anal cancer screening if it has been recommended by a health care provider.
  4. GARDASIL has NOT been demonstrated to provide protection against disease from vaccine and non-vaccine HPV types to which a person has previously been exposed through sexual activity.
  5. Since syncope (fainting) has been reported following vaccination sometimes resulting in falling with injury, observation for 15 minutes after administration is recommended.
  6. Vaccine information is required to be given with each vaccination to the patient, parent, or guardian.
  7. Information regarding benefits and risks associated with vaccination.
  8. GARDASIL is not recommended for use in pregnant women.
  9. Importance of completing the immunization series unless contraindicated.
  10. Report any adverse reactions to their health care provider

The remainder of this article contains information that was obtained directly from the Gardasil package insert (and sometimes paraphrased from what was printed there). I have also bolded, enlarged and/or italicized some of the words or phrases to point out and/or emphasize the not-so-subtle, frequent obfuscation of data that the FDA allowed Merck to publish, data which likely was designed to distort (or at least put a positive spin on) the information – for both patients and physicians:   5.1 Syncope Because vaccinees may develop syncope (fainting shortly after a Gardasil shot), sometimes resulting in injury, observation for 15 minutes after administration is recommended. Syncope, sometimes associated with tonic-clonic movements and other seizure-like activity, has been reported following vaccination with GARDASIL   When syncope is associated with tonic-clonic movements (tonic/clonic movements ARE SEIZURES!!), the activity is usuallytransient and typically responds to restoring cerebral perfusion by maintaining a supine or Trendelenburg position.

Some vaccine victims died, some had strokes, some had heart attacks, some developed chronic epilepsy, some developed chronic fatigue syndrome, etc.

Table 5: Common Systemic Adverse Reactions in Girls and Women 9 Through 26 Years of Age

(GARDASIL ≥ Control) Adverse Reactions (1 to 15 Days Postvaccination) GARDASIL (N = 5088) AAHS/aluminum adjuvant “placebo” (N = 3790)

Fever 13% with Gardasil; 11.2% with AAHS/Aluminum adjuvant “placebo”, Nausea 6.7% Gardasil; 6.5% Aluminum, Dizziness 4.0% Gardasil; 3.6% Aluminum Diarrhea 3.6% Gardasil; 3.5% Aluminum Vomiting 2.4% Gardasil; 1.9% Aluminum Cough 2.0% Gardasil; 1.5% Aluminum Toothache, Upper respiratory tract infection, Malaise, Arthralgia, Insomnia, Nasal congestion all had an incidence over 1.0%. Many other adverse effects that had an incidence of less than 1.0% were not listed.

6.1 Clinical Trials Experience Studies in Girls and Women (ages 9 Through 45) and Boys and Men (9 Through 26 Years of Age) 18,083 individuals were administered GARDASIL or aluminum/AAHS “placebo” or saline placebo on the day of enrollment, and approximately 2 and 6 months thereafter, and safety was evaluated using Vaccination Report Cards (VRC) for 14 days after each injection.   The individuals that were monitored using the Vaccination Report Cards included 10,088 individuals 9 through 45 years of age at enrollment who received GARDASIL and 7,995 individuals who received the aluminum “placebo” or the saline true placebo.

99.8% of trial participants continued to the end of the 6-month trial despite many of them suffering significant adverse effects from both the vaccine and the aluminum adjuvant.

Table 9: Summary of Girls and Women 9 Through 26 Years of Age Who Reported an Incident Condition Potentially Indicative of a Systemic Autoimmune Disorder After Enrollment in Clinical Trials   (Recall that Aluminum adjuvants have a long history of causing autoimmune disorders.   It should be required for everybody to read and understand the extensive scholarly literature that had led to the identification of the ASIA Syndrome = “Autoimmune/Inflammatory Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants” at: https://autoimmunity-network.com/media/moxie/files/a/ad/adm/admin/The%20autoimmune-inflammatory%20syndrome%20induced%20by%20adjuvants.pdf

Note: Patients with the vaccine-induced ASIA Syndrome commonly present with post-vaccination symptoms such as chronic fatigue syndrome, cognitive impairment, arthralgias, myalgias, fevers, dry eyes and dry mouth, symptoms that are totally compatible with the ASIA Syndrome and are now found to occur following Gardasil vaccinations. Included are some of these disorders:  

1.     Arthralgia/Arthritis/Arthropathy   120 Gardasil-injected volunteers reported arthropathic signs and symptoms that were compatible with autoimmune arthropathies (and the ASIA Syndrome).  98 aluminum-adjuvanted “control group” members also reported arthropathies.

2.     There were 10 cases of Insulin Dependent Diabetes Mellitus (a known autoimmune disorder) in the Gardasil group and there were 6 cases of IDDM among the aluminum-adjuvant group.

3.     Also occurring among these previously totally healthy groups of young women were cases of these autoimmune, ASIA disorders:   Autoimmune Thyroiditis, Celiac Disease, Erythema Nodosum, Hyperthyroidism, Hypothyroidism, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Nephritis, Optic Neuritis, Pigmentation Disorder, Psoriasis, Raynaud’s Phenomenon, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Scleroderma/Morphea, Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, Uveitis.

6.2 Post-marketing Experience The following adverse events have been spontaneously reported during post-approval use of GARDASIL. Because these events were reported voluntarily (unsolicited) from a population of uncertain size, it is not possible to reliably estimate their frequency or to establish a causal relationship to vaccine exposure.

Blood and lymphatic system disorders: Autoimmune hemolytic anemia, Idiopathic (autoimmune) thrombocytopenic purpura, Lymphadenopathy. Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders: Pulmonary embolus. Gastrointestinal disorders: Nausea, Pancreatitis, Vomiting.

General disorders and administration site conditions: Asthenia, Chills, Death, Fatigue, Malaise. Immune system disorders: Autoimmune diseases, Hypersensitivity reactions including anaphylactic/anaphylactoid reactions, Bronchospasm/Asthma, and Urticaria. Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders: Arthralgia, Myalgia. Nervous system disorders: Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, Dizziness, Guillain-Barré syndrome, Headache, Lower motor neuron disease, Paralysis, Seizures, Syncope (including syncope associated with tonic/clonic movements and other seizure-like activity) sometimes resulting in falling with injury, Transverse myelitis.

Infections and infestations: Cellulitis. Vascular disorders: Deep venous thrombosis   GARDASIL is not indicated for women 27 years of age or older.   However, safety data in women 16 through 45 years of age was collected, and 3819 women (GARDASIL N = 1894 vs. AAHS control (aluminum adjuvant) or saline placebo N = 1925) reported at least 1 pregnancy each.   The overall proportions of pregnancies that resulted in an adverse outcome, defined as the combined numbers of: Spontaneous abortion, Late fetal death, and Congenital anomalies (45 cases in Gardasil vaccinees and 34 cases in aluminum-adjuvanted “placebo cases)out of the total number of pregnancy outcomes for which an outcome was known (and excluding elective terminations), were 22.6% (446/1973) in women who received GARDASIL and 23.1% (460/1994) in women who received AAHS control or saline placebo. Overall, 55 and 65 women in the group that received GARDASIL or AAHS control or saline placebo, respectively (2.9% and 3.4% of all women who reported a pregnancy in the respective vaccination groups), experienced a serious adverse reaction during pregnancy.

There were 45 cases of congenital anomaly in pregnancies that occurred in women who received GARDASIL and 34 cases of congenital anomaly in pregnancies that occurred in women who received AAHS control or saline placebo.   Further sub-analyses were conducted to evaluate pregnancies with estimated onset within 30 days or more than 30 days from administration of a dose of GARDASIL or AAHS control or saline placebo. For pregnancies with estimated onset within 30 days of vaccination, 5 cases of congenital anomaly were observed in the group that received GARDASIL compared to 1 case of congenital anomaly in the group that received AAHS control or saline placebo.

The congenital anomalies seen in (Gardasil-affected) pregnancies with estimated onset within 30 days of vaccination included

Pyloric stenosis, Congenital megacolon, Congenital hydronephrosis, Hip dysplasia, and Club foot.  

Conversely, in pregnancies with onset more than 30 days following vaccination, 40 cases of congenital anomaly were observed in the group that received GARDASIL compared with 33 cases of congenital anomaly in the group that received AAHS (aluminum!) “control” or saline placebo.

GARDASIL or AAHS control were given to a total of 1133 (breast-feeding) women (vaccine N = 582, AAHS control N = 551) during the relevant Phase 3 clinical studies.

Overall, 27 and 13 infants of women who received GARDASIL or AAHS control, respectively (representing 4.6% and 2.4% of the total number of women who were breast-feeding during the period in which they received GARDASIL or AAHS control, respectively), experienced a serious adverse reaction.   In a post-hoc analysis of clinical studies, a higher number of breast-feeding infants (n = 7) whose mothers received GARDASIL had acute respiratory illnesses within 30 days post vaccination of the mother as compared to infants (n = 2) whose mothers received AAHS control.

11. DESCRIPTION GARDASIL, Human Papillomavirus Quadrivalent (Types 6, 11, 16, and 18) Vaccine, Recombinant, is a non-infectious recombinant quadrivalent vaccine prepared from the purified virus-like particles (VLPs) of the major capsid (L1) protein of HPV Types 6, 11, 16, and 18. The L1 proteins are produced by separate fermentations in recombinant Saccharomyces cerevisiae and self-assembled into VLPs.

The fermentation process involves growth of S. cerevisiae on chemically-defined fermentation media which include vitamins, amino acids, mineral salts, and carbohydrates. The VLPs are released from the yeast cells by cell disruption and purified by a series of chemical and physical methods.

The purified Virus-Like Particles are adsorbed on pre-formed aluminum-containing adjuvant (Amorphous Aluminum Hydroxyphosphate Sulfate).

The quadrivalent HPV VLP vaccine is a sterile liquid suspension that is prepared by combining the adsorbed VLPs of each HPV type and additional amounts of the aluminum-containing adjuvant and the final purification buffer.   GARDASIL is a sterile suspension for intramuscular administration.

Each 0.5-mL dose contains approximately 20 mcg of HPV 6 L1 protein, 40 mcg of HPV 11 L1 protein, 40 mcg of HPV 16 L1 protein, and 20 mcg of HPV 18 L1 protein.  

Each 0.5-mL dose of the vaccine contains approximately 225 mcg of aluminum (as Amorphous Aluminum Hydroxyphosphate Sulfate adjuvant), 9.56 mg of sodium chloride, 0.78 mg of L-histidine, 50 mcg of polysorbate 80, 35 mcg of sodium borate.   And yet, despite the fact that there is no proof that Gardasil has prevented a single case of cervical cancer, the CDC website does not dare to discuss the details and personal stories of the thousands of young, previously health young women that experienced serious, even fatal, adverse effects both before the costly vaccine was marketed and after it was sanctioned by the CDC, the AAFP and the AAP.

Indeed, the CDC’s website (https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/pdf/data-summary-hpv-gardasil-vaccine-is-safe.pdf) reassuringly states, totally ignoring the warnings in the Gardasil product insert that medical ethicists say must be revealed to the patient or guardian prior to a vaccine injection or a drug prescription – per the age-old medical ethical standard of “fully informed consent”:

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American Academy of Family Physicians, and American Academy of Pediatrics strongly recommend children receive all vaccines according to the recommended schedule.”  

Here is that CDC-recommended schedule that is now mandatory, no questions to be asked, in California: After studying it and trying to calculate exactly how much injected mercury, aluminum, live viruses and the various impurities that the schedule will deliver to any California child that wants to go to public school, it is important to ask any physician that orders their patients to comply with the CDC schedule (exactly as posted) any of the questions listed further below this 2018 schedule that contrasts the number of vaccinations from previous years. This totally accurate diagram is posted at: http://somehelpful.info/Science/Vaccination-Russian-roulette.html.    

After being enlightened about America’s mandated, obvious over-vaccination schedule, are there any Questions?

Such as:

  1. What might happen if my baby doesn’t take ALL of the vaccines?
  2. What might happen if I delay having my baby start the vaccine schedule until he/she has reached blood-brain barrier and immunological maturity?
  3. Why are the unvaccinated people that I know also the healthiest people, the ones with the fewest chronic illnesses, the ones that aren’t on cocktails of potentially toxic drugs, the ones with no autoimmune disorders and the ones that never catch the flu anyway?
  4. What if there is a mis-match between the influenza viruses that circulated in Australia during their flu season last year and the viral antigens that were chosen to be included in the current flu shot?
  5. What if I had an adverse reaction to a previous vaccine, should I still be vaccinated with that shot? (And what is the strength of the evidence for your recommendation that my baby stick to the CDC’s mandated schedule?)
  6. What if there is a family history of vaccine adverse effects?
  7. Why should I have my baby follow the CDC schedule when my autistic first baby had his first seizure, near-SIDS event and his first autistic symptoms immediately after a cocktail of vaccinations that was given at your clinic?
  8. Did your medical school only teach you about the benefits of vaccinations and not about the actual risks?
  9. Were your medical school professors actual practicing physicians or were they mainly academically-oriented and therefore with minimal practical experience in pediatric patient care?

And here are some enlightening and very useful quotes from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, who knows more and is more articulate about vaccines and the dangers of over-vaccinating American children than 99% of US physicians and 99.9% of US politicians.  

“For American kids born in 1986, only 12.8% had chronic diseases (especially autoimmune disorders). That number has grown to 54% among the vaccine generation (those born after 1986) in lockstep with the expanding schedule.”  

“Safety testing, which typically requires months and years for other medical products, often lasts only a few days with vaccines – not nearly long enough to spot cancers or chronic conditions like autoimmune diseases (e.g., juvenile, insulin dependent diabetes mellitus, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis), allergic illnesses (e.g., food allergies, allergic rhinitis, eczema, asthma), or neurological and neurodevelopmental injuries (e.g., ADD, ADHD, narcolepsy, seizure disorders, and the spectrum of autistic disorders). The vaccine inserts that accompany every vial of mandated vaccines include warnings about these and over 400 other injuries including many serious immune, neurological, and chronic illnesses for which FDA suspects that vaccines may be the cause.”   “Many of these illnesses became epidemic in American children after 1986, coterminous with the exploding vaccine schedule. For American kids born in 1986, only 12.8% had chronic diseases. That number has grown to 54% among the vaccine generation (those born after 1986) in lockstep with the expanding schedule.”  

“The children who comprise this vaccine-injured generation are now aging out of schools that needed to build quiet rooms and autism wings, install wobble chairs, hire security guards and hike special ed spending to 25% to accommodate them. They are landing on the social safety net which they threaten to sink. As lawmakers all around the nation vote to mandate more vaccines and call for the censorship of experts (including parents of vaccine-injured or killed children) that are expressing concerns about vaccine safety, Democratic Presidential candidates argue about how to fix America’s dysfunctional and unaffordable health care system without addressing the reality of the vaccine-related chronic disease and autoimmune disorder epidemic. The good news for Big Pharma, of course, is that many of these vaccine-injured children have lifelong dependencies on blockbuster drugs like insulin, Adderall, anti-psychotic drugs, Epi-Pens, asthma inhalers, and diabetes, arthritis, and anti-seizure meds made by the same companies that made the vaccines.”  

“An overwhelming majority of the FDA officials directly charged with licensing vaccines, and the CDC officials who effectively mandate them for children, have personal financial entanglements with vaccine manufacturers. These “public servants” are often shareholders in, grant recipients from, and/or paid consultants to vaccine manufacturers, and, occasionally, even patent holders of the very vaccines they vote to approve. Those conflicts of interest motivate them to recommend ever more vaccines with minimal support from evidence-based science” – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  

“The FDA receives 45% of its annual budget from the pharmaceutical industry. The World Health Organization (WHO) gets roughly half its budget from private sources, including Pharma and its allied foundations. And the CDC, frankly, is a vaccine company; it owns 56 vaccine patents   and buys and distributes $4.6 billion in vaccines annually through the Vaccines for Children program, which is over 40% of its total budget.” — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr  

“An overwhelming majority of the FDA officials directly charged with licensing vaccines, and the CDC officials who effectively mandate them for children, have personal financial entanglements with vaccine manufacturers. These “public servants” are often shareholders in, grant recipients from, and/or paid consultants to vaccine manufacturers, and, occasionally, even patent holders of the very vaccines they vote to approve. Those conflicts of interest motivate them to recommend ever more vaccines with minimal support from evidence-based science” – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  

“The FDA receives 45% of its annual budget from the pharmaceutical industry. The World Health Organization (WHO) gets roughly half its budget from private sources, including Pharma and its allied foundations. And the CDC, frankly, is a vaccine company; it owns 56 vaccine patents   and buys and distributes $4.6 billion in vaccines annually through the Vaccines for Children program, which is over 40% of its total budget.” — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr  

“The HHS (US Health and Human Services partners with vaccine makers to develop, approve, recommend, and pass mandates for new products and then shares profits from vaccine sales. HHS employees can personally collect up to $150,000 annually in royalties for products they work on. For example, key HHS officials collect money on every sale of Merck’s controversial HPV vaccine Gardasil, which also yields tens of millions annually for the agency in patent royalties.” — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr  

“In 1986, Congress—awash in Pharma money (the pharmaceutical industry is number one for both political campaign contributions and lobbying spending on legislators over the past 20 years) enacted a law granting vaccine makers blanket immunity from liability for injuries caused by vaccines. The subsequent gold rush by pharmaceutical companies boosted the number of recommended inoculations from twelve shots of five vaccines in 1986 to 54 shots of 13 vaccines today. A billion-dollar sideline grew into the $50 billion vaccine industry behemoth.” — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr  

“Since vaccines are liability-free – and effectively compulsory to a captive market of 76 million children – there is meager market incentive for companies to make them safe. The public must rely on the moral scruples of Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, and Pfizer. But these companies have a long history of operating recklessly and dishonestly, even with (the many non-vaccine) products that they must market to the public and for which they can be sued for injuries. The four companies that make virtually all of the recommended vaccines are all convicted felons.  Collectively they have paid over $35 billion since 2009 for defrauding regulators, lying to and bribing government officials and physicians, falsifying science, and leaving a trail of injuries and deaths from products they knew to be dangerous and still sold under pretense of safety and efficacy.” – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr

Addenda:

1)    The Health Resources Services Administration runs an under-advertised Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). Information on how to file a vaccine injury claim is available at (https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/data/index.html).

2)    Scandalously, even your neighborhood pharmacy has been given approval to have poorly trained, vaccinology-ignorant sales staff, who don’t know a deltoid muscle from a triceps, to inject the full-gamut of 13 adult vaccines into anybody who asks for one or more of them at the store!! One wonders: Are risks or contraindications even inquired about? Is the concept of fully informed consent understood by the pharmacy employees when potentially toxic medical procedures are offered? Since vaccine-makers and physician clinics and hospitals are free from liability, does that hold for pharmacies as well?

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Gary G. Kohls is a retired rural family physician from Duluth, Minnesota who has written a weekly column for the Reader Weekly, Duluth’s alternative newsweekly magazine since his retirement in 2008. His column, titled Duty to Warn is re-published around the world.   Dr Kohls practiced holistic mental health care in Duluth for the last decade of his family practice career prior to his retirement in 2008, primarily helping patients who had become addicted to cocktails of psychiatric drugs to safely go through the complex withdrawal process. His column often deals with various unappreciated health issues, including those caused by Big Pharma’s over-drugging, Big Vaccine’s over-vaccinating, Big Medicine’s over-screening, over-diagnosing and over-treating agendas and Big Food’s malnourishing food industry. Those four sociopathic entities can combine to even more adversely affect the physical, mental, spiritual and economic health of the recipients of the vaccines, drugs, medical treatments and the eaters of the tasty and ubiquitous “FrankenFoods” – particularly when they are consumed in combinations, doses and potencies that have never been tested for safety or long-term effectiveness.

Dr Kohls’ Duty to Warn columns are archived at:
http://duluthreader.com/search?search_term=Duty+to+Warn&p=2;
http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/gary-g-kohls;
http://freepress.org/geographic-scope/national; https://www.lewrockwell.com/author/gary-g-kohls/; and https://www.transcend.org/tms/search/?q=gary+kohls+articles

Source: Duluth Reader

US Vax Court Sees 400% Spike in Vaccine Injuries, Flu Shot Wins Top Honors for Biggest Payout | Vaccine Impact

Vaccine injury cases are on the rise people, so if you’ve got your head in the sand and you haven’t been paying attention, it’s time to wake up.

Here’s a little background for those of you just getting started.

Ronnie Reagan… almost 30 years ago to the day, the 40th president of the United States signed away the rights of Americans to sue vaccine makers, replacing them with a law that forces families who have suffered vaccine injury or death to sue the U.S. government instead of a pharmaceutical company.

As a result, special masters from the United States Special Claims Court, also known for our purposes as the vaccine court, are given full authority as judge with no jury to decide the fate of Americans who have had the unfortunate ‘luck’ to be stricken by a vaccine injury — which can range from chronic, mild symptoms to death.

Once a year, this non-traditional court provides the public with a glimpse into its inner workings, by issuing an annual report on its website — a ritual that happens every January.  The report is sent to the President of Congress, otherwise known as the Vice President of the United States, where it is intended to serve as a bell weather monitoring reactions the American public may be having to vaccinations that are increasingly becoming forced by government mandates around the country.

Great, right?  Accountability in action?

Wrong.

The report, which is consistently ignored by mainstream media/politicians/health officials and the CDC, lies dormant on the reports page of the U.S. Special Claims Court website.

No headlines, no press release, no analysis, no alert the media, no nothing.

No surprise, given that most people in America don’t even know that vaccines were ruled to be unavoidably unsafe by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011.  Also no surprise, that mainstream, co-opted, globalist elite media constantly ignore this report, along with sane arguments made by health freedom advocates about the dangers and risks of vaccine injury (‘look! a unicorn!’), instead using terms like ‘the science is in,’ and vaccine risk has been ‘debunked,’ to deter rational discussion pertaining to evidence that is hiding in plain sight.

Also no surprise that the U.S. Special Claims Court offers up an ineffective, low tech, archaic version of the report every year.  Instead of a nice, sort-able spread sheet, the court posts a scanned PDF document — a format which requires labor-intensive activities to conduct any sort of concrete analysis.  One must either re-data-entry all 220+ pages which would take weeks, or conduct an extensive, hand-written breakdown by vaccine of each case, combined with extensive tallying and organization efforts in order to identify statistical relevance and trends emerging from the vaccine court.

Is this by design?  Perhaps.  Most definitely it is at the very least a deterrent from having anybody actually sit down and try to analyze the damn thing.

Which is exactly why we do it, every year since 2014.  Not to be deterred, it took us 10 months to finally finish our analysis of this year’s report.  But once we did, the trends we found were shocking — not just because of what they revealed about the continual increase in vaccine injury, but also because of the deafening silence present among the halls of mainstream media, as vaccine injury continues to be a subject that journalists and media outlets ignore — chalking it up to yet another conspiracy theory from yet another fake news site.

Well pull up a chair and hold on to your hats, because guess what we discovered:

  1. Vaccine court settlement payouts increased in total $91.2 million in 2015, up from $22.8 million in 2014 to $114 million in 2015 — a 400% increase. 
  2. Vaccine court settlement payments for flu shots increased the most, from $4.9 million in 2014 to $61 million in 2015 —  an increase of more than 1000%, despite autumnal onslaughts every year of media/pr/advertising campaigns urging Americans to ‘get your flu shot,’ with total abandon for the statistical facts coming out of the vaccine court.
  3. Varicella (chicken pox) had the third biggest increase — from $0 in 2014 to $5.8 million in 2015.  (No surprise shingles is on the rise among the elderly population, as recently vaccinated grandchildren continuously shed live virus to their unsuspecting elders.)
  4. Hepatitis B was the fourth largest increase in vaccine court settlements, increasing 321% in 2015 to more than $8 million in 2015 from $1.9 million in 2014.
  5. TDap/DTP/DPT and D/T shots were the fifth largest increase, leaping 75% in 2014 from $5.5 million to $9.8.

The rest of the settlements not pictured here are: Tetanus, $4 million; HPV $3.4 million, up from almost nothing in 2014 (one to watch in January when the 2016 report is issued); MMR, which actually decreased from the number one position last year to under $1 m — an 88%+ decrease in payouts; pertussis, $1.7 million; thimerisol $1.5 million; HIB, $345k, menginococal $500k, HEP A $408k, DPT & Polio, $210k & rotovirus $76k. 

You may have noticed we omitted the second place winner, ‘other.’  Here’s why.

‘Other’ illustrates perfectly the dodgy nature of the vaccine court report, and its lack of transparency in the vaccine court process.  Instead of identifying which combination of vaccines are being charged with injury or death and labeling the case accordingly, a special master can decide to label a vaccine case ‘other,’ thereby diluting its affect on the overall numbers in the final analysis.

In 2015, the ‘other’ category was the second largest increase in vaccine settlement payments, totaling $21.5 million in payouts, up 388% from $4.4 million in payouts the year before.

We’re not accusing anybody of anything.  But, 388% increase is a lot.  What combination of vaccines is causing such an increase?  Doesn’t the public have a right to know?  If the court decided, for example, that there were too many flu shot settlements mounting for the year, couldn’t it simply skew the data by categorizing certain cases as ‘other,’ which would artificially deflate the flu category?

Did we mention that these results are ONLY for the judgements — cases that are found in favor of the plaintiff.  It does NOT include the EXTENSIVE legal fees for both sides, which are paid for by the U.S. government whether the lawyer wins or loses the case?  Those are categorized as costs.  And instead of submitting them in the report along with any judgments that are awarded, often they are entered as separate entries, making the exercise of linking them with their judgement payouts that much harder, requiring yet another step in the arduous, analysis of data.

The total dollar payout of legal fees for the vaccine court in 2015 is $42 million.

Also, a hand full of settlements in the payout are based on annuities — that means that the payouts (many of which total more than $1 million) reoccur annually.  That’s because life as they knew it for some plaintiffs disappeared after their vaccine injury occurred, and the costs to care for them in perpetuity for the life of the plaintiff requires an annual sum that is often extensive.

Share far and wide people, it’s time to turn the tide.

Republished with permission of The Mom Street Journal. Read the full article at TheMomStreetJournal.com.

Source: Vaccine Impact & TheMomStreetJournal.com

Health Insurance Costs Surpass $20,000 Per Year, Hitting a Record (for Employees) | Bloomberg

Editor’s Note: Sixty-seven years old and I’ve never had health insurance, haven’t seen a medical doctor since 1983, stay away from pharmaceutical and recreational drugs of all kinds, get plenty of exercise, eat healthy, mostly vegan and raw food. Although such a lifestyle may seem radical or unrealistic for many people, it’s a better option than paying through the nose for a morsel of health security. Hippocrates once said, “If you’re not your own doctor, you’re a fool.”

The cost of family health coverage in the U.S. now tops $20,000, an annual survey of employers found, a record high that has pushed an increasing number of American workers into plans that cover less or cost more, or force them out of the insurance market entirely.

“It’s as much as buying a basic economy car,” said Drew Altman, chief executive officer of the Kaiser Family Foundation, “but buying it every year.” The nonprofit health research group conducts the yearly survey of coverage that people get through work, the main source of insurance in the U.S. for people under age 65.

While employers pay most of the costs of coverage, according to the survey, workers’ average contribution is now $6,000 for a family plan. That’s just their share of upfront premiums, and doesn’t include co-payments, deductibles and other forms of cost-sharing once they need care.

The seemingly inexorable rise of costs has led to deep frustration with U.S. health care, prompting questions about whether a system where coverage is tied to a job can survive. As premiums and deductibles have increased in the last two decades, the percentage of workers covered has slipped as employers dropped coverage and some workers chose not to enroll. Fewer Americans under 65 had employer coverage in 2017 than in 1999, according to a separate Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of federal data. That’s despite the fact that the U.S. economy employed 17 million more people in 2017 than in 1999.

“What we’ve been seeing is a slow, slow kind of drip-drip erosion in employer coverage,” Altman said.

Employees’ costs for health care are rising more quickly than wages or overall economy-wide prices, and the working poor have been particularly hard-hit. In firms where more than 35% of employees earn less than $25,000 a year, workers would have to contribute more than $7,000 for a family health plan. It’s an expense that Altman calls “just flat-out not affordable.” Only one-third of employees at such firms are on their employer’s health plans, compared with 63% at higher-wage firms, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s data.

The survey is based on responses from more than 2,000 randomly selected employers with at least three workers, including private firms and non-federal public employers.

Deductibles are rising even faster than premiums, meaning that patients are on the hook for more of their medical costs upfront. For a single person, the average deductible in 2019 was $1,396, up from $533 in 2009. A typical household with employer health coverage spends about $800 a year in out-of-pocket costs, not counting premiums, according to research from the Commonwealth Fund. At the high end of the range, those costs can top $5,000 a year.

While raising deductibles can moderate premiums, it also increases costs for people with an illness or who get hurt. “Cost-sharing is a tax on the sick,” said Mark Fendrick, director of the Center for Value-Based Insurance Design at the University of Michigan.

Under the Affordable Care Act, insurance plans must cover certain preventive services such as immunizations and annual wellness visits without patient cost-sharing. But patients still have to pay out-of-pocket for other essential care, such as medication for chronic conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure, until they meet their deductibles.

Many Americans aren’t prepared for the risks that deductibles transfer to patients. Almost 40% of adults can’t pay an unexpected $400 expense without borrowing or selling an asset, according to a Federal Reserve surveyfrom May.

That’s a problem, Fendrick said. “My patient should not have to have a bake sale to afford her insulin,” he said.

Source: Bloomberg

How Anti-Vaccine Sentiment Took Hold in the United States | The New York Times

Editor’s Note: The New York Times (and likely their biggest Big Pharma advertisers) are heralding a strongly-held opinion that choice regarding vaccines should not be an option for parents who may have good reason to believe their children are at risk. The almost completely unregulated vaccine industry is in denial regarding the potentially dangerous side effects, chronic illnesses that can result and in too many cases they’d rather not count – death. Not once in this well-written, one-sided article did the views, opinions or reasoning of the anti-vaccine crowd get acknowledged. This is but one of numerous op-ed articles the New York Times has recently published. 

As families face back-to-school medical requirements this month, the country feels the impact of a vaccine resistance movement decades in the making. The question is often whispered, the questioners sheepish. But increasingly, parents at the Central Park playground where Dr. Elizabeth A. Comen takes her young children have been asking her: “Do you vaccinate your kids?”

Dr. Comen, an oncologist who has treated patients for cancers related to the human papillomavirus that a vaccine can now prevent, replies emphatically: Absolutely.

She never imagined she would be getting such queries. Yet these playground exchanges are reflective of the national conversation at the end of the second decade of the 21st century — a time of stunning scientific and medical advances but also a time when the United States may, next month, lose its World Health Organization designation as a country that has eliminated measles, because of outbreaks this year. The W.H.O. has listed vaccine hesitancy as one of the top threats to global health.

As millions of families face back-to-school medical requirements and forms this month, the contentiousness surrounding vaccines is heating up again, with possibly even more fervor.

Though the situation may seem improbable to some, anti-vaccine sentiment has been building for decades, a byproduct of an internet humming with rumor and misinformation; the backlash against Big Pharma; an infatuation with celebrities that gives special credence to the anti-immunization statements from actors like Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey and Alicia Silverstone, the rapper Kevin Gates and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And now, the Trump administration’s anti-science rhetoric.

“Science has become just another voice in the room,” said Dr. Paul A. Offit, an infectious disease expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “It has lost its platform. Now, you simply declare your own truth.”

The constituents who make up the so-called vaccine resistant come from disparate groups, and include anti-government libertarians, apostles of the all-natural and parents who believe that doctors should not dictate medical decisions about children. Labeling resisters with one dismissive stereotype would be wrongheaded.

“To just say that these parents are ignorant or selfish is an easy trope,” said Jennifer Reich, a sociologist at the University of Colorado Denver, who studies vaccine-resistant families.

[Why did we start listening to celebrities about vaccines? Read more.]

It remains true that the overwhelming majority of American parents have their children vaccinated. Parent-driven groups like Voices for Vaccines, formed to counter anti-vaccination sentiment, have proliferated. Five states have eliminated exemptions for religious and philosophical reasons, permitting only medical opt-outs.

But there are ominous trends. For highly contagious diseases like measles, the vaccine rate to achieve herd immunity — the term that describes the optimum rate for protecting an entire population — is typically thought to be 95 percent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the vaccination rate for the measles, mumps and rubella (M.M.R.) injection in kindergartners in the 2017-2018 school year had slipped nationally to 94.3 percent, the third year in a row it dropped.

Seven states reported rates for the M.M.R. vaccine that were far lower for kindergartners, including Kansas at 89.1 percent; New Hampshire, 92.4 percent; the District of Columbia, 81.3 percent. (The highest is West Virginia at 98.4 percent.)

Almost all states have at least one anti-vaccine group. At least four have registered political action committees, supporting candidates who favor less restrictive vaccine exemption policies.

Public health experts say that patients and many doctors may not appreciate the severity of diseases that immunizations have thwarted, like polio, which can affect the spinal cord and brain — because they probably have not seen cases.

“Vaccines are a victim of their own success,” said Dr. Offit, a co-inventor of a vaccine for rotavirus, which can cause severe diarrhea in young children. “We have largely eliminated the memory of many diseases.”

The growth of vaccine doubt in America coincides with several competing forces and attitudes.

Since the early 2000s, as the number of required childhood vaccines was increasing, a generation of parents was becoming hypervigilant about their children and, through social media, patting each other on the backs for doing so. In their view, parents who permitted vaccination were gullible toadies of status quo medicine.

In 2011, Dana Fuqua, of Aurora, Colo., pregnant with her first child, felt that irresistible pull of groupthink parenting.

She had just moved to the area, so she reached out to mothers’ groups on Facebook. Colorado, with a kindergarten vaccination compliance rate of 88.7 percent, has a rambunctious vaccine-resistant movement. Ms. Fuqua’s new friends urged her to have a drug-free birth, use cloth diapers and never to let a drop of formula pass her baby’s lips. Vaccines, it followed, were anathema.

The women intimidated her. They had advanced degrees; she had only a bachelor of science and a nursing background.

“I didn’t argue with them,” Ms. Fuqua said. “I was so desperate for their support that I compromised by delaying the vaccine schedule, so I wouldn’t get kicked out of the group.”

But when her second child was born prematurely, susceptible to illness, the group’s approval was not as important as her baby’s safety. Her position, she said, shifted from, “‘I can’t hang out with you if you had a vaccine because you could be shedding a virus’” — a common, false belief among the vaccine resistant — to, “ ‘If you haven’t had a vaccine, I will not associate with you.’”

She had both children fully vaccinated.

There have been anti-vaccination movements at least since 1796, when Edward Jenner invented the smallpox vaccine. But many experts say that the current one can be traced to 1982, when NBC aired a documentary, “DPT: Vaccine Roulette,” that took up a controversy percolating in England: a purported tie between the vaccine for pertussis — a potentially fatal disease that can cause lung problems — and seizures in young children.

Doctors sharply criticized the show as dangerously inaccurate. But fear spread. Anti-vaccination groups formed. Many companies stopped making vaccines, which were considered loss-leaders and not worth the corporate headache.

Then, in 1998, Andrew Wakefield, a British gastroenterologist, published a Lancet study (since discredited and withdrawn), associating the M.M.R. vaccine with autism.

Faced with risking autism or measles, some parents thought the answer was obvious. Most had never seen measles, mumps or rubella because vaccines had nearly eliminated them. But they believed they knew autism.

And most people are notoriously poor at assessing risk, say experts in medical decision-making.

Many stumble on omission bias: “We would rather not do something and have something bad happen, than do something and have something bad happen,” explained Alison M. Buttenheim, an associate professor of nursing and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.

People are flummoxed by numerical risk. “We pay more attention to numerators, such as ‘16 adverse events,’ than we do to denominators, such as ‘per million vaccine doses,’ ” Dr. Buttenheim said.

A concept called “ambiguity aversion” is also involved, she added. “Parents would like to be told that vaccines are 100 percent safe,” she said. “But that’s not a standard we hold any medical treatment to.”

Relatively few people are absolutists about refusing all vaccines. “But if you’re uncertain about a decision, you’ll find those who confirm your bias and cement what you think,” said Rupali J. Limaye, a social scientist who studies vaccine behaviors at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Nowhere is that reinforcement more clamorous than on social media, Dr. Limaye added. “You may only see your pediatrician a few times a year but you can spend all day on the internet,” she said.

People tend to believe an individual’s anecdotal narrative over abstract numbers. By 2007, when Ms. McCarthy, the actress, insisted that vaccines caused her son’s autism, thousands found her to be more persuasive than data showing otherwise. A nascent movement took hold.

At the same time that these powerful attacks on vaccine confidence were underway, a constellation of trends was emerging.

The definition of a good parent was becoming fraught with the responsibility for overseeing every aspect of a child’s life.

“As we adopted a culture of individualistic parenting, public health became a hard sell,” Dr. Reich said.

The primary reason for healthy people to get the flu shot is to protect those with compromised immune systems, like infants and older adults, from getting sick. But altruism isn’t a great motivator for parents, Dr. Buttenheim said. “They are much more concerned about protecting their own child at all costs,” she said.

Contrast that attitude with the collective good will of the 1950s, say medical sociologists, when American parents who had seen President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s wheelchair as a debilitating symbol of polio patriotically sought to vaccinate their children to help eradicate the disease worldwide.

By 2014, studies showed that parental confidence in authorities like the C.D.C. and in pediatricians was dropping, especially around vaccines. Mistrust of Big Pharma was even more pronounced.

By then, Donald Trump was offering support on Twitter for the discredited link between autism and vaccination. As president-elect, he met with leaders of the anti-vaccination movement, although as measles cases surged, he endorsed vaccination.

As parenting became rife with orthodoxy, the Marcus Welby model of the paternalistic doctor retreated. Patients asserted autonomy, brandishing internet printouts at doctors. Shared decision-making became the model of doctor-patient engagement.

Pediatricians offered to stagger vaccine schedules. Some were even flexible about vaccinations altogether.

In 2011, shortly after Emma Wagner had given birth in Savannah, Ga., a pediatrician on the ward examined the baby. “He asked me if I was interested in the hepatitis B vaccine,” she said of an inoculation typically done at birth.

She was apprehensive.

He replied, “‘That’s fine, because your 2-day-old daughter isn’t a prostitute and isn’t using I.V. drugs, so hep B isn’t at the top of my worries.’”

Ms. Wagner said she “swallowed the anti-vax Kool-Aid. I was motivated by fear. I thought, ‘Until I know for certain that these are safe, I won’t do it.’ The pediatrician said, ‘I will support your decision and in a few years we’ll talk about exemptions for school.’”

She has since become a staunch supporter of immunization.

Libertarianism also courses through vaccine hesitation, with parents who assert that government should not be able to tell them what to put in their bodies — a position often marketed as “the right to choose.”

“Having the government order them to do something reinforces conspiracy theories,” said Daniel Salmon, director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins. “And people perceive their risk to be higher when it’s not voluntary.”

In reality, he said, one’s risk of harm is greater while driving to an airport than it is being on the airplane itself. But driving is voluntary and gives the illusion of control. People fear flying because they cannot control the plane. By extension, many childhood vaccines are not voluntary, which rattles those who prefer to believe they can control their health.

With so many different but deeply held convictions, public health experts struggle to design vaccine-positive campaigns.

In 2017, researchers applied the six values of “the moral foundations theory” to vaccine attitudes, surveying 1,007 American parents.

The results were intriguing. Those most resistant to vaccines scored highest in two values: purity (“my body is a temple”) and liberty (“I want to make my child’s health care decisions”).

A third, said Saad B. Omer, director of Yale’s Global Health Institute and an author of the study, was also telling: deference to authority — a score indicating whether one was likely to adhere to the advice of experts like a pediatrician or the C.D.C.

Dr. Salmon’s team at Johns Hopkins is working on an app to capture parents’ vaccine attitudes and to tailor information to persuade them to vaccinate their children.

Pediatricians are front-line persuaders, he said, and they should be compensated for the time it takes to educate parents.

Most experts note that physicians themselves, never mind parents, have no idea about the federal vaccine monitoring systems, which have been in place for more than 20 years.

“We ask parents in the first two years of their child’s life to protect them against 14 diseases, that most people don’t see, using fluids they don’t understand,” Dr. Offit said. “It’s time for us to stand back and explain ourselves better.”

Source: The New York Times

Dangerous chemicals hiding in everyday products | CNN

It was long believed that you could acquire “better living through chemistry.” But that may really not be the case. In a landmark alliance, known as Project TENDR, leaders of various disciplines have come together in a consensus statement to say that many of the chemicals found in everyday products can result in neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism and attention-deficit disorders.

“Ten years ago, this consensus wouldn’t have been possible, but the research is abundantly clear,” said Irva Hertz-Picciotto, an environmental epidemiologist at the University of California, Davis and co-chairwoman of Project TENDR.

BPA-free plastic alternatives may not be safe as you think

“At some point, we say we know enough to take preventative action,” said Frederica Perera, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University. Perera is also a signatory on the statement.

Last year, the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (PDF) stated that “Widespread exposure to toxic environmental chemicals threatens healthy human reproduction.” Other medical groups such as the Endocrine Society (PDF), the world’s oldest and largest organization devoted to researching hormones, have expressed similar concerns.

But this is the first time that leading scientists, doctors and policy advocates across various disciplines have come together to say that the science on toxic chemicals is clear: They can harm brain development.

Everyday chemicals carry toxic burden

These everyday chemicals, including organophosphates, flame retardants and phthalates, can be found in food, plastics, furniture, food wrap, cookware, cans, carpets, shower curtains, electronics and even shampoo. They are pretty much everywhere around us.

Scientists and researchers are concerned that many of these chemicals may be carcinogenic or wreak havoc with our hormones, our body’s regulating system. But the impact of these chemicals may be most severe on the developing brain, Perera said.

Brain development is the “most complete and most rapid during the first nine months, prenatally,” she said. During that time, neural connections and pathways are being developed.

“Any interference by a physical stress like a toxic chemical or other stressor can disrupt this natural progression that is so very delicate and complex,” explained Perera.

Though the group hopes to come up with regulatory recommendations to reduce this toxic burden, there are some simple things that inpiduals can do to reduce their exposure.

Chemicals to watch for

Organophosphate pesticides

Organophosphate pesticides (PDF) are a class of neurotoxic chemicals used as warfare agentsin the 1930s. However, today, they account for about half of all pesticide use in the United States. And they can make their way onto crops that we use as food sources. Areas that spray pesticides heavily, such as farms, may find higher rates of exposure.

Children exposed to higher levels of these pesticides have been found to have higher rates of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

You can reduce your exposure to them by eating organic and using alternative pest control methods.

Phthalates

These chemicals soften plastics and help scents and chemicals bind together.

Exposure to phthalates has been associated with lower IQ levels.

They can be found in shampoos, conditioners, body sprays, hair sprays, perfumes, colognes, soap, nail polish, shower curtains, medical tubing, IV bags, vinyl flooring and wall coverings, food packaging and coatings on time-release pharmaceuticals.

You can reduce your exposure to phthalates by using unscented lotions and laundry detergents, microwaving food in glass containers rather than plastic, using cleaning supplies without scents, and avoiding air fresheners and plastics labeled as No. 3, No. 6 and No 7.

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers

These chemicals are used as flame retardants, chemicals that can slow the speed of a flame. They can be found in televisions, computers, insulation and foam products, including children’s toys and baby pillows.

Products can shed ethers that can accumulate in dust. Exposure to these ethers have been associated with thyroid issues.

There isn’t a directory that lists which products have these ethers, but consumers may still be able to reduce exposure by looking for products that advertise themselves as free of flame retardant. These chemicals were found in a lot of older foams, so replace products such sofas and pillows that have exposed foam. And use a high-efficiency HEPA filter vacuum to clean up dust.

Air pollutants

Air pollution from burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil or gas is usually associated with respiratory issues. However, these pollutants can also include nitrogen dioxide, formaldehyde and benzene.

Higher exposure to air pollutants has been associated with lower birth weights, preterm deliveries and congenital heart defects. The World Health Organization (PDF) considers exposure to benzene a major public health concern.

Aside from trying to avoid polluted areas, you can make sure to buy furniture and products that advertise themselves as formaldehyde-free. Try to avoid buying furniture made with particleboard, plywood or pressed wood. Many of these products use glues containing formaldehyde.

Lead

Lead is a naturally occurring metal. It was banned from gasoline in the 1970s but can still be found in older homes that used leaded paint. Lead can also make its way into water, because of corrosion from old water pipes. Lead is also used in a variety of products like industrial paints, car batteries and wheel weights.

Lead exposure has been associated with ADHD, lower IQs and developmental delay.

Infants and toddlers are at greatest risk for lead exposure because they frequently put their hands and toys in their mouths after they may be exposed to lead in dust.

Why lead is so dangerous for children

Find out if you have lead in your water by reaching out to your local water supplier or even getting an at-home test kit from a home improvement store. If your home was built before 1978, test your paint. If the paint is chipping or peeling, it will need to be stripped or covered.

Homeowners may want to consider using a professional who is lead-safe certified to help you. Parents can also talk to your doctor about having your children tested for lead if there is reason for concern.

Mercury

Mercury is a naturally occurring element, but it can also be released into the environment from the burning of coal and oil. Mercury can also be found in some household items such as thermometers, light bulbs and older-model clothes dryers and washing machines. Mercury in the environment can make its way into fish and shellfish. Some fish, such as some kinds of tuna, may have higher concentrations of mercury.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, exposure to mercury in utero may impact memory, attention and cognitive skills.

While you can’t completely eliminate mercury from your environment, you can reduce your exposure to mercury by avoiding fish high in mercury. Try to use mercury-free thermometers. When getting rid of household items with mercury, reach out to your state or local household hazardous waste collection center for advice.

Polychlorinated biphenyls

Between 1929 and 1977, thousands of tons of polychlorinated biphenyls were used worldwide. Production of the chemical in the U.S. was banned by the EPA in 1977, but they can linger (PDF) in the environment for a long time and make their way into the food chain. These chemicals have been used as coolants and lubricants in electrical equipment because they are good insulators.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, polychlorinated biphenyls are associated with cancer in occupational settings and has been associated with issues with motor skills and short term memory in children.

Much like mercury, they have made their way into our food sources, particularly fish and some meat. To avoid polychlorinated biphenyls in your food, the Environmental Defense Fund suggests, before cooking, removing the parts where toxic chemicals are likely to accumulate, such as the skin, fat and internal organs. When cooking, make sure to drain away fat and avoid drippings.

Source: CNN

Dr Peter Gøtzsche Exposes Big Pharma as Organized Crime | Health Impact News

Peter C Gøtzsche, MD exposes the pharmaceutical industries and their charade of fraudulent behavior, both in research and marketing where the morally repugnant disregard for human lives is the norm.

The main reason we take so many drugs is that drug companies don t sell drugs, they sell lies about drugs. This is what makes drugs so different from anything else in life… Virtually everything we know about drugs is what the companies have chosen to tell us and our doctors… the reason patients trust their medicine is that they extrapolate the trust they have in their doctors into the medicines they prescribe.

The patients don’t realize that, although their doctors may know a lot about diseases and human physiology and psychology, they know very, very little about drugs that hasn’t been carefully concocted and dressed up by the drug industry… If you don t think the system is out of control, please email me and explain why drugs are the third leading cause of death… If such a hugely lethal epidemic had been caused by a new bacterium or a virus,or even one-hundredth of it, we would have done everything we could to get it under control.

Peter C. Gøtzsche, MD is a Danish medical researcher, and leader of the Nordic Cochrane Center at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, Denmark. He has written numerous reviews within the Cochrane collaboration.

Source: Health Impact News