Notes on Vaccines and Pharmaceuticals

Notes on Vaccines and Pharmaceuticals - Compiled from back issues of the Well Being Journal

VACCINES, DIABETES AND AUTISM.. This excerpt from Health Alert might pique a reader's interest
about vaccines a little more:

“I hope...you tuned in to the hearings on vaccines on Capitol Hill. If you didn't, I'll clue you in—they
were an insult to human intelligence and a testament to special interests and big money. Even the senators
conducting the hearings couldn't believe what was going on. They couldn't coerce a simple answer from
any of the experts on the side of `more research [money] and vaccines.'... Meanwhile, the parents in
attendance whose kids developed autism right after the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine were as
frustrated as the senators trying to get a straight answer to anything....

“The MMR vaccine is given between 12 and 15 months of age. Since the mid-1980s when MMR came
into wide use, autism rates rose very sharply, with most cases being recognized at 18 months of age. In
fact, a study released by an autism research center at the University of California at Davis showed a
273% increase in an 11-year period.... Today kids may receive up to 35 various vaccines before entering
the first grade—with 5 more on the immediate horizon [as suggested preventives] including one for ear
infections!

“Autism is not the only theorized vaccine problem. Evidence is strong relating vaccines [as well as
processed carbohydrate foods, sugars and hydrogenated oils] to the spiraling cases of childhood diabetes.
For more information: www.vaccines.net.” (See Health Alert, September, 2000, Vol. 17:9, 5 Harris Court
N., Monterey, CA 93940-5753.)

VACCINES: TREATMENTS WITH SIDE EFFECTS, NOT WONDER DRUGS. “Although the effects
of vaccines have been grossly understudied, some recent investigations show that certain vaccinations
may actually be making children sicker.” So notes Jonathan V. Wright, M.D., in an article about evidence
that autism and other illnesses are caused by the DPT and MMR vaccinations, and the investigations of
Harold E. Buttram, M.D., into those and other controversies surrounding vaccinations. Wright: “It's true
that there may be situations, especially in the medical world, in which extreme measures may be justified,
as the lesser of two evils, to preserve life and health. Yes, because of vaccines, polio...and smallpox may
have been eliminated worldwide. However, vaccine proponents would have us believe that vaccines are
wonder drugs and have been largely responsible for controlling virtually all of the epidemics of killer
diseases in the U.S. With the exceptions above, the facts do not show this to be the case.

“According to the records of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., from 1911 to 1935 the four leading
causes of childhood deaths from infectious diseases in the U.S. were diphtheria, pertussis (whooping
cough), scarlet fever, and measles. However, by 1945 the combined death rates from these causes had
declined by 95 percent. This [decline happened] before the implementation of mass immunization
programs. The greatest factors in this decline were not vaccines but better sanitation, improved nutrition,
better housing with less crowded conditions, antibiotics, and the weakening of these diseases through
passage of time and serial passages through human hosts.

“I won't deny that many lives have been saved due to the implementation of vaccinations, but society
shouldn't turn its back on their possible negative side effects just because of historical ideas. It seems that
people have blindly accepted [vaccinations] without much question...or safety testing....” (Nutrition &
Healing News, V. 7, No. 9, 819 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21201.)

GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS WHO OWN DRUG STOCK. As far as reform of Medicare, healthcare
and costs of drugs go in the coming congress and administration of the U.S. government, here is partial
list of individuals and families to watch regarding legislation (and listed are approximate amounts of dollars
held in shares of pharmaceutical company stocks): The George W. Bush family ($62,000-$234,000);
Dick Cheney ($150,000-$350,000); Hadassa Lieberman ($15,000-$50,000); Rep. Robin Hayes (over $11
million as of 12-31-99); Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (ranking Republican on a judiciary subcommittee “that
often reviews patent legislation that can deliver windfalls to name-brand drug companies,” $2.2
million-$7.1 million in five drug companies); Teresa Kerry, wife of Sen. John Kerry ($2.1 million-$4.2
million in eight drug companies). It should be noted that George W. Bush put all his stock into a blind
trust before the election and Dick Cheney, “on leave” during the presidential campaign as a director of
Proctor & Gamble, planned to do the same if elected and to relinquish 11,000 options in P&G stock. The
Bush senior healthcare advisor, Gail Wilensky, held $10.5 million in shares and stock options in
healthcare companies. McClatchy Newspapers Washington Bureau reviewed 180 congressmen's latest
financial disclosure statements and found that 36 members or their families owned drug company stocks.
(International Council for Health Freedom Newsletter, Winter 2001, Vol. IV., No. 4, page 49;
1-619-702-1282.)

FDA DRUGS, SAFE? President Clinton once urged the FDA to view the drug industry as their “partners,
not adversaries.” Right. Now the cost of this permissive attitude is becoming clear. Seven drugs approved
since 1993 have been withdrawn from the market after reports of over 1,000 deaths, according to the Los
Angeles Times. The FDA disregarded danger signs and blunt warnings from its own specialists. In cancer,
dangerous drugs are routinely approved under the perception that they save lives. However, anticancer
drugs only need to show that they shrink tumors, not that they actually increase survival. We must learn
to ask hard questions about the safety of all proposed cancer treatments. —Ralph Moss, Ph.D., leading
cancer expert in conventional and complementary alternative cancer treatments, in Townsend Letter for
Doctors and Patients, May, 2001 (p. 63, 911 Tyler St., Port Townsend, WA 98368, www.tldp.com).

IMMUNIZATION DANGERS. Joseph Mercola, M.D., writing in the American Association of Physicians
and Surgeons journal Medical Sentinel: “Immunizations contribute to the enormous and tragic increase in
autism in this country, and it is time physicians take a stand on this issue and defend the patient's right to
choose.”

Currently there are only nineteen states in the U.S. that allow a philosophical exemption to immunizations.
All but two, West Virginia and Mississippi, allow a religious exemption.

“It seems imperative,” states Mercola, “that the first step for physicians who have not carefully studied
this issue is to become informed.” To that end, Mercola publishes a weekly newsletter that is free to
subscribers at http://www.mercola.com. Focus is on the mandates from government and pharmaceutical
company alignments that impose vaccines upon citizens. There are over 5,000 pages of articles for review
to help physicians “get up to speed.” (Medical Sentinel, V. 6, No. 1, Spring, 2001: hfaria@
mindspring.com. P.O. Box 13648, Macon, GA 31208-3648.)

ARTICLE BY GREG PALAST, a journalist for the Observer in London and the Guardian, quotes Nobel
prize winning economist Joe Stiglitz, a former world bank official, and secret documents from inside the
IMF in this article. Here's a sample:

Stiglitz is particularly emotional over the WTO’s intellectual property rights treaty (it goes by the acronym
TRIPS, more on that in the next chapters). It is here, says the economist, that the new global order has
"condemned people to death" by imposing impossible tariffs and tributes to pay to pharmaceutical
companies for branded medicines. "They don’t care," said the professor of the corporations and bank
loans he worked with, "if people live or die." (From www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=78&row=1)

LANCET QUESTIONS FDA INTEGRITY, CLAIMING DRUG INDUSTRY INFLUENCE. Patients
taking a controversial new drug for irritable bowel syndrome may have died because the US Food and
Drug Administration has become the “servant of the drug industry,” claimed the Editor of The Lancet, the
prestigious British medical Journal. (www.
medstudents.medscape.com/38029.rhtml?srcmp=meds-051801)

SAME OLD PRESCRIPTIONS? “You know how physicians in the U.S. are trained: they're taught to
fight every illness and medical condition with a prescription drug. What you may not realize is that most
doctors get their education about new drugs from the drug companies. Maybe you've seen the attractive
young men and women in expensive suits who hang out in your doctor's office. What are they there for?
They're constantly feeding your physician company literature that highlights the drugs' benefits and
obscures the drugs' side effects.

“The drug companies are brilliant—they make their fact sheets a lot easier to read than the New England
Journal of Medicine! Why should doctors bother reading the actual medical journals? Even if physicians
do read the journals, they probably don't realize that many of the studies were paid for by the drug
companies and the articles were written by researchers directly or indirectly being paid by the big
pharmaceutical companies.

“And those well-dressed men and women you see in the waiting room are giving your physician a carton
full of free drug samples, which the doctors pass on to us, the patients, in order to seem generous.
Doctors love to receive and give out free samples.

“The drug companies are taking your doctor out to lunch at four-star restaurants and sending him or her
to expensive resorts for `professional seminars.' On what subject? The newest drugs, of course!” —John
R. Lee, M.D., in his Medical Letter, advising readers about natural solutions to health challenges.
Medical Letter, PO Box 84900, Phoenix, AZ 85071, 1-800-528-0559.

PHYSICIANS CALL FOR VACCINE MORATORIUM. A leading national physician organization is
calling for a moratorium on all government mandated vaccines and has passed a resolution to that end at
their annual meeting. Members of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) voted
this week at their 57th Annual Meeting in St. Louis to pass a resolution calling for an end to mandatory
childhood vaccines. The resolution passed without a single “no” vote. (The resolution and mandatory
vaccine fact sheet are posted at www.aapsonline.org.)

“Our children face the possibility of death or serious long-term adverse effects from mandated vaccines
that aren't necessary or that have very limited benefits,” said Jane M. Orient, M.D., AAPS Executive
Director. “This is not a vote against vaccines,” said Dr. Orient. “This resolution only attempts to halt
blanket vaccine mandates by government agencies and school districts that give no consideration for the
rights of the parents or the individual medical condition of the child.”

Forty-two states have mandatory vaccine policies, and many children are required to have 22 shots before
first grade. On top of that, as a condition for school attendance, many school districts require vaccination
for diseases such as hepatitis B—primarily an adult disease, usually spread by multiple sex partners, drug
abuse or an occupation with exposure to blood. And yet, children under the age of 14 are three times
more likely to suffer adverse effects— including death—following the hepatitis B vaccine than to catch
the disease itself.

Source: www.rense.com. For more information, contact AAPS: 1601 N. Tucson Blvd. Suite 9, Tucson,
AZ 85716; 1-800-635-1196; hotline: 1-800-419-4777; www.aapsonline.org.

FDA PROTECTS...? “The manufacturers didn't know [what it would do] when they started selling
[protease inhibitors]. The FDA didn't require them to show it would cure AIDS and not kill the patient
anymore than they required them to show that about AZT [a formerly shelved chemotherapy drug]. They
only required that a surrogate goal be met...[namely,] something we [scientists] think may be related to
the disease in question that may be improved by the drug.... The surrogate goal [construct] is an
indication that our FDA no longer serves our needs. Or at least it does not serve our needs unless we own
stock in the pharmaceutical industry and don't [care] about health care.” (Kary Mullis, Ph.D., Nobel
Prize-Winner, Chemistry, from Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, 1998, Pantheon Books, Random
House, p. 184.)

VACCINE MANDATES. “Although we recognize that vaccines, in the past, have prevented many
serious illnesses, it is simply a fact that every insurance policy has a premium. Every medical intervention
carries both risks and potential benefits. The risk:benefit calculation is different for each individual patient,
and can only be made by the patient (or the patient's guardian) in consultation with the attending
physician.”

“It is the right of every patient to refuse a medical intervention, even if recommended by the attending
physician, and it is the duty of the physician to advise according to his or her own best judgment.
Informed consent is a prerequisite for ethical medical treatment (or for research), as is internationally
recognized in the Nuremberg Code....”

The above excerpts are from a letter that was sent by the American Association of Physicians and
Surgeons (AAPS) to Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala in July. The AAPS also wrote
to Harold Margolis, M.D., Chief, Hepatitis Branch, Centers for Disease Control (CDC), requesting details
concerning the initial safety testing in children and ongoing studies on possible neurological and other
complications of hepatitis B vaccine.

Reason: Methods used to implement universal hepatitis B vaccine in newborns are questionable. Burton
Waisbren, M.D., states that vigorous peer review may have been circumvented by publishing of “invited”
articles from drug company-sponsored seminars in journal supplements. He also notes that CDC officials
make personal visits to state boards of health.

One potential method of persuasion is to tie federal welfare funding to immunization compliance.

All Kids Count, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation project set up to establish immunization registries in
every state, conceivably might play a role. The program emphasizes enrolling newborns, and hepatitis B is
the only vaccine administered to newborns. “People really are seeing [registries] as the way to
institutionalize immunizing our real young kids,” stated William Watkins, executive director of the
Decatur-based All Kids Count organization.

The AAPS testimony has sparked numerous inquiries (including many by newspapers and radio stations
in Connecticut, and school district officials in Philadelphia). And policy is beginning to change. All but two
of Connecticut's birthing hospitals have suspended routine hepatitis B vaccines. A Virginia parent (who
was notified of the vaccines his child received only after the fact) told AAPS that his state has also
suspended hepatitis B vaccines in newborns of uninfected mothers. In a surprise statement by the
Surgeon General—almost as a footnote in a larger announcement on halting the use of thimerosal as a
vaccine preservative—federal policy now deems the vaccine appropriate at birth only if the mother is
infected or of unknown status. “Federal officials did not acknowledge that recent criticism from Congress,
parents, and doctors played any role in the policy change,” wrote John Hanchette of Gannett News
Service.

See www.house.gov/refor/hearings for testimony from the Aug. 3 hearing before the House Committee
on Government Reform and Oversight, and www.aapsonline.org for the AAPS written statement
distributed at the hearing. (AAPS News, 9/99, 1601 N. Tucson Blvd., Ste. 9, Tucson, AZ 85716.)

PHYSICIANS CONCERN about vaccinations. In a recent study almost one-third of physicians fear there
is a risk of serious adverse reaction to the pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine, and 13 percent thought the
same about the measles vaccine. Many are concerned about litigation from parents. Many said they were
unlikely to recommend a third dose of the DTP (diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis) vaccine. Findings were
based on a survey of 1,236 doctors in the U.S.” (Arch Ped & Adolesc Med, 1998; 152: 12-19.) For
up-to-date information subscribe to the Vaccine News, 251 W Ridgeway Dr., Dayton, OH 45459,
937-435-4750.

UNSAFE DRUGS APPROVED. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) removed three approved
drugs from the market in 1998—more than in any other year. Redux caused heart valve defects; Posicor,
serious drug interactions and fatal heart problems; and Duract, sometimes-fatal liver damage. Why were
these drugs ever approved? According to Public Citizen's Health Research Group, Congress—on the
behalf of sponsors in the drug industry—has been systematically weakening the U.S. drug approval
process. In 1992 Congress passed the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA), authorizing drug
companies to pay user fees to the FDA for the hiring of additional medical officers to review new drugs.
Then, in 1997, the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act (FDAMA) expanded the use of
“accelerated approval” mechanisms for drugs for life-threatening conditions, included mechanisms for
speeding FDA review, and allowed new drugs to be approved on the basis of one clinical trial, instead of
two. In September, 1998, Peter Lurie, M.D., and Sidney M. Wolfe, M.D., of Public Citizen's Health
Research Group surveyed the FDA's medical officers to find out what was going on inside the agency.
Among their findings: Of the 53 medical officers who responded, 19 mentioned 27 drugs that were
approved in the past three years over the opposition of the reviewing medical officer. Eight reported 14
instances in which they had been instructed not to present their own opinions or data to an FDA Advisory
Committee because to do so would have reduced the likelihood that a drug would have been approved.
Thirty-four medical officers stated that the pressure on them to approve new drugs was “somewhat
greater” or “much greater” than before 1995. One medical officer reported, “In the last two years, I
recommended that two drugs not be approved. They were both approved without consulting me. This
never happened before. In one case, the drug did not meet the standards set up by the division, so they
modified the standards.” Lurie and Wolfe concluded that “changes in FDA review and approval policies
... appear to have led to a significant decline in the safety and efficacy standards for new drugs.” They
also stated that new drugs have a greater likelihood of approval because of “inappropriate pressure from
Congress, the drug companies, and senior FDA employees.” (Washington Post 12/30/98, and Public
Citizen's Health Research Group, www.citizen.org.)