Scandals - 02/14/03

Avoidance Of Vaccine Truth But Not Consequences -  Are We "Knee Deep in the Big Muddy"? - Pete Seeger

by Sandy Mintz

Amid the glib reassurances, the unremitting claims that "the benefits of vaccines (far) outweigh their risks", the CDC quietly released some of the results of eleven years of vaccine adverse events reported to VAERS.

During the period covered, over 125,000 adverse reactions to vaccination were reported.

Before anyone rushes to discount the import of these adverse reaction reports, let it be noted that according to the CDC report itself, "Overall, 14.2% of all reports received in VAERS during 1991-2001 described serious adverse events."

This translates to a good (or bad) 18,000 or so serious adverse vaccine-associated reactions.

And what are we to make of these 18,000 or so serious adverse reactions? 

All we really know for sure is that a passive reporting system, which is what VAERS is, receives notice of some fraction of serious drug or vaccine associated events.  And that significant underreporting is taking place.

Shouldn't we know more than that?

Clearly, it is of critical importance that we get a handle on whether or not those 18,000 represent a large or small proportion of actual serious events.  It is also clear, however, that even if there are no more than the 18,000 reported, that's a heck of a lot of serious adverse reactions potentially caused by vaccines.

And while nobody knows how many of these vaccine-associated reactions were, in fact, caused by vaccines, numbers like these are nothing to sneeze at.

But will the "experts" sneeze or investigate?  Will they react with appropriate concern, choosing to thoroughly explore these troubling facts, trying to determine the extent of vaccine causality?  Or will such associations,  with a wave of their omnipresent magic wand, be cavalierly dismissed as coincidental?

If history is any guide, their response will be along the lines of the one the CDC already made in the recent report, when they wrote, in referring to vaccine-associated deaths, that the "IOM concluded that the majority of deaths reported to VAERS are temporally but not causally related to vaccination (20)." 

But how could the Institute of Medicine know that?  Didn't the the IOM once lament that they were "handicapped" by the "many gaps and limitations in knowledge bearing directly and indirectly on the safety of vaccines"?  Haven't other more recent IOM reports corroborated that claim?  How, then, could such a reassuring conclusion justifiably be drawn?

Moreover, since virtually all studies compare vaccinated children to vaccinated children, i.e., have no control group, no one really knows what the incidence of these kinds of  "events" are among never vaccinated children.  Thus, while the experts may like to claim the results of such "studies" prove all vaccines to be equally safe, the cold, hard fact is they may all be equally "unsafe". 

The sad but unavoidable truth is that we don't know for sure how many adverse reactions are occurring.  Why don't we know that?  Shouldn't we know exactly how many children have been harmed by vaccines?  Shouldn't we know exactly how many once healthy children are now either vaccine-injured or dead? Shouldn't we know if it is hundreds or many thousands of children?

Shouldn't the fact that these vaccines are mandated amount to more than a lame excuse for not facing the truth?

If it turns out that autism is related to vaccination, hiding our heads in the sand will have done nothing to prevent the epidemic.  Ignoring an unpleasant reality will merely have served to prolong and perpetuate it.  The same can be said for the many other vaccine reactions reported to VAERS.

Enough with the excuses.  Isn't it time to conduct the kind of studies which will bring us the knowledge we need?

How much death and disability will it take for us to take proper note?  How much death and disability will it take for us to meaningfully care? Or will we stay "knee deep in the Big Muddy and the damn fools keep yelling to push on"?

Sandy Mintz