Scandals:   Warning:  Vaccine Sacred Cows May Endanger Your Health

Scandals - 10/31/04

Warning:  Vaccine Sacred Cows May Endanger Your Health

by Sandy Gottstein Mintz

A sacred cow is defined as: "One that is immune from criticism, often unreasonably so".  A criticism leveled at vaccinations is that they have, indeed, become a sacred cow. 

Evidence that vaccines are considered "sacred" abounds.  I have written in the past about how the mainstream media's treatment of safety issues pertaining to them are treated superficially at best, and ignored at worst.  Many, including Dr. Sherri Tenpenny and Dr. Randall Neustaedter,  have asserted that vaccines have become a "sacred cow".  Nurse Patti White powerfully argued in her testimony to Congress that the hepatitis B vaccine has become one.

Taken against the background of ongoing news about how the drug companies and the FDA appear to have ignored safety issues regarding prescription drugs (e.g., 1, 2), this special protection afforded vaccines is particularly troubling. There is simply no reason to assume that vaccines are singularly exempt from such failings.

To the contrary, the vaccination issue is not being examined with even the nominal amount of scrutiny being applied to other health issues.   Just how much grim evidence is it going to take for us to realize this?  When will we face the fact that the ever-increasing number of vaccines we seem to clamor for are evaluated by the same tainted system that keeps "bad news" about reactions from reaching our ears and allows unsafe drugs to be cavalierly approved and promoted? 

It is time to realize that treating vaccines as a "sacred cow" may be endangering our health.

Compounding the problem is the fact that even someone in a position of power, like Congressman Dave Weldon. M.D., has thus far been rendered powerless about the apparent CDC cover-up of a connection between thimerosal and autism.  If he can't do anything, what can we do?

Well, we can do plenty.  We can first stop believing everything that comes out of the mouths of so-called experts.  For instance, just recently, the considerable number of deaths admitted to be associated with Prevnar, the vaccine for pneumonia, has been written off as unrelated to the vaccine.  This is in spite of the fact that it has also been admitted that not enough is really known.  We do not have to buy into these unfounded assurances.

We can also recognize that, for whatever reasons, our doctors cannot be relied on to protect us.

Vaccines are given to healthy kids in order to prevent an unpredictable event.  Because an unvaccinated child may or may not get a  "vaccine-preventable" disease, and may or may not suffer long-term consequences even if he or she does get sick, it is absolutely imperative that vaccine benefits far outweigh their risks.  Instead of weighing and reporting all the evidence fairly and objectively, however, the public health imperative has been to try and convince people that vaccine benefits outweigh their risks, regardless of evidence to the contrary.  Public Health may well be sincere in its beliefs about vaccines. But believing and wanting something does not make it true. 

I have written many times about how vaccine studies are flawed, inadequate and tainted by conflict of interest and that any claims that the benefits of vaccines (far) outweigh their risks should be viewed with suspicion.

This is not merely an intellectual exercise.  It has concrete significance for our health.

Our cultural belief that vaccines are good for us, and that we need to force everyone to get them in order to protect the "herd", is a belief that should be challenged.  We need to understand that a "sacred cow" will not protect the herd. 

Those parents who are convinced that one or more of their children have been harmed by vaccines would give almost anything to turn back the clock, to have questioned the safety and necessity of vaccination before blindly allowing it.  We must learn from their tragic experiences.

by Sandy Gottstein Mintz

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." - Wendell Phillips (1811-1884), paraphrasing John Philpot Curran (1808)

Sandy Gottstein Mintz is the publisher of the website "Vaccination News", and writer of  the columns "Scandals" and "Out of Control".  To join her political action egroup or learn more about it, please send an email to sandymintz@touchngo.com, indicating the purpose  of your email in the subject line.

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