The Vaccines are Far More Deadly
than the Swine Flu
by Dr. Mae-Wan Ho and Prof. Joe
Cummins
http://globalresearch.ca/, August
21, 2009
The vaccines are far more deadly than
the swine flu. Mass vaccinations is a recipe for disaster Dr.
Mae-Wan Ho and Prof. Joe Cummins
This report has been submitted to Sir Liam Donaldson, Chief Medical
Officer of the UK, and to the US Food and Drugs Administration
A swine flu outbreak occurred in Mexico
and the United States in April 2009 and spread rapidly around
the world by human-to human transmission. The new type A H1N1
influenza virus is unlike any that had been previously isolated
[1, 2], judging from the first data released in May. __It is a
messy combination of sequences from bird, human and swine flu
virus lineages from North America and Eurasia. A senior virologist
based in Canberra, Australia, told the press he thought that the
virus could have been created in a laboratory and released by
accident [3]. Some analysts even suggest, without corroborating
evidence, that it was made intentionally as a bioweapon [4], while
others blame the intensive livestock industry and extensive trafficking
of love animals over long distances, which provide plenty of opportunity
for generating exotic recombinants [5]. __But what worries the
public most is the mass vaccination programmes governments are
putting in place to combat the emerging pandemic, which could
well be worse than the pandemic itself.
Watchdog opposes fast-track vaccine for
school children
The US government is intending to vaccinate
all children in September when school re-opens, and the country's
vaccine watchdog National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) has
called on the Obama Administration and all state Governors to
provide evidence that the move is [6] "necessary and safe",
demanding "strong mechanisms for vaccine safety screening,
recording, monitoring, reporting and vaccine injury compensation."
The US Departments of Health and Homeland
Security had declared a national public health emergency in April
soon after the swine flu outbreak. As a result, some schools were
closed, people quarantined, and drug companies were given contracts
worth $7billon to make vaccines that are being fast tracked by
the Food and Drugs Administration [7]. That means they will only
be tested for a few weeks on several hundred children and adult
volunteers before being given to all school children this fall.
Furthermore, under federal legislation
passed by Congress since 2001, an Emergency Use Authorization
allows drug companies, health officials and anyone administering
experimental vaccines to Americans during a declared public health
emergency to be protected from liability if people get injured.
US Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius has
granted vaccine makers total legal immunity from any lawsuits
that may result from any new swine flu vaccine. And some states
may make the vaccination mandatory by law.
The NVIC is asking whether the states
are prepared to obey vaccine safety provisions in the 1986 National
Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which include: 1. Giving parents
written information about vaccine benefits and risks before children
are vaccinated; 2. Keeping a record of which vaccines the children
get, including the manufacturer's name and lot number; 3. Recording
which vaccines were given in the child's medical record; and 4.
Recording serious health problems that develop after vaccination
in the child's medical record and immediately making a report
to the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.
NVIC also wants to know if the states
are prepared to provide financial compensation to children injured
by the swine flu vaccines, whether parents will be given "complete,
truthful information about swine flu vaccine risks", and
have the right to say "no" to vaccination.
Co-founder and president of NVIC Barbara
Loe Fisher said [6]: "Parents and legislators should be asking
themselves right now: Why are children the first to get experimental
swine flu vaccines? Are schools equipped to get signed informed
consent from parents before vaccination, keep accurate vaccination
records and screen out children biologically at high risk for
suffering vaccine reactions? Will people giving these vaccines
know how to monitor children afterwards and immediately record,
report and treat serious health problems that develop? And will
states have the financial resources to compensate children who
are injured?"
WHO and mass vaccination fever__The mass
vaccination order has come from the World Health Organization
(WHO) [8]. In early July 2009, a group of vaccination experts
concluded that the pandemic is unstoppable, and Marie-Paul Kieny,
WHO director on vaccine research said all nations will need access
to vaccines, and that a vaccine should be available as early as
September.
Critics point out that the 'vaccination
experts' are dominated by the vaccine makers standing to gain
from the enormously lucrative vaccine and antiviral contracts
awarded by governments. But the decisive argument against mass
vaccinations is that flu shots simply don't work and are dangerous
[9].__Flu shots ineffective and increase risks of asthma__There
are widely acknowledged reasons why flu vaccines won't work, as
already pointed out with regard to the much touted vaccines against
the 'pandemic bird flu' that has yet to materialize [10] (How
to Stop Bird Flu Instead, SiS 35). The flu virus changes quickly
- even without the help of genetic engineering in the laboratory,
and especially with the help of the intensive livestock industry
- whereas the vaccines target specific strains. Furthermore, flu
vaccination does not give permanent protection, and must be repeated
annually; the vaccines are difficult to mass-produce, and some
strains won't grow at all under laboratory conditions.
Numerous studies have documented that
flu shots give little or no protection against infection and illness,
and there is no reason to believe that swine flu vaccines will
be different.
A review of 51 separate studies involving
more than 294 000 children found that in children aged from two
years, nasal spray vaccines made from weakened influenza viruses
and injected vaccines made from the killed virus prevented 82
and 59 percent of illnesses. The prevention of 'flu-like illness'
caused by other types of viruses was only 33 and 36 percent respectively.
In children under the age of two, the efficacy of inactivated
vaccine was similar to placebo. It was not possible to analyse
the safety of vaccines from the studies due to the lack of information,
and lack of standardization on the little information available
[11]. A report published in 2008 found flu vaccines in young children
made no difference in the number of flu-related doctor and hospital
visits [12].
On the other hand, a study of 800 children
with asthma found that those receiving a flu vaccine had a significantly
increased risk of asthma-related doctor and emergency room visits
[13]; the odds ratios were 3.4 and 1.9 respectively. This was
confirmed in a report published in 2009, which showed children
with asthma who received FluMist had a 3-fold increased risk of
hospitalization [14]
Flu vaccines are equally useless for adults,
including the elderly, giving little or no protection against
infection or illnesses including pneumonia (see [9]).
Toxic adjuvants in flu vaccines
Vaccines themselves can be dangerous,
especially live, attenuated viral vaccines or the new recombinant
nucleic acid vaccines [10], they have the potential to generate
virulent viruses by recombination and the recombinant nucleic
acids could cause autoimmune diseases.
A further major source of toxicity in
the case of the flu vaccines are the adjuvants, substances added
in order to boost the immunogenicity of the vaccines. There is
a large literature on the toxicities of adjuvants. Most flu vaccines
contain dangerous levels of mercury in the form of thimerosal,
a deadly preservative 50 times more toxic than mercury itself
[9]. At high enough doses, it can cause long-term immune, sensory,
neurological, motor, and behavioural dysfunctions. Also associated
with mercury poisoning are autism, attention deficit disorder,
multiple sclerosis, and speech and language deficiencies. The
Institute of Medicine has warned that infants, children, and pregnant
women should not be injected with thimerosal, yet the majority
of flu shots contain 25 micrograms of it.
Another common adjuvant is alum or aluminium
hydroxide, which can cause vaccine allergy, anaphylaxis, and macrophage
myofascitis, a chronic inflammation syndrome, In cats, alum also
gives rise to fibrosarcomas at the site of injection [15]. Numerous
new adjuvants are no better, and could be worse. According to
a recent review in a science and business pharmaceutical publication
[15], most newer adjuvants including MF59, ISCOMS, QS21, AS02,
and AS04 have "substantially higher local reactogenicity
and systemic toxicity than alum."
Current status of swine flu vaccines
Five different companies have been contracted
to produce vaccines worldwide: Baxter International, GlaxoSmithKline,
Novartis and Sanofi-Aventis and AstroZeneca [16]. Already stretched
beyond capacity, there is every intention to make smaller vaccine
doses go further with a range of new adjuvants [17], with the
blessing of the WHO (see later).
Flu vaccines are traditionally produced
from non-virulent (attenuated or weakened) influenza viruses (see
Box for a description of the viruses). To be effective, the genes
of the non- virulent virus used must match those of the viral
strain spreading in the population. Activation of the immune system
by exposure to the non pathogenic form of the circulating pathogenic
strain leads to the production of antibodies that will confer
protection against the pathogenic strain. Producing the non-virulent
virus involves first identifying and then recreating the subtypes
of two of the virus's surface proteins, haemagglutinin (H) and
neuraminidase (N), which determine the strain's virulence and
ability to spread, and are also the target proteins for vaccine
production.
Influenza viruses
There are 3 types of influenza viruses,
A, B and C. The influenza A type virus is the main one that cause
diseases in birds and mammals. Its genome consists of 8 segments
of RNA coding for 11 proteins, and the viruses are further classified
by subtype on the basis of the two main surface glycoproteins
(proteins with complex carbohydrate side chains): haemagglutinin
(H) and neuraminidase (N) [18]. The segmented genome enables the
virus to' reassort' (shuffle) segments as well as recombine within
segments, thereby greatly increasing the rate of evolution and
generation of new strains. Reassortment is also widely exploited
in the laboratory in the process of creating vaccine strains.
To-date, 16 H and 9 N subtypes have been detected in numerous
combinations circulating in wild birds [19].
Seed viruses are first made to provide
the starting material for large scale production of live non-virulent
flu viruses. The seed viruses are approved by the WHO or the United
States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA). The usual method
of seed virus production is reassortment (see Box). Fertilized
chicken eggs are injected with both a standard non-pathogenic
influenza strain known to grow well in eggs and the strain that
carries the genes expressing the desired vaccine H and N protein
subtypes. The two viruses multiply, and their eight genome segments
reassort with 256 possible combinations. The resulting recombinant
viruses are then screened for the desired virus with the six genome
segments that allow the standard strain to grow so well in eggs
and the H and N genes from the circulating strain. The seed virus
is then injected into millions of eggs for mass production of
vaccine. This conventional method of seed stock production takes
about one to two months to complete [20].
Cell culture systems may eventually replace
chicken eggs. Baxter International applied for a patent on a process
using cell culture to produce quantities of infecting virus, which
are harvested, inactivated with formaldehyde and ultraviolet light,
and then detergent [21]. Baxter has produced H5N1 whole virus
vaccines in a Vero cell line derived from the kidney of an African
green monkey, and conducted phase 1 and 2 clinical trials with
and without aluminium hydroxide as adjuvant [22, 23]. The main
finding was that the toxic adjuvant did not increase neutralising
antibodies against the vaccine strain. Baxter has agreed to ship
H1N1 vaccine by the end of July or early August 2009 but details
of the production of that vaccine have not yet been released to
the public [16].
In December, a Baxter facility in Austria
sent a human flu vaccine contaminated with the deadly H5N1 live
avian flu virus to 18 countries, including the Czech Republic,
where testing showed it killed the ferrets inoculated [24]. Czech
newspapers questioned whether Baxter was involved in a deliberate
attempt to start a pandemic.
Norvatis, another big pharma, announced
on 13 June that it, too, has produced a swine flu vaccine using
cell-based technology and the proprietary adjuvant MF59®.
The MF59® adjuvant is oil based and contains Tween80, Span85,
and squalene [25]. In studies of oil-based adjuvants in rats,
the animals were rendered crippled and paralyzed. Squalene brought
on severe arthritis symptoms in rats, and studies in humans given
from 10 to 20 ppb (parts per billion) of squalene showed severe
immune system impact and development of autoimmune disorders [26].
Novartis was in the news in 2008 for a
clinical trial of a H5N1 vaccine in Poland. The trial was administered
by local nurses and doctors who gave the vaccine to 350 homeless
people, leaving 21 died; and were prosecuted by the Polish police
[27, 28]. Novartis claimed the deaths were unrelated to the H5N1
vaccine [29], which had been "tested on 3500 other people
without any deaths."
GlaxoSmithKline's vaccine will be made
up of antigens of the recently isolated influenza strain, and
also contains its own proprietary adjuvant system AS03 that has
been approved in the EU along with its H5N1 bird flu vaccine in
2008. According to the European Public Assessment Report [30],
AS03 adjuvant is composed of squalene (10.68 milligrams), DL-_-tocopherol
(11.86 milligrams) and polysorbate 80 (4.85 milligrams). The H5N1
vaccine also contains 5 micrograms thiomersal, as well as Polysorbate
80, Octoxynol 10, and various inorganic salts. The company is
aggressively promoting various adjuvant systems as its 'adjuvant
advantage' that reduces the dose of vaccines [31].
A recent WHO survey of primary vaccine
producers concluded that the potential output of 4.9 Billion doses
of H1N1 vaccine per year is a best-case scenario, assuming among
other factors that the most dose-sparing formulation (that will
include toxic adjuvants) be selected by each manufacturer and
that production will take place at full capacity. WHO Director-General,
Dr .Margaret Chan, and the United Nations Secretary-General, Mr
Ban Ki-moon, met with senior officials of vaccine manufacturers
on 19 May and asked them to reserve part of their production capacity
for poor countries that would otherwise have no or little access
to vaccine in the case of a pandemic [32].
The last mass-vaccination in the US was
a disaster. In 1976, cases of swine flu were found in soldiers
at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and one of them died, most likely of
physical overexertion rather than from the infection [7]. This
led to the launch of a mass vaccination of 40 million against
a pandemic that never materialized. Thousands filed claims for
injury. At least 25 died and 500 developed paralyzing Guillain-Barre
syndrome [33, 34].
Swine flu syndromes mostly mild
As of 22 July 2009, the CDC listed a total
of 40 617 cases in the US, with 319 fatalities, giving a fatalites/case
ratio of 0.8 percent [35]; though the real death rate - among
all cases of infection including the mild ones that go unreported
- is probably much lower. Experts estimate that only 1 out of
20 cases are reported [36].
The UK is the worst affected European
country, and the pandemic is in the headlines everyday in July.
A new telephone helpline was set up on 23 July to let people get
advice and tamiflu without seeing a doctor. In that week, there
has been a record rise in cases to 100 000 and a total of 30 deaths
so far [37], giving a fatalities/case ratio of 0.03 percent, a
more accurate reflection of the actual death rate.
UK's chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson
has ordered the NHS to plan for as many as 65 000 deaths, with
350 a day at the peak [38]. There has been no plan as yet for
mass vaccination; but the UK government has advance orders for
195 million doses of vaccine with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).
The vaccine that GSK is developing will
be tested on a limited number of people as the UK drug company
reportedly [39] "weighs the pandemic danger against the risks
of an unsafe shot." This was criticized as "risky"
by Prof. Hugh Pennington, a retired microbiologist at the University
of Aberdeen, Scotland. "By limiting clinical trials, Glaxo
raises the danger that the vaccine dose isn't properly calibrated,
and could lead to shots that don't protect people from the virus
or at worse are unsafe," Pennington said.
Pennington added that the shot's ability
to trigger the body's defences is crucial and requires tests to
determine the best dose and whether an adjuvant is needed to bolster
the immunity. (As we know, GSK is definitely promoting its new
range of toxic adjuvants.) He also referred to the Fort Dix incident
in 1976 (see earlier).
France has ordered vaccines from Sanofi,
GSK and Novartis, but sees no reason to ask vaccine makers to
shorten or skip clinical trials [16]. Sanofi-Aventis, the French
drug maker developing its own swine flu vaccine will begin testing
the product in early August, and estimates it will need as much
as two and a half months of tests before having a shot that's
"both safe and protective", according to Albert Garcia,
speaking for the company's vaccine unit, "the vaccine will
be ready in November or December, he said.
Baxter, however, will produce a vaccine
by early August for clinical tests.
Glaxo also said it is developing a face
mask coated with antivirals to prevent infection and boosting
production of its Relenza drug for patients already suffering
from swine flu.
There are obviously safer and more effective
ways to combat the pandemic than mass vaccinations: washing hands
often, sneezing into a tissue that can be safely disposed of,
avoiding unnecessary gatherings, and delay opening schools - all
advised by governments - and we would add, eating healthily, exercise,
and getting enough vitamin D to boost your natural immunity [10].
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