Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Fort Detrick Lab Shut Down After Failed Safety Inspection; All Research Halted Indefinitely

https://www.fredericknewspost.com/news/health/fort-detrick-lab-shut-down-after-failed-safety-inspection-all/article_

Fort Detrick lab shut down after failed safety inspection; all research halted indefinitely

By Heather Mongilio hmongilio@newspost.com

Updated

USAMRIID
The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick.  News-Post file photo

All research at a Fort Detrick laboratory that handles high-level disease-causing material, such as Ebola, is on hold indefinitely after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found the organization failed to meet biosafety standards.

No infectious pathogens, or disease-causing material, have been found outside authorized areas at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

The CDC inspected the military research institute in June and inspectors found several areas of concern in standard operating procedures, which are in place to protect workers in biosafety level 3 and 4 laboratories, spokeswoman Caree Vander Linden confirmed in an email Friday.

The CDC sent a cease and desist order in July.

After USAMRIID received the order from the CDC, its registration with the Federal Select Agent Program, which oversees disease-causing material use and possession, was suspended. That suspension effectively halted all biological select agents and toxin research at USAMRIID, Vander Linden said in her email.

The Federal Select Agent Program does not comment on whether a program such as USAMRIID is registered and cannot comment on action taken to enforce regulations, Kathryn Harben, a spokeswoman for the CDC, wrote in an email.

“As situations warrant, [Federal Select Agent Program] will take whatever appropriate action is necessary to resolve any departures from regulatory compliance in order to help ensure the safety and security of work with select agents and toxins,” Harben said in the email.

The suspension was due to multiple causes, including failure to follow local procedures and a lack of periodic recertification training for workers in the biocontainment laboratories, according to Vander Linden. The wastewater decontamination system also failed to meet standards set by the Federal Select Agent Program, Vander Linden said in a follow-up email.

“To maximize the safety of our employees, there are multiple layers of protective equipment and validated processes,” she said.

Vander Linden could not say when the laboratory would be able to continue research.

“USAMRIID will return to fully operational status upon meeting benchmark requirements for biosafety,” she said in an email. “We will resume operations when the Army and the CDC are satisfied that USAMRIID can safely and consistently meet all standards.”

USAMRIID has been working on modified biosafety level 3 procedures and a new decontamination system since flooding in May 2018. This “increased the operational complexity of bio-containment laboratory research activities within the Institute,” she said.

At the time of the cease and desist order, USAMRIID scientists were working with agents known to cause tularemia, also called deer fly or rabbit fever, the plague and Venezuelan equine encephalitis, all of which were worked on in a biosafety level 3 laboratory. Researchers were also working with the Ebola virus in a biosafety level 4 lab, Vander Linden said.

Of the pathogens, Ebola, bacteria Yersinia pestis (plague), and bacterium Francisella tularensis (tularemia) are on the list of the Health and Human Services select agents and toxins. The three are considered Tier 1 agents, which pose a severe public health and safety threat.

Venezuelan equine encephalitis also falls under the Federal Select Agent Program, according to the Code of Federal Regulations.

The military research institute is looking at each of its contracts to see what will be affected by the shutdown. USARMIID work outside the lab is not expected to be affected, including on Ebola, Vander Linden said.

“We are coordinating closely with the CDC to ensure that critical, ongoing studies within bio-containment laboratories are completed under appropriate oversight and that research animals will continue to be cared for in accordance with all regulations,” she said in an email. “

Although much of USAMRIID’s research is currently on hold, the Institute will continue its critical clinical diagnostic mission and will still be able to provide medical and subject matter expertise as needed to support the response to an infectious disease threat or other contingency.”

According to the Code of Federal Regulations, which also lists required training, records and biosafety plans, Federal Select Agents Program registration can be suspended to protect public health and safety. It is not clear if this is why the USAMRIID registration was suspended.

The code also gives the Department of Health and Human Services, under which the CDC falls, the right to inspect any site and records, without prior notifications. Vander Linden said in the email that the CDC inspected USAMRIID several times over the past year, both unannounced and on a regularly scheduled basis.

USAMRIID will work to meet requirements set by the Army and the CDC and have its suspension lifted, Vander Linden said.

“While the Institute’s research mission is critical, the safety of the workforce and community is paramount,” she said.

“USAMRIID is taking the opportunity to correct deficiencies, build upon strengths, and create a stronger and safer foundation for the future.”

_______________________

And perhaps do a lot of paper shredding……

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/08/06/kris-newby-responds-to-telfords-criticism-of-bitten/  In this link, investigative journalist Kris Newby explains:

The Army explained:“In 1953, the Biological Warfare Laboratories at Fort Detrick established a program to study the use of arthropods for spreading anti-personnel BW agents. The advantages of arthropods as BW carriers are these: they inject the agent directly into the body, so that a mask is no protection to a soldier, and they will remain alive for some time, keeping an area constantly dangerous.” Source: U.S. Army Chemical Corps, “Summary of Major Events and Problems (Fiscal Year 1959),” Rocky Mountain Arsenal Archive.

Burgdorfer, the discoverer of the Lyme bacterium, was a key member of this project team. He worked on weaponizing ticks and teamed up with fellow tick expert James Oliver at the Ft. Detrick bioweapons headquarters to develop ways to mass produce infected ticks so that they could be dropped from airplanes on enemy territory. These claims are backed up by interviews with these scientists, as well as with extensive government documentation from multiple reliable sources, all listed in BITTEN…

And after my interview, I verified his claims with recently released documents, including a 1962 Memorandum to the NIH Director that says that Dr. Burgdorfer, “was engaged for 3 years on classified projects (Army) from which findings could not be published because of their impact on national defense.”

The institute, which has about 900 employees, studies germs and toxins that could be used to threaten the military or public health. It also investigates disease outbreaks and carries out research projects for government agencies, universities and drug companies, which pay for the work.  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/08/13/deadly-germ-research-is-shut-down-at-army-lab-over-safety-concerns/

Excerpt:

The select agents and toxins list is found here. According to the NBACC website, the facility conducts research on pathogens for which there is no vaccine or treatment.  https://www.selectagents.gov/SelectAgentsandToxinsList.html

INTERESTINGLY, THE FOLLOWING FROM THE LIST ARE TRANSMITTED BY TICKS:

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/07/31/tick-expert-admits-to-working-on-ticks-dropping-them-out-of-airplanes/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/08/04/lyme-disease-amendment-passes-house-tells-dod-ig-to-investigate-the-bioweaponization-of-ticks/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/07/19/biological-warfare-experiment-on-american-citizens-results-in-spreading-pandemic/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/07/21/got-15-minutes-the-officially-ignored-link-between-lyme-plum-island/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/05/24/microbiology-professor-im-convinced-lyme-disease-is-transmittable-from-person-to-person/

Category:

Activism, Uncategorized

Fully Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated – A Summary of the Research

http://vaccineimpact.com/2019/fully-vaccinated-vs-unvaccinated-a-summary-of-the-research/

Fully Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated — A Summary of the Research

07-18-19-Vax-Unvax-Full-Presentation-Featured-Image

By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Chairman
Children’s Health Defense

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has repeatedly asked CDC to create studies which explain,

“How do child health outcomes compare between fully vaccinated and unvaccinated children?”

During a November 2012 Congressional hearing on autism before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Dr. Coleen Boyle, the Director of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, gave evasive answers to lawmakers pressing her on this point. After considerable badgering, she finally stated,

“We have not studied vaccinated versus unvaccinated [children].”

That was perjury.

Boyle knew that CDC had commissioned an in-house researcher, Thomas Verstraeten to perform vaccinated/unvaccinated study on CDC’s giant Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) in 1999 (I summarize Verstraeten’s secret findings on slide 2).

Verstraeten found a dramatic link between mercury-containing hepatitis B vaccines and several neurological injuries including autism and prepared the study for publication. CDC shared Verstraeten’s analysis with the then four vaccine makers but kept it secret from the American public.

The data in CDC’s 1999 Verstraeten study clearly inculpated thimerosal as the principle culprit behind the autism epidemic.

Burying the results

The world’s largest vaccine maker GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) then whisked Verstraeten off to a sinecure in Brussels and CDC handed his raw data to his CDC boss Frank DeStefano and another researcher, Robert Davis who served as a vaccine industry consultant.

Those two men tortured the data for 4 years, removing all unvaccinated children, to bury the autism signal before publishing a sanitized version purporting to exculpate the vaccine. The CDC then cut off public access to the VSD and to this day aggressively blocks any attempts by researchers to study health outcomes in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated populations.

Contemporary emails among CDC officials— obtained under the FOIA— and the transcripts from a secret 2000 meeting between government regulators and vaccine makers at Simpsonwood, Georgia, show HHS officials plotting to create phony studies to exonerate vaccines.

CDC officials hired a Scandanavian, Poul Thorsen, giving him $10 million to create a series of fraudulent reports from Denmark. Thorsen dutifully produced the predetermined results but allegedly stole at least $1 million of the grant from CDC.

He is now an international fugitive under Federal indictment and on HHS’s “Most Wanted” list (scroll down to see Thorsen). CDC continues to cite Thorsen’s studies as the bedrock for its claim that vaccines don’t cause autism.

Attempting to debunk the link

CDC officials Frank DeStefano and Coleen Boyle knew they needed to study an American population to convincingly debunk the vaccine/ autism link.

They believed it would be safe to study the MMR vaccine because the MMR did not contain thimerosal. They assigned senior scientist and CDC whistleblower, Dr. William Thompson, and three other researchers from the Immunization Safety Office to study the MMR vaccine in Georgia children.

Thompson worried about being dragged into another “circus” like the Verstraeten study. His bosses promised Thompson that this time there would be no mid-course shenanigans to bury unpleasant data. They would agree on protocols up front and stick to them no matter what the data revealed.

Nevertheless, when the data showed a shocking 364% increase in autism among African American boys given the MMR on time, Destefano ordered the four CDC scientists to destroy the damning information in large garbage cans. “I can’t believe we did what we did, but we did it”, recalls Thompson. That sanitized study is now cited in 97 subsequent publications as the proof that vaccines don’t cause autism.

“I have great shame now when I meet the parent of a child with autism because I have been part of the problem.”

Slide 12 shows the true results of Dr. Thompson’s original data.

Despite CDC’s efforts at suppression, independent scientists and research institutions (including UCLA) have managed to conduct and publish several additional vaccinated/unvaccinated studies since 1999. Those studies indicate high incidence of chronic diseases and brain and immune system injuries among vaccinated compared to unvaccinated cohorts. Some of those studies are summarize in this presentation.

See the 24 slides of the Vaxxed-Unvaxxed presentation.

Read the full article at ChildrensHealthDefense.org.

© 2019 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support them in their efforts.

____________________

For more:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/05/18/first-peer-reviewed-study-of-vaccinated-vs-unvaccinated-children/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/03/02/mic-drop-at-the-acip-cdc-meeting-vaccine-science-not-settled/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/09/08/acip-vote-yes-for-new-vaccine-despite-no-safety-studies-on-cumulative-effect-with-other-vaccines/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/10/08/vaccine-safety-efficacy-studies-that-are-the-bases-for-marketing-authorizations-are-a-complete-methodological-mess/

The elites refuse vaccines for their own children:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/01/22/bill-gates-former-doctor-says-billionaire-refused-to-vaccinate-his-children/

 

 

 

 

 

Category:

Uncategorized

Man Thought He Would Die After Symptoms of Lyme Disease Were Mistaken For a Stroke

https://metro.co.uk/2019/07/31/man-thought-die-symptoms-lyme-disease-mistaken-stroke-10495446/

Man thought he would die after symptoms of Lyme disease were mistaken for a stroke

Zoe Drewett, 31 Jul 2019

image-49-bbc9Andrew McGuinness was told he had multiple sclerosis and told he had two strokes before his diagnosis for Lyme disease (Picture: supplied/Getty)

An author suffered in agony until he experienced suicidal thoughts because his Lyme disease was misdiagnosed for two years.

Andrew McGuinness, 52, was wrongly told he had multiple sclerosis, a brain tumour and even that he had suffered two strokes.

In reality, he had been bitten by a tick and become infected with Lyme disease.

It would be two painful years before he found out.

The author, of Whitstable, Kent, said: ‘Often people with Lyme disease are misdiagnosed because many of the symptoms are the same as that of a cold or flu.

‘My misdiagnosis was pretty life-changing. The entire time, nobody knew what it was.’

Andrew lost his ability to read and write and was forced to give up his job as a lecturer at Kent university as the bacterial infection took hold of his body.

IMG_3701-d4bd-e1564585877548Andrew said the lack of awareness around Lyme disease and a resistance to investigate it for him left him feeling angry and frustrated (Picture: supplied)

There was so little awareness of Lyme disease even among medical professionals that eventually, Andrew diagnosed himself after online research.

In 2010, Andrew noticed a strange rash that was initially diagnosed as cellulitis, a skin condition, contracted from an insect bite.

A few weeks later, he began developing other symptoms that he put down to being under the weather, or suffering from the flu.

But instead of lasting a few days, the illnesses would last him weeks.

He said: ‘I remember being in a supermarket with my wife and almost fainting. I had a fever and I was always exhausted.’

Next he started suffering from a stiff and painful neck. He now knows that this was the point at which the Lyme disease infected his spinal fluid, with bacteria entering his brain and attacking his central nervous system.

But he was told to take painkillers and that eventually he would return to normal.

The most extreme reaction happened about a year after the initial cellulitis diagnosis, when Andrew suddenly lost the feeling in the left half of his body.

He said: ‘I just went completely numb all down one side. I was absolutely terrified.

‘I was actually so terrified that I didn’t even tell my wife for a number of hours until I thought, actually, this might be something very serious.

‘She rushed me to A&E and they said, you are suffering a stroke.’

PRI_78195124Humans can contract Lyme disease if they are bitten by infected ticks (Picture: Getty)

Andrew was given blood thinning medication and eventually sent home, but seven days later, the same thing happened again.

He said: ‘The other half went numb. They said ‘you’ve had another stroke’. I thought ‘I might not survive this’.’

But after several tests and monitoring, doctors started to realise a stroke wasn’t behind the sudden numbness.

Instead, he was seen by neurologists, who began to suspect Andrew may have multiple sclerosis.

He said: ‘They did a lot of tests and MS was never explicitly mentioned but I knew what they were testing for.’

When the tests revealed swelling in his brain, Andrew was given the diagnosis he was dreading.

He said: ‘I was devastated. My sister-in-law had MS and I had watched her condition deteriorate. I knew that to be diagnosed as a man in my 40s probably meant it would come on quite rapidly.

‘I assumed the worst, saw myself incapacitated. Actually it made me very, very depressed.’

But the confusion continued when his medication for MS actually made him more ill and he was told he did not have the condition after all.

Andrew said: ‘When I was signed off treatment for MS I really thought I had nowhere else to go with this.

PRI_78195126If caught early enough, Lyme disease can be treated with antibiotics (Picture: Getty)

‘Eventually I went online and did research on my own and that led me to Lyme disease.

‘Up until that point, my symptoms had been treated individually by different doctors – there had been no communication or no linking of symptoms.

‘It suddenly became clear they were all connected.’

Official estimates put the number of cases of Lyme disease in the UK at around 2000 – but new research reveals the actual number of people with the disease could be closer to 8,000.

Lyme disease has been found in every region in the UK, particularly in Scotland and the south of England.

Researchers hope the new figures will increase awareness, as early intervention could prevent some of the long-term problems that Andrew now suffers.

He said: ‘If I have been diagnosed the very first time I went into hospital, I would have been given antibiotics and it would have gone away.’

IMG_0113-7e89-e1564585938771Andrew wrote semi-autobiographical fiction novel Anatomised in part to help raise awareness of Lyme disease (Picture: supplied)

Instead, he said not knowing what was wrong with him left him feeling suicidal.

He said: ‘I felt incredibly angry and frustrated, I felt a lot of resistance from my GP and the NHS in wanting to treat Lyme and find out more about it.’

Andrew still suffers with fatigue and has the constant feeling his hands are burning, taking strong medication typically prescribed to epilepsy sufferers every day to cope.

He spent four years writing a semi-autobiographical novel about his experience in the hope it would help others avoid the suffering he has faced.

The author said: ‘My main feeling is that I wanted people to know that being diagnosed with Lyme disease doesn’t mean your life is over.

‘I am so glad it has helped other people to find out more about the condition and helped other people with Lyme.

‘It’s all about raising awareness. We need to make as many people aware as possible as this is obviously a lot more common than first thought.’

 

 

 

Category:

Activism, Lyme, Uncategorized

Lyme Disease Amendment Passes House – Tells DOD IG To Investigate the ‘Bioweaponization’ of Ticks

https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=405995

News Item

Chris Smith’s Lyme Disease Amendment Passes House, Tells DOD IG to Investigate the ‘Bioweaponization’ of Ticks

Washington, Jul 12, 2019 | Jeff Sagnip (202-225-3765)

• Rep. Smith addresses colleagues on the House floor July 11, 2019 on his Lyme disease amendment.

The full House of Representatives passed an amendment offered by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) which directs the Inspector General (IG) of the Department of Defense to investigate the “possible involvement of DOD biowarfare labs in the weaponization of Lyme disease in ticks and other insects”  from 1950-1975.

According to Smith, he was “inspired to write the amendment”—now part of the House-passed 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)—by “a number of books and articles suggesting that significant research had been done at U.S. government facilities including Fort Detrick, Maryland and Plum Island, New York to turn ticks and other insects into bioweapons.”

During debate on the floor, Smith said that, “The most recent book—Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons—includes interviews with Dr. Willy Burgdorfer—the researcher who is credited with discovering Lyme disease.  The book reveals that Dr. Burgdorfer was a bioweapons specialist. Those interviews combined with access to Dr. Burgdorfer’s lab files suggest that he and other bioweapons specialists stuffed ticks with pathogens to cause severe disability, disease—even death—to potential enemies.”

“With Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases exploding in the United States—with an estimated 300,000 to 437,000 new cases diagnosed each year and 10-20 percent of all patients suffering from chronic Lyme disease—Americans have a right to know whether any of this is true.  And have these experiments caused Lyme disease and other tick-borne disease to mutate and to spread?” Smith asked.

“My amendment tasks the DOD Inspector General to ask the hard questions and report back,” he said.   During debate on his amendment, Smith said the investigation would explore such questions as:

•  “what were the parameters of the program?

•  who ordered it?

•  was there ever any accidental release anywhere or at any time of any diseased ticks?

•  were any ticks released by design?

•  did the program contribute to the disease burden?

•  can any of this information help current-day researchers find a way to mitigate these diseases?”

Smith has a long record of fighting for people suffering from Lyme disease.  He is the author of the pending bipartisan, bicameral TICK Act introduced earlier this year to create a whole-of-government national strategy to aggressively fight Lyme disease.  The TICK Act (Ticks: Identify, Control, Knockout Act) (HR 3073) authorizes an additional $180 million to boost funding for Lyme research, prevention and treatment programs.

Smith—who is the founding co-chair of the House Lyme Disease Caucus along with Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN)—said the bill provides $60 million over five years to reauthorize the Regional Centers of Excellence in Vector Borne Disease which have led the scientific response against tick-borne diseases.  And the bill authorizes new CDC grants for a total of $120 million over six years, to build a public health infrastructure for Lyme and other tick-borne diseases. The legislation is supported by more than 25 non-government organizations dedicated to combating Lyme.

In June, the House of Representatives adopted two other Smith amendments to boost funding for combating Lyme disease.  One amendment, (Division C of H.R. 2740, adopted June 18th), adds $2 million to the DOD’s Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (CDMRP) for Tick-Borne Disease Research which primarily helps service personnel and their families exposed to Lyme. The program is currently funded at $5 million.

On June 12th, the House adopted Smith’s amendment to add $1 million for Lyme disease research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC currently spends $11 million on Lyme research.

This spring, Smith hosted a Congressional town meeting on Lyme disease in Wall Township, NJ, featuring a panel of national experts including Dr. Ben Beard, Deputy Director of the Division on Vector-Borne Diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control; Pat Smith, President of the Lyme Disease Association; and Dr. Richard Horowitz, an Internist and expert in treating patients with Lyme and other tick-borne diseases.

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For more:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/07/24/lyme-disease-expert-champions-investigation-into-pentagon-weaponizing-ticks-its-a-courageous-move/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/07/19/biological-warfare-experiment-on-american-citizens-results-in-spreading-pandemic/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/07/21/got-15-minutes-the-officially-ignored-link-between-lyme-plum-island/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/07/31/tick-expert-admits-to-working-on-ticks-dropping-them-out-of-airplanes/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/05/17/where-lyme-disease-came-from-and-why-it-eludes-treatment/

Category:

Activism, Ticks, Uncategorized

Pod-Cast On Laughter: A Healing Force For Lyme Disease

https://livingwithlyme.us/episode-79-laughter-a-healing-force-for-lyme-disease/

Episode 79: Laughter: A Healing Force for Lyme Disease

July 26, 2019

 

Cindy Kennedy, FNP, is joined by Robert Rivest, an internationally admired performer and teacher, to discuss how laughter is a healing force for Lyme Disease.

Laughter can be a vital form of healing and relaxation. In addition to being a renowned comic mime artist, Robert is also an accomplished health, literacy and stress relief educator, a gifted mindfulness teacher, a certified laughter yoga master trainer and an engaging public speaker.Since 1990 Robert has given over 8,000 presentations in Europe, Asia, Africa and across the U.S. His mission is to use mindfulness, laughter and the performing arts to bring greater health and happiness to individuals and organizations around the world.

For more information, visit robertrivest.com

Category:

Activism, Lyme, Uncategorized