Christine’s life has been devastated by one tick bite (Image: Supplied)
Sitting on a park lawn as she played with her two-year-old daughter Christine Jennings had no idea her life was about to be ripped apart.
The mother-of-four had taken her children to Leicester’s Bradgate Park to get them away from paint fumes as she redecorated the family home.
It was a decision she has regretted every day since.
That night, as she got ready for bed, Christine, then aged 32, was horrified to find an insect attached to the side of her torso at the rib cage.
Screaming at the sight of the creepy crawly – a deer tick – which had buried into her skin, she managed to rip it out.
Three years later she would learn she had left the creature’s tiny head inside.
Within days Christine, a talented painter and interior designer, started getting pains all over her body, migraines and swollen knees.
She thought she had picked up a virus and put the headaches down to the paint fumes.
Christine, playing with her children, before the nightmare began(Image: Supplied)
Yet it was only the start of a harrowing litany of serious and irreversible health afflictions – made worse by what she claims was shocking NHS indifference to her plight – which would rob Christine of everything.
Today, aged 57, the once energetic and devoted mother is a prisoner in her own body – unable to move, blind, bed bound and confirmed to a dark room.
She is in constant and excruciating pain as, in her words, she lies “waiting to die”.
Christine had been infected by Lyme disease , carried by the tick which bit her on that summer outing in 1994.
The rare bacterial infection is transmitted by the black-legged tick which feed on deer.
It can be more effectively treated if diagnosed early – yet Christine claims NHS doctors have refused to diagnose her and now claims she is now being refused treatment which could improve her quality of life.
Remembering how her full and accomplished life suddenly went into freefall 25 years ago, she said: “I’d taken the kids out on a nature walk to get out of the house I was painting. I’d recently got divorced and we’d moved into a new home.
She got the tick bite in Leicester’s Bradgate Park(Image: Loughborough Echo)
“After we’d gone quite a distance I sat in the short grass with my youngest while the others played with the dog.
“We were a long way from the deers, I was wearing walking boots, jeans and a denim blouse.
“When I got home I carried on decorating and ended up going to bed in the early hours, which is when I discovered I’d got this insect attached to my rib cage.
“I only realised it was a tick when I couldn’t get it off and after a bit of panic I eventually managed to grasp the body and rip it off, which I later discovered was the worst thing to do because I’d left the head in.”
Lyme disease rarely infects people if the entire infected tick is removed from the body within 36 hours.
In Christine’s case, the head was discovered and surgically removed three years later.
Two weeks after being bitten Christine got a bulls-eye rash on her arm and decided to go to the doctor.
She said: “From that moment on my life never recovered.
The blood-sucking bug behind Lyme disease, the deer tick(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
“I’d never been one for being ill or suffering from bugs or headaches.
“The symptoms were like a flu without the cold, a really bad migraine , head pain, neck pain, and swollen knees. I was so ill I couldn’t get out of bed.
“When I got the rash on my arm a week after coming down with the other symptoms, I went to the doctor, who dismissed it as ringworm.
“I told him about the tick, but he said that I didn’t have to worry, that you only get things like that in America. So Lyme disease was dismissed right from the offset.”
Christine claims doctors continued to rule out Lyme disease as she was afflicted by more health problems, including back pain, knee problems, and tinnitus .
She said: “I was so immobile at times that I couldn’t stand up, go up the stairs or move around. I felt so ill.
“Within four years I was having to use a wheelchair if I wanted to get from A to B.
“Until then I didn’t know about Lyme disease but one day I was reading a magazine article about little known summer illnesses, and there was some information about it.
“The symptoms were identical to mine. The fact that it was carried by deers, and I had been in a deer park.
“Everything I had been experiencing fitted, but doctors wouldn’t accept it, they just dismissed any mention of Lyme disease.”
Within four years Christine had to use a wheelchair(Image: Supplied)
Unable to get a diagnosis that would allow her to get treatment, Christine’s health continued to deteriorate as the infection wreaked havoc on her body.
By 2000 it began to affect her eyes, and knowing that Lyme disease can cause blindness, she began a desperate search for experts who were researching or treating the disease in the hope of saving her sight.
During that time she managed to get six clinical diagnoses, outside the NHS, for Lyme disease.
After after meeting a specialist in Sunderland she started a three-year treatment programme, in which she received a dual combination of antibiotics through a Hickman line.
But she was devastated when she was told she was already too ill to continue the treatment.
The disease had been left too long and she had lost the chance to bring it under control.
By 2004 Christine had developed a rare combination of four eye diseases.
Today she is confined to a dark room and in constant pain(Image: Supplied)
She says when a “staggered” doctor at a specialist eye hospital examined her, he found only three other similar cases – and all were as a result of Lyme disease.
Christine was passed on to a doctor who had worked with Lyme disease in the US “had no doubt” she had the disease and suggested a treatment regime involving neurologists and other professionals.
But Christine claims: “Then he received a letter from a public health officer and he told me he’d been told go to down a different path.
“So even though this rare combination of eye diseases needed specialist treatment, I was denied that care.
“I believe they were more worried that I would file a lawsuit against them if they acknowledged it really was Lyme than they were worried about my life.
“But that was never the case. I would have been happy to have had my sight saved and received the medical care I had been fighting for for years.
A watercolour painted by Christine before her illness left her unable to move(Image: Supplied)
“I’ve lost half of my life to this disease. My mental and emotional ability to carry on fighting is rapidly diminishing now.
“I can’t cope and the sense of hopelessness, knowing that there is no acknowledgement on any level, is very distressing.”
Christine says she has considered ending her life – but can’t do that to her children and grandchildren.
She said: “Right now, I’m just existing. I feel that I’m just lying here waiting to die.
“I’m bed bound, I can’t move around without assistance, I need 24-hour care day and night, I’ve had seven mini strokes, three bleeds on the brain, I’ve got arthritis , muscle wasting, bowel problems, I have no use of my left side, and I need help to eat, drink, shower, and get dressed.
“I’ve lost all independence and I’m now totally blind.
“The iris on one of my eyes has split open and blood vessels are exposed and are pushing through to lay on the surface of the eye.
“So even though I’m blind I have to stay in the dark as the slightest bit of light affects all the nerves in my eye and increases the pain in my brain.”
“Some days I don’t cope at all. Other days I want to end it, but I couldn’t take my own life because I’ve got four children, and grandchildren, and I couldn’t do that to them.
“Two of my daughters care for me, and without them I wouldn’t get through my days or nights.
“I’m never going to be cured now, it’s too late. I’m never going to get my sight back. A lot of what is wrong with me is damaged and cannot be put right.
“But I could be supported and my quality of life could be improved. That is all I am asking for.”
A spokesperson at Leicester’s Hospitals said: “We are sorry to find out Christine is unhappy with her care.
“Christine has been invited to appointments this year, but has not attended them.
“We have not yet received a formal complaint about her current concerns so would encourage her to contact our Patient Information and Liaison Service, and we will happily look into them for her.”
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**Comment**
Expect to hear more stories just like this one. This isn’t going away, in fact it’s spreading, and authorities are still in the Dark Ages.
This story also highlights the importance of early diagnosis and treatment. Even if you’ve had a delay, delay it no further and get to a ILADS trained practitioner. This does not get better on its own but will worsen until there is irreparable damage.
Appropriate treatment is everything.
If you do not know the Lyme literate doctors in your area, contact your local support group. They do.
Thomas Frieden pleaded guilty to groping a woman in his NYC apartment.
NEW YORK CITY – The former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) has pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct related to his arrest last August for alleged sexual misconduct and will not serve jail time, Fox News has learned.
Dr. Thomas Frieden, also a former New York City health commissioner, appeared Tuesday in Brooklyn Criminal Court.
Under the terms of his plea, Frieden’s case will be sealed and dismissed in a year if he isn’t arrested during that time.
Frieden was the director of the CDC from 2009 to 2017.
Frieden was arrested in August. A woman he knew had accused Frieden of grabbing her buttocks on Oct. 20, 2017, in his Brooklyn home.
Both bartonellosis and Lyme disease are associated with dangerous heart conditions that can be fatal in some cases. The heart has three important aspects that can be affected by disease: electrical, structural, and muscular. Bartonella and Borrelia species can negatively impact all three of these.
Electrical
The electrical function of the heart causes the muscles to contract in a specific sequence for ideal blood flow. These electrical patterns can be seen on an ECG (electrocardiogram) tracing. Specific pathways carry electrical impulses at different speeds to cause the heart to beat correctly. If an impulse is too fast or too slow, the heart will beat inefficiently, which may be fatal.
Carditis is a localized or diffuse swelling of the heart tissues. It can disrupt electrical signals in the heart, causing a “heart block.” An example of this is when the signal from the atrioventricular node (AV node) is interrupted. Less commonly, a patient may also experience atrial fibrillation, an abnormal heartbeat that can reduce the amount of blood moving through the heart.
A heart block can be detected as an abnormality on an ECG. A severe heart block can prevent the heart from getting the electrical stimulation necessary to beat, leading to sudden death.
The AV node sends electrical impulses through the heart, leading to muscle contractions. If a complete or partial heart block occurs, the signal is interrupted (Source: CDC).
Borrelia spirochetes have a characteristic corkscrew shape. They can be seen in stained heart tissue (Source: CDC).
“Lyme carditis” is carditis caused by Lyme disease and occurs in up to 10% of people who contract Lyme disease. It occurs when Borrelia spirochetes infiltrate heart tissue, resulting in inflammation.
Heart blocks can be treated with a pacemaker. It is important to know if the heart block is caused by Lyme carditis. If it is, the patient can use a temporary pacemaker until the carditis is resolved with antibiotic treatment eliminating the need for a permanent pacemaker.
Since these slow heartbeats are the most common result of infection, fast heartbeats can be missed as a symptom of infection. Nevertheless, different kinds of fast electrical impulses like tachycardia and premature ventricular contractions (PVCs) can also be caused by infections.
Structural
The structure of the heart valves consists of fibrous material and collagen with very little blood supply into the tissue. Healthy valves allow blood to flow through the chambers of the heart while preventing backward flow. The cells in heart valves are extremely slow-growing and slow-dividing. Consequently, valves are unable to heal the way other tissue does and are susceptible to infection.
Abnormalities in heart valves can increase the risk of infection. About one in fifty people have abnormalities in how their valves developed in gestation. As people age, their valves can develop additional abnormalities, including calcification. Genetic differences such as Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS) can also make valves more likely to deteriorate over time.
The heart is made up of four chambers that receive blood sequentially. The tricuspid and mitral valves prevent backward flow of blood (Source: NIH).
Endocarditis is a swelling of the inner layer of the heart. It is often caused by a pathogen that can strike these vulnerable structures. Sometimes inflammation from the pathogen causes fibrin and other materials in the blood to stick to the heart valves. As more of this material sticks together, it grows in the shape of a plant off of the heart valve. The growth is called a “vegetation” because of this shape.
If someone has endocarditis, blood samples will be taken to see if the pathogen can be identified. If no pathogen is identified, the diagnosis is “culture-negative endocarditis.” A common cause of culture-negative endocarditis in humans and animals is Bartonella species infection. A recently published case described a 28-year old patient with a history of homelessness who was positive for Bartonella quintana using PCR. Bartonella quintana is transmitted to humans via lice and is the most common species associated with culture-negative endocarditis, but B. henselae, B. kohlerae, and other species have been implicated in these cases as well.
Rarely, Borrelia species including the species that causes Lyme disease can cause endocarditis. This is most likely because Borrelia typically do not remain in the bloodstream long after infection occurs. Likewise, research shows that Bartonella can cycle in and out of the bloodstream over the course of an infection. If endocarditis causes damage to the heart valves, the patient may require heart valve surgery.
Muscular
The muscles of the heart contract to move blood through the chambers of the heart. These muscles have a rich blood supply. Over time, the blood vessels supplying the heart can become damaged. Each time a blood vessel is damaged, the body makes a kind of band-aid for the damage out of cholesterol and fibrin. Eventually these build up into plaques which can block blood supply to the heart. This process is called coronary artery disease (CAD).
As plaque builds up in the coronary arteries, blood flow becomes restricted. This results in coronary artery disease. (Source: CDC).
Rarely, Lyme disease and Bartonella species infections affect the muscle of the heart directly. This can cause angina (heart pain) and damage like a heart attack. When the muscle is damaged, it releases chemicals that can be tested for in the blood. Usually heart muscle damage is caused by CAD. However, with Lyme disease, the test may be positive even though there is no problem with blood flow. In one small study, patients who were assumed to have CAD were tested for several infectious diseases; a number of them had Borrelia species infections, including Lyme disease.
Inflammation from the immune response to infectious disease can increase the cycle of damage to the heart vessels that is repaired with even more aggressive plaques, leading to earlier and more severe CAD than a person otherwise would have had. Despite this logical cause of disease, research on the association of CAD with Lyme disease or Bartonella species infections has had mixed results. It may be that the association between infectious disease and CAD involves additional variables that are unknown at this time.
Conclusion
Bartonellosis and Lyme disease can damage the heart in a variety of ways. Some of this damage may be permanent or require surgery. When a heart problem develops, it is important to consider infectious causes including bartonellosis and Lyme disease so that antibiotic treatment can be initiated and further damage or death can be prevented.
References
Hinton, R. B., & Yutzey, K. E. (2011). Heart valve structure and function in development and disease. Annual Review of Physiology, 73, 29-46. doi:10.1146/annurev-physiol-012110-142145 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4209403/
Scheffold, N. et al. (2015). Lyme carditis—Diagnosis, treatment and prognosis. Deutsches Ärzteblatt International, 112(12), 202-208. doi:10.3238/arztebl.2015.0202 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4395762/
Zainal, A. et al. (2019). Lyme carditis presenting as atrial fibrillation. BMJ Case Reports, 29(4), e228975. doi:10.1136/bcr-2018-228975 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31036741
Fatima, B. et al. (2018). Lyme disease—An unusual cause of a mitral valve endocarditis. May Clinic Proceedings: Innovations, Quality & Outcomes, 2(4), 398-401. Doi:10.1016/j.mayocpiqo.2018.09.003 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6260468/
Gilson, J. et al. (2017). Lyme disease presenting with facial palsy and myocarditis mimicking myocardial infarction. Journal of Community Hospital Internal Medicine Perspectives, 7(6), 363-365. doi:10.1080/20009666.2017.1396170 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5738646/
Kubánek, M. et al. (2012). Detection of Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato in endomyocardial biopsy specimens in individuals with recent-onset dilated cardiomyopathy. European Journal of Heart Failure, 14(6), 588-596. doi:10.1093/eurjhf/hfs027 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22379178
Stöllberger, C. et al. (2001). Seroprevalence of antibodies to microorganisms known to cause arterial and myocardial damage in patients with or without coronary stenosis. Clinical and Diagnostic Laboratory Immunology, 8(5), 997-1002. doi:10.1128/CDLI.8.5.997-1002.2001 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC96185/
Patel, S. et al. (2019). A case of Bartonella quintana culture-negative endocarditis. American Journal of Case Reports, 20, 602-606. doi:10.12659/AJCR.915215 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31026253
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**Comment**
Great article; however, a reminder that nobody’s really got a bead on how many with Lyme/MSIDS have heart issues. When testing misses over half of all cases with mainstream medicine’s head in the sand, there are many with heart issues flying under the radar or blamed on something else.
Please note that the article states the importance of knowing if the heart issues ARE caused by Lyme/MSIDS as proper treatment will often ameliorate the problem. This is true with nearly every other symptom as well. Knowing is everything but mainstream medicine at this point in time would rather diagnose you with anything BUT Lyme/MSIDS so you need to see ILADS trained health professionals. I could pull up 100 articles of people who went to doctor after doctor only to be misdiagnosed for years that had an underlying Lyme/MSIDS infection that could have been treated. Due to the delay, many never retrieved their health back.
Diagnosing Lyme/MSIDS requires a shift in thinking that mainstream doctors haven’t been wiling to make. Plus, we do not fit into a 10 minute Western Medicine managed care paradigm.
In 2015, Pfizer’s Prevnar 13 vaccine (which protects against common strains of pneumonia) made more money than either Lipitor or Viagra, two of Pfizer’s top-selling drugs, thanks to the U.S. government recommendation to start using it in seniors over 65
There’s a rapidly progressing effort to vilify and even criminalize those who express concerns about vaccine safety, and to shut down free speech in the U.S. (but only speech relating to vaccine harms, not the alleged benefits of vaccines)
Increasingly tyrannical measures are also being employed, including forcing people to get vaccinated against measles or face significant fines or jail time
Washington state will no longer accept a philosophical exemption from the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine for children seeking to attend daycare or school
Instagram is now blocking vaccine-related hashtags such as #vaccinescauseautism, and any hashtag found to be “spreading misinformation” will be added to an ever-growing list of banned hashtags
The following referenced information contains opinion and perspective on a health topic related to vaccine science, policy, law or ethics that is being discussed in public forums, including in medical, law and other professional journals; newspapers, magazines and other print; broadcast and online media outlets; state legislatures and the U.S. Congress.
Readers are encouraged to go to the websites of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) for the perspective of federal agencies responsible for vaccine research, development, regulation and policymaking, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for information on vaccine policymaking; to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for information on regulating vaccines for safety and effectiveness; and to National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for information on research and the development of new vaccines.
The World Health Organization has stated that “vaccine hesitancy” is one of the top 10 global public health threats.
Is the vaccine business a profitable industry? You bet!1 Many vaccine pushers like to promote the idea that vaccine profits are slim, hence there’s no financial incentive behind the push for vaccinations. Two years ago, the blog Skeptical Raptor, just to point to one example, stated that ” … [T]he Big Pharma vaccine profits conspiracy is still one of most amusing myths of the antivaccination world.”2
In reality, Pfizer’s Prevnar 133 vaccine (which protects against common strains of pneumonia) actually made more money than Lipitor or Viagra in 2015, both Pfizer top-selling drugs,4,5 and the 2018 revenues for Gardasil 9 was $3 billion according to CNBC.6
As noted by Financial Times,7 profits from Prevnar 13 shot up in 2015, reaching $6.25 billion, nearly three times more than Viagra that year, thanks to the U.S. government recommendation to start using it in seniors over 65 and not just children. “The success of Prevnar shows [vaccines] can be as lucrative as any drug,” the article states.8
Censorship Aimed at Blocking First-Hand Testimony of Vaccine Harms
When you have a profitable business, you want to nurture and protect it, and promote its sustained growth. That’s normal in the world of business. What’s not normal is enlisting government to mandate the use of your product while simultaneously preventing the sharing of bad reviews that might impact sales and/or force you to improve the safety or effectiveness of your product.
And that’s exactly what’s happening in the vaccine industry. In recent months, the push to censor negative press about vaccines has been outright shocking. The “justification” given is that “misinformation” about vaccines is preventing people from making sound medical decisions.
But make no mistake about it; what’s really happening here is that Big Pharma and government are blocking parents of vaccine-injured children from sharing their stories and letting the truth be known that there are risks involved. It’s really a showdown between a largely pharma-run government and parents of vaccine injured children — not government against creators of fake news.
There’s nothing fake about vaccine injuries. There’s also nothing fake about data, oftentimes obtained from government documents, that are unfavorable for the vaccine manufacturers. The current censorship is blocking out those real-world stores of injury, and important data demonstrating that government and industry are not telling the whole truth about what is known about vaccines.
‘Vaccine Doubts Spread Like Disease’
Speaking at a recent event at the World Health Organization’s annual assembly, Seth Berkley, CEO of the Global vaccine alliance GAVI, stated that doubts about vaccines spread across social media “at the speed of light,” and that the spread of “misinformation about vaccines,” is “not a freedom of speech issue,” and that “social media firms need to take it offline” because “it kills people.”9
He also stated there’s “a strong scientific consensus about the safety of vaccines,” referring to the spread of negative vaccine information as “a disease.” It’s well worth remembering that GAVIs primary mission is to “shape markets for vaccines and other immunization products.” Clearly that will not be as easy if people understand the risks.
The WHO and U.S. government are founding partners of GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance. In 2000, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided $750 million in seed money to spearhead the creation of GAVI, a public-private partnership and multilateral funding mechanism involving the WHO, governments, the vaccine industry, the World Bank, philanthropic foundations and civil society groups to “improve access to new and underused vaccines for children living in the world’s poorest countries.”10
Since 2000, GAVI has raised more than $15 billion to vaccinate the world’s children. The single biggest funding source for GAVI is the Gates Foundation, which has donated more than $3 billion, or 20 percent of GAVI’s total income.11
Between 2000 and 2013, only about 10 percent of total funding provided by GAVI ($862 million) was used to actually strengthen health systems in developing countries, such as improving sanitation and nutrition, while nearly 80 percent was used to purchase, deliver and promote vaccines.12
Shutting Down Vaccine Safety Discussion and Censoring Vaccine Harms
Several of my recent articles have discussed the rapidly progressing effort to vilify (if not outright criminalize) those who express concerns about vaccine safety and to shut down free speech about vaccine harms in the U.S., along with increasingly tyrannical measures, forcing people to get vaccinated or face significant fines or jail time. Here’s a summary of some of the most prominent examples:
The World Health Organization lists “vaccine hesitancy” as one of the top 10 global public health threats for 2019.13
In a January interview with CBS News,14 Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) did not tell the truth when he flat-out denied the fact that vaccines can cause injury or death.
The fact is, the federal vaccine injury compensation program (VICP) created under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 has paid out $4 billion in awards for vaccine damages and deaths, and that’s just 31 percent of all the injury petitions filed.15,16
February 27, 2019, Fauci also did not tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth to the U.S. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations at its “Confronting a Growing Public Health Threat: Measles Outbreaks in the U.S.” hearing.17
In his sworn testimony, he claimed childhood vaccines like the MMR are completely safe and do not cause encephalitis (brain inflammation) before the parents in the audience audibly protested and he was prodded into quickly adding the word “rare.”18 The facts are:
a. The MMR vaccine package insert19 published by Merck states that “Encephalitis and encephalopathy have been reported approximately once for every 3 million doses of M-M-R II or measles-mumps- and rubella-containing vaccine.”
b. The vaccine information statement (VIS), which doctors by federal law (under the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act) are required to give parents before their children receive a CDC recommended vaccine, states that “severe” adverse effects of the MMR20 and MMRV21 vaccines include “deafness; long-term seizures; coma; lowered consciousness; and brain damage.” One of the “moderate” adverse events listed as associated with the MMRV vaccine is encephalitis.
c. Studies have shown the MMR vaccine can cause encephalitis and encephalopathy (acute or chronic brain dysfunction).22
d. As noted in a 2015 paper in the journal Vaccine:23
“We summarize epidemiologic data on deaths following vaccination, including examples where reasonable scientific evidence exists to support that vaccination caused or contributed to deaths.
Rare cases where a known or plausible theoretical risk of death following vaccination exists include anaphylaxis, vaccine-strain systemic infection after administration of live vaccines to severely immunocompromised persons, intussusception after rotavirus vaccine, Guillain-Barré syndrome after inactivated influenza vaccine, fall-related injuries associated with syncope after vaccination, yellow fever vaccine-associated viscerotropic disease or associated neurologic disease, serious complications from smallpox vaccine including eczema vaccinatum, progressive vaccinia, postvaccinal encephalitis, myocarditis, dilated cardiomyopathy and vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis from oral poliovirus vaccine.”
Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, also misinformed Congress when she stated, “There are rare instances in children with certain very specific underlying problems with their immune system in whom the vaccine is contraindicated.”
She lied when she said the MMR vaccine “does not cause brain swelling and encephalitis” in healthy children, and that parents would know if their child was at risk beforehand, because their child’s doctor would tell them if this were the case.24
In February 2019, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb threatened state legislators with federal government intervention if they do not eliminate vaccine exemptions.25,26,27
California state Sen. Dr. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, is urging the U.S. Surgeon General to push mandatory vaccinations to the top of the federal public health agenda.28,29 According to Pan, mandating vaccines, as was done for smallpox during the Revolutionary War, would “protect our right as Americans to be free of preventable diseases.”
In March 2019, a bill was introduced in Washington, D.C., allowing minor children of any age to get vaccines in the city without a parent’s knowledge or consent after a doctor says the child is “mature” enough to make the decision.30
March 27, 2019, Rockland County, New York, barred any infant, child or teen under the age of 18 who is not vaccinated against measles from entering “public places” until the state of emergency is lifted in 30 days or until they get an MMR shot. (A New York Supreme Court judge lifted the state of emergency April 5, saying the number of measles cases did not meet the legal requirement for an emergency order.)
April 9, 2019, health officials ordered residents in four Williamsburg, New York, zip codes — 11205, 11206, 11211, 11249 — to get vaccinated for measles within 48 hours or face a $1,000 fine or six months in jail.
April 25, 2019, Rockland county issued another emergency order that banned anyone with measles or who has come in contact with a measles case from appearing in public for up to 21 days or face a $2,000 per day fine.
“The new order would keep unvaccinated students who don’t have medical or religious exemptions in the most affected areas from going to school, and those who have measles or have been exposed to it and are not vaccinated from going to public places, both indoor and outdoor,” CBS2 New York reported.31
May 12, 2019, KUTV reported Washington state will no longer accept a philosophical exemption from the MMR vaccine for children seeking to attend daycare or school.32
Tech Platforms Embrace Position as Truth Adjudicators
In recent months, media have also been flooded with reports of how tech platforms and social media are fueling “anti-vax” fears and spreading misinformation, and not doing everything possible to prevent sharing of vaccine safety-related material between users.33
Art Caplan, a bioethics professor and head of the division of medical ethics at New York University School of Medicine, has stated that “companies cannot allow themselves to be ‘vehicles for misinformation contagion,'” and must take steps to censor information that might lead people to avoid vaccination.34 In response:
YouTube has demonetized “anti-vaccine” channels, barring them from advertising on the platform.35
Facebook is “hiding” vaccine critical content and barring “ads that contain misinformation about vaccines.”36
Pinterest is blocking search terms related to vaccines, as well as “memes and pins from sites promoting anti-vaccine propaganda.”37
Amazon has removed films critical of vaccine safety from its Prime Video streaming service, including the award winning 2011 documentary “The Greater Good,”38,39 as well as books discussing vaccine risks and failures and/or biomedical and holistic health treatments for autism.40
Google is burying content and videos relating to vaccine safety issues.41
Instagram is blocking vaccine-related hashtags such as #vaccinescauseautism and any hashtag found to be “spreading misinformation” will be added to an ever-growing list of banned hashtags.42,43
Twitter Joins in Censoring Vaccine Material
To this ever-growing list we can now add Twitter, which on May 10, 2019, announced44 users searching for vaccine-related Tweets will immediately be directed to “a credible public health resource,” namely the vaccines.gov website, which is run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
“Noncredible commentary and information about vaccines” will not be included in auto-suggested queries. Twitter is also planning on expanding this censorship tool to include “other important public health issues …”
And that’s the crux of the problem, isn’t it? Let’s face it, the censorship will not be restricted to vaccine information. There are many toxic but profoundly profitable industries out there, and before you know it, we won’t be allowed to read about any number of toxic and dangerous issues.
Can You Get Full Disclosure on Vaccines From a Single Source?
Even if, right now, you think it “might be a good idea” to restrict information about the risks and failures of vaccines, it won’t be long before the censorship train stops at your station and suppresses information you are interested in and need to know about to take control of your health. Censorship, which is a threat to freedom of thought, speech and conscience, is always a slippery slope.
If the vaccine thought police prevail today, tomorrow you easily could be prevented from reading or sharing information about another health topic near and dear to your heart — be it pollution, climate change, water fluoridation, toxic cosmetics, dangerous infant products, pesticide-contaminated and GMO-altered food or any number of other contentious issues that can impact an industry’s bottom line.
Once censorship takes root as an acceptable norm, there will be no end to it. The fact of the matter is, the federal government’s vaccines.gov website does not spell out the whole truth about what is known, scientifically, about vaccines. For example, in a May 16, 2019 post, The Highwire points out the fallacies proclaimed on vaccines.gov with regard to aluminum adjuvants in vaccines,45 and that’s just one example of many.
According to the vaccines.gov website, aluminum in vaccines is safe, stating that “For decades, vaccines that include aluminum have been tested for safety — these studies have shown that using aluminum is safe.”
However, as noted in a 2011 paper in Current Medicinal Chemistry, titled “Aluminum Vaccine Adjuvants: Are They Safe?”:46
“Experimental research … clearly shows that aluminum adjuvants have a potential to induce serious immunological disorders in humans. In particular, aluminum in adjuvant form carries a risk for autoimmunity, long-term brain inflammation and associated neurological complications and may thus have profound and widespread adverse health consequences.”
Or how about this 2018 study,47 which found high amounts of aluminum in the brains of autistic patients. According to the authors:
“The aluminium content of brain tissue in autism was consistently high. The mean (standard deviation) aluminium content across all 5 individuals for each lobe were 3.82(5.42), 2.30(2.00), 2.79(4.05) and 3.82(5.17) μg/g dry wt. for the occipital, frontal, temporal and parietal lobes respectively.
These are some of the highest values for aluminium in human brain tissue yet recorded and one has to question why, for example, the aluminium content of the occipital lobe of a 15 year old boy would be 8.74 (11.59) μg/g dry wt.?”
This study goes on to note that one known source of aluminum that children would be exposed to is vaccines, and that “their burgeoning use has been directly correlated with increasing prevalence of ASD.”
Science Earmarked as False News — Who Are the Science Deniers Now?
This 1978 MMR vaccine’s licensing data were recently obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the Informed Consent Action Network.49 These documents raise several other safety questions as well. For example, they show that:
The MMR vaccine was licensed for use in all children based on clinical trials involving a total of 834 children, of which only 342 received the MMR vaccine
Adverse events were only tracked for 42 days following injection
All of the control groups in the eight trials upon which licensing was granted were given another vaccine, in some cases simply another batch or lot of the MMR. None received a real placebo (an inert substance), without which you cannot accurately judge safety, as both the treatment group and the controls will experience side effects. The only thing these studies can tell us is which of two vaccines is better or worse, in terms of short-term side effects
We’re Entering an Era of Faith-Based Science
Does the vaccine.gov website tell you this about the MMR? No, it does not. Instead, this very real news, based on official documents from the FDA showing the actual science underpinning the licensing of this vaccine, is now labeled “noncredible vaccine commentary.”
The pro-vaccine lobby is very quick to label anyone who questions the safety of vaccines as “anti-science.” Yet, what most vaccine safety critics are trying to do is to reveal the science the pro-vaccine lobby doesn’t want to share with the public. So, just who are the science deniers?
The pro-vaccine lobby is working hard to get laws passed that will force everyone to use every vaccine the pharmaceutical industry produces and the federal government recommends. If forced vaccination lobbyists get their way, only studies confirming preconceived notions that all vaccines are safe and effective in all instances will be deemed “real science.” Everything else is “pseudoscience” or plain “misinformation.”
Not only is this censorship trend endangering public health by hiding reality, it’s also endangering the very foundation of the field of science by ushering in a highly-radicalized form of faith-based science, where you form an opinion and only allow studies that support that opinion to see the light of day. That’s already happening, but we’re bound to get much more of it if we continue down this path.
We cannot make sensible decisions about our health and that of our children when all we get is half the story. The video below, “Our Girls Are Not Rumors — Stories of the HPV (Gardasil) Vaccine,” is a perfect example of the devastation wrought by incomplete vaccine disclosures. Yet media, largely owned by Big Pharma, tries to write these real-world effects off as nothing but fake news.
In Criminals We Trust?
According to the vaccine lobby, information highlighting the lack of safety is too dangerous to be read. You should just trust the vaccine industry, the makers of these lifesaving marvels.
The problem with that is that most of them have been found guilty in civil courts of engaging in unethical, even criminal, behavior. Why should we trust companies with shoddy ethics that engage in criminal behavior? In my view, this is an unreasonable demand.
In 2012, Pharmaceutical-technology.com reported50 GlaxoSmithKline was in hot water again after a court in Argentina found the company mismanaged a Synflorix vaccine trial that killed 14 babies. Synflorix is a pediatric vaccine against pneumonia and meningitis, much like Pfizer’s blockbuster vaccine Prevnar. According to Pharmaceutical-technology.com:
“The firm was fined $93,000 for failing to obtain parental consent to conduct the trials on 15,000 Argentine babies, and an additional 9,000 babies from Colombia and Panama, between 2007 and 2008.
The children were recruited from poor families. Evidence from Argentina’s medical regulator said that, in some cases, GlaxoSmithKline pressured parents and grandparents to sign lengthy consent forms that they couldn’t understand … GlaxoSmithKline was also criticised [sic] by Judge Marcelo Aguinsky for keeping inadequate records of the children’s ages and medical histories.”
Unethical Vaccine Testing Methods Have Been the Norm
The sad truth is that GlaxoSmithKline’s “mismanagement” was not a one-off event. As reported by Collective-Evolution,51while under oath, “Dr. Stanley Plotkin, known as one of the fathers of vaccines, reveals … testing vaccines on orphans, colonial ruled populations, babies whose mothers are in prison, and mentally handicapped children.” In a letter to the editor of “Ethics on Human Experimentation,” Plotkin wrote:
“The question is whether we are to have experiments performed on fully functioning adults and on children who are potentially contributors to society or to perform initial studies in children and adults who are human in form but not in social potential?”
A short outtake of his testimony covering these specific points is in the video above. The full nine-hour video testimony can be found on Youtube.52 I also suggest reading through “The 6 Top Thugs of the Medical World… As Ranked by ‘Top 100 Corporate Criminals List” for a general overview of the companies you’re being told to trust blindly and without question.
The Fallacy of Censorship as a Conformity Builder
What we have here is a highly profitable vaccine industry, which has no civil liability for any of the health problems caused by the use of their products, that lobbies government to mandate vaccines, while simultaneously insisting on censoring criticism of vaccine safety and effectiveness, and blocking parents from publicly describing real-life experiences about how their healthy children were injured or died after vaccinations, and refusing to conduct well-designed scientific research that investigates evidence of harm.
The end result cannot be anything other than mounting public distrust, because this simply isn’t how honest corporations and industries who conduct business with transparency and integrity go about making a profit. There’s no need for censorship when you have nothing to hide and are willing to address shortcomings or product risks to ensure safety and effectiveness.
On top of it all, we now also have an up-cropping of self-appointed arbiters of truth and trustworthiness, such as NewsGuard — a company that right out of the gate failed to adhere to one of its own tenets of trustworthiness: transparency. From the outset, NewsGuard “declined to disclose” the size of its revenue stream in its U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.53
