Last May, just before Dr. Wakefield's appearance at the Center for Personal Rights rally (of which I was a coordinator) and the launch of Wakefield's book "Callous Disregard", seemingly out of nowhere, with no real precipitating event, the media was flooded with stories, old stories, unfounded stories, about how Dr. Wakefield's research was bogus, that the vaccine/autism link has been disproven and declared the vaccine safety debate over.
Imagine my surprise when this week, seemingly out of nowhere, with no real precipitating event, the media was flooded with stories, old stories, unfounded stories, about how Dr. Wakefield's research was bogus, that the vaccine/autism link has been disproven and declared the vaccine safety debate over.
It might lead someone to wonder... does the vaccine safety/choice community and/or Dr. Wakefield have any events and/or books coming out for which this might be an attempt to sabotage/distract/end around/disparage/discredit and generally torpedo? I mean they did that with "Callous Disregard" in the spring and to "Age of Autism" last fall, should I be looking for a new book from those who care about vaccine safety?
Fortunately, I already know the answer to that question is... wait for it... YES!
And I know that because I am proud to share that I am a contributing editor and co-author (along with Andrew Wakefield and more than twenty others) of the upcoming book, brought to you by the Center for Personal Rights, announced today:
How crazy that AGAIN, just like last May, that Wakefield has been declared a dastard, and vaccines cleared of all wrong doing RIGHT BEFORE our community comes out with media on the vastness of the problems in the vaccine program... darn the luck, I tell ya. Boy... do we have bad timing or what!
And that the source of this damning "new information" (which was actually from March of 2010) is once again, Brian Deer, who has mined the (illegally obtained) medical files of the children in Wakefield's paper to find evidence of "fraud" (by which he means that kids GP's who knew nothing about bowel disease and autism took different notes than the internationally known specialists in the field doing in depth research and medical evaluations on the children). Brian Deer.... who for those of you who have lost track, was the man who made the complaint that Wakefield's GMC trial was in response to (but who is also a "journalist" reporting on it... wrap your brain around those ethics if you can)... Deer has has managed to find "fraud" that was undectable by the parents of the children involved in the research project, Wakefield's 12 coauthors on the paper, the prosecutors and judges in Wakefield's 6 year/3 million dollar GMC trial, and the entire medical community and autism community, in the 13 years since this paper has been published.
Wow... that Brian Deer is one talented "journalist". So talented in fact, that he, among all journalists and doctors and people on planet earth, is allowed to illegally obtain the medical records of children, and not only escape arrest and prosecution for doing so, but is granted special dispensation to actually PUBLISH information, over the protests of the children's parents, that he claimed came from the files... in a medical journal! And not just that, but gets to have his unverifiable allegations broadcast by every mainstream media outlet in the US! (Anyone wonder why this is not being broadcast in the UK? Might there be legal problems with doing that there? Never mind... I am probably concerning myself over nothing.)
/end sarcasm
If it is not clear to you this far, let me be frank about it. The coverage of the vaccine/autism debate that you see in the media, is not scientific debate or earnest investigation... it is a dog fight. And Pharma plays dirty.
The vaccine industry is a 27 billion dollar per year business. It is as near as you get to the Federal Reserve and the Treasury as a license to print money. Vaccines are marketed and purchased by the US government and vaccine makers are immune from any financial or any other kind of liability when their vaccines kill or maim the American people. If you had a product line that you didn't have to advertise, that every child in the country had to buy (several times) and that you could not be sued for, and that even when one of your products was known to cause widespread death and damage, you could STILL go a decade or more with out having to go to the expense of updating it... how hard would you fight to keep that golden goose a'layin'? OK... pretend you have the gutter ethics of Merck, and GSK (who make MMR in the US and the UK respectively) and then tell me how hard you would fight. Ruining a man's life to prevent billions or trillions in future losses and potentially damaging a few kids is really nothing at all. It certainly would not have been the first time, nor the last. (Have I mentioned that Deers "investigations" have been mostly published by James Murdoch's newspaper? Did I mention that Murdoch is on the board of directors of GSK who makes the MMR? Or that Deer was "assisted" by Pharma's investigation
Vaccine Epidemic is a real threat to those 27 billion in profits. Our book is a very serious, very in depth analysis, by a cadre of smart and respected professionals (and me), that outlines the international medical standard of informed consent, stories of a variety of vaccine damage, legal implications/historical perspectives/financial concerns/political machinations/medical opinions of vaccinations and presents information on much of the damage that 25 years of pharmaceutical liability protection has done to the vaccine program and to our children.
What you have witnessed in the media this week is a frenzied effort to convince you that:
1. This one research paper represents all of the concerns about the vaccine program. (Our book has almost 400 citations... and we didn't cite the Wakefield paper 400 times).
2. That Wakefield has been "discredited". (He hasn't).
3. That the vaccine/autism debate is settled and that all the questions have been "asked and answered". (It is actually expanding and the evidence that there is a causal association is mounting, not diminishing).
And if you read Vaccine Epidemic, you will see why the medical community and Pharma throwing out the Wakefield paper and declaring the debate "closed", is like carving a pothole in I-95 in Virginia and declaring the interstate from Florida to Maine "closed".
They don't want the media taking our book seriously and they sure as heck don't want you to read it.
So please buy our book and decide for yourself. Is the message that you are getting on NBC the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Or do you need to take responsibility for your family's vaccine decisions in your own hands, based on your own research from original sources?
UPDATE: From the Department of Backfire
Yesterday our book was ranked below 250,000 on Amazon. At the moment it is #2,886 and climbing.
Offit's book, out last week, is 8,569
Wakefield's Callous Disregard, a year old, has climbed back up to 7,706 and number 10 in autism.
When they did this to Wakefield last spring, they put his book on the Amazon top ten list. So thank you to Brian Deer and Pharma? I guess? Keep slinging mud and the people will keep seeing through your CYA tactics and looking for the truth in how to best raise their children.
2 comments:
Wowzer! Great title! It's worth giving up chocolate to be able to afford this book. Thanks to all who contributed.
Amazon tells me this should be delivered February 14. Valentine's Day gift to myself!!
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