Andrew Wakefield, Scientific Censorship, and Fourteen Monkeys

February 8th, 2010

monkeysFrom Generation Rescue

A statement from Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey

Dr. Andrew Wakefield is being discredited to prevent an historic study from being published that for the first time looks at vaccinated versus unvaccinated primates and compares health outcomes, with potentially devastating consequences for vaccine makers and public health officials.

It is our most sincere belief that Dr. Wakefield and parents of children with autism around the world are being subjected to a remarkable media campaign engineered by vaccine manufacturers reporting on the retraction of a paper published in The Lancet in 1998 by Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues.

The retraction from The Lancet was a response to a ruling from England’s General Medical Council, a kangaroo court where public health officials in the pocket of vaccine makers served as judge and jury. Dr. Wakefield strenuously denies all the findings of the GMC and plans a vigorous appeal.

Despite rampant misreporting, Dr. Wakefield’s original paper regarding 12 children with severe bowel disease and autism never rendered any judgment whatsoever on whether or not vaccines cause autism, and The Lancet’s retraction gets us no closer to understanding this complex issue.

Dr. Wakefield is one of the world’s most respected and well-published gastroenterologists. He has published dozens of papers since 1998 in well-regarded peer-reviewed journals all over the world. His work documenting the bowel disease of children with autism and his exploration of novel ways to treat bowel disease has helped relieve the pain and suffering of thousands of children with autism.

For the past decade, parents in our community have been clamoring for a relatively simple scientific study that could settle the debate over the possible role of vaccines in the autism epidemic once and for all: compare children who have been vaccinated with children who have never received any vaccines and see if the rate of autism is different or the same.

Few people are aware that this extremely important work has not only begun, but that a study using an animal model has already been completed exploring this topic in great detail.

Dr. Wakefield is the co-author, along with eight other distinguished scientists from institutions like the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Kentucky, and the University of Washington, of a set of studies that explore the topic of vaccinated versus unvaccinated neurological outcomes using monkeys.

The first phase of this monkey study was published three months ago in the prestigious medical journal Neurotoxicology, and focused on the first two weeks of life when the vaccinated monkeys received a single vaccine for Hepatitis B, mimicking the U.S. vaccine schedule. The results, which you can read for yourself here, were disturbing. Vaccinated monkeys, unlike their unvaccinated peers, suffered the loss of many reflexes that are critical for survival.

Dr. Wakefield and his scientific colleagues are on the brink of publishing their entire study, which followed the monkeys through the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule over a multi-year period. It is our understanding that the difference in outcome for the vaccinated monkeys versus the unvaccinated controls is both stark and devastating.

There is no question that the publication of the monkey study will lend substantial credibility to the theory that over-vaccination of young children is leading to neurological damage, including autism. The fallout from the study for vaccine makers and public health officials could be severe. Having denied the possibility of the vaccine-autism connection for so long while profiting immensely from a recent boom in vaccine sales around the world, it’s no surprise that they would seek to repress this important work.

Behind the scenes, the pressure to keep the work of Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues from being published is immense, and growing every day. Medical journals take extreme risk of backlash in publishing any studies that question the safety of the vaccination program, no matter how well-designed and thorough the research might be. Neurotoxicology, a highly-respected medical journal, deserves great credit for courageously publishing the first phase of this vaccinated monkey study.

The press has been deeply misled in the way The Lancet retraction, and Dr. Wakefield’s mock trial, have been characterized. Led by the pharmaceutical companies and their well-compensated spokespeople, Dr. Wakefield is being vilified through a well-orchestrated smear campaign designed to prevent this important new work from seeing the light of day.

What medical journal would want to step in front of this freight train? Moreover, why now, after 12 years of inaction, did The Lancet and GMC suddenly act? Is it coincidence that the monkey study is currently being submitted to medical journals for review and publication?

We urge the media to take a close look at the first phase of the monkey study discussed above and to start asking a very simple question: What was the final outcome of the 14 primates that were vaccinated using the U.S. vaccine schedule and how did that compare to the unvaccinated controls?

The U.S. vaccine schedule has grown from 10 vaccines given to our children in the 1980s to 36 today, perfectly matching the dramatic rise in autism. The work of Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues deserves to be shared with the world to further, rather than censor, scientific progress.

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Vaccine Injury / Autism Webinar Download

February 7th, 2010


If you missed the Vaccine Injury Webinar in December, it will soon be available for download! This webinar, “The Deadly Truth About Vaccines…. Prevention or Poison?” features Dr. Rashid A. Buttar, Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, and Dr. Victor Marcial-Vega. They discuss Vaccine Injury, and the Vaccine/Mercury -- Autism connection. Watch for details soon of this informative webinar download. You don’t want to miss it!

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Inside Edition

February 6th, 2010

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Huge range of salt found in processed foods

February 5th, 2010

Sauces, spreads, and processed meats are top offenders, study says

 

updated 10:32 a.m. ET, Mon., Jan. 25, 2010

NEW YORK – Many processed foods contain too much salt, and sauces, spreads, and processed meats are the top offenders, new research shows.

People who consume lots of salt are more likely to see their blood pressure rise as they get older, with a corresponding increase in their heart disease risk.

Public health officials are increasingly looking to the food industry for help in cutting people’s salt intake; the United Kingdom and France, for example, have been able to achieve significant reductions in salt consumption through industry collaborations, while New York City has just launched a campaign to cut U.S. salt intake by 25 percent over the next five years. Read the rest of this entry »

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‘Fake’ swine flu pandemic? WHO slams charges

February 4th, 2010

Some claim H1N1 pandemic scare created for benefit of drug companies

By FRANK JORDANS

Associated Press Writer

updated 9:23 a.m. ET, Mon., Jan. 25, 2010

GENEVA – The World Health Organization on Monday slammed as “irresponsible” critics who claim swine flu is a fake pandemic created for the benefit of drug companies.

The U.N. health agency said the outbreak of a new strain of H1N1 influenza in North America last year had all the scientific characteristics of a pandemic, adding the WHO was never improperly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry that has benefited from huge government orders for vaccines and anti-viral drugs.

“The world is going through a real pandemic. The description of it as a fake is wrong and irresponsible,” the WHO said in a strongly worded statement Monday.

A WHO spokesman declined to spell out who the World Health Organization was responding to in its statement, saying only that “this applies to anyone who believes it is not a real pandemic.” Read the rest of this entry »

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Quitting Smoking Doubles Cancer Survival Rate

February 3rd, 2010

 

 

A cigarette is put out in an ashtray. Medical researchers said that quitting smoking could double a cancer patient’s chances of living for another five years. / Korea Times File

By Bae Ji-sook

Staff Reporter

A group of British medical researchers has reported that quitting smoking after being diagnosed with early-stage lung cancer doubles a patient’s chances of living for another five years. Read the rest of this entry »

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Fast food menus with calorie information lead to lower calorie selection

February 2nd, 2010

by Poonam Singhal

 

In a new study, the amount of calories selected by parents for their child’s hypothetical meal at McDonald’s restaurants were reduced by an average of 102 calories when the menus clearly showed the calories for each item.

This is the first study to suggest that labeled menus may lead to significantly reduced calorie intake in fast food restaurant meals purchased for children. Read the rest of this entry »

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FDA Warns of Heart Risk for Meridia

February 1st, 2010

Weight Loss Drug Called Risky for People With Hypertension or Heart Disease

By Daniel J. DeNoon

WebMD Health NewsReviewed by Brunilda Nazario, MDJan. 21, 2010 – The weight loss drug Meridia is too dangerous for people with high blood pressure or heart problems, the FDA today warned.

European authorities today went one step further and banned the drug, known generically as sibutramine and sold in Europe as Reductil.

“Evidence suggests that there is an increased risk of non-fatal heart attacks and strokes with this medicine that outweighs the benefits of weight loss, which is modest and may not be sustained in the long term after stopping treatment,” the U.K.’s Medical Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) says in a news release.

The FDA based its warning on new data showing a higher-than-expected risk of heart attack and stroke. The FDA says Meridia should NOT be taken by people with: Read the rest of this entry »

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Industrial Chemicals Lurking In Your Bloodstream

January 31st, 2010

Rebecca Ruiz, 01.21.10, 04:00 PM EST

Everyone has heard about BPA. How many other potentially nasty chemicals may be in your body?

 

Concern is heating up over whether common industrial chemicals found in plastics and other consumer goods could be harming our kids.

The Food and Drug Administration made headlines when it said last week that it would review the safety of Bisphenol A, an industrial chemical commonly used in plastic bottles and food containers. It is worried that the chemical might have subtle but deleterious effects on the neurological and reproductive development of kids.

For years the chemical has been the subject of controversy over whether it can harm people. Some studies have linked it to abnormal brain and reproductive organ development in animals while others have shown little evidence that is harmful in the small doses that are likely to be ingested by humans. Other adverse health effects to which it has been linked include erectile dysfunction and heart disease in humans and early onset of puberty in female rats.

In Depth: 10 Chemicals You Should Worry About

But BPA is just one of hundreds of industrial chemicals that may be in your blood or urine right now. A report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2009 found detectable levels of a total of 212 chemicals in blood or urine samples from 2,400 people nationwide. These included the agricultural pesticide atrazine, the gas additive Methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) and the coal and petroleum byproduct benzene. Little is known about the human health effects of most of the chemicals. Read the rest of this entry »

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Woman Loses Eyesight After Taking Tamiflu

January 30th, 2010

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Fox News

A 19-year-old woman is blind after taking Tamiflu — and she didn’t even have the H1N1 virus, London’s Daily Mail reported.

A National Health Services helpline advised Samantha Millard to take the medication, and within 72 hours Millard was in the hospital on life support.

Millard suffered from Stevens-Johnson syndrome, causing her skin to peel off, and toxic epidermal necrolysis syndrome, which robbed the woman of her sight. Read the rest of this entry »

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