Dr. Andrew Wakefield Should Be Thanked

COLUMN TRENCHThis past week I received an e-mail from a friend who sent a link to a British film that had been banned for nearly a decade. It dealt with gastroenterologist Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s controversial 1998 research that was published in The Lancet suggesting a link between the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine, chronic bowel disease, and autism.

The article put into question the safety of the vaccine. The film portrays Dr. Wakefield’s research and a mother’s agonizing attempt to learn the truth about what suddenly caused her child’s autism.

Some consider Wakefield a martyred saint due to his research persistence and his concern for the health of children amid a controversy waged by the powers that be who wanted to silence him.

The movie is available on YouTube at this link: http://www.ageofautism.com/2013/02/banned-wakefield-films-from-british-tv-emerge-on-youtube-after-nearly-a-decade.html.

wakefield bigThe drama ‘Hear the Silence’ stars Hugh Bonneville as Andrew Wakefield and Juliet Stevenson as a mother trying to find the truth about what happened to her child. The film was seen once on British television in December 2003 and then disappeared after mainstream media publishing giant Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times discredited, smeared, and attacked Wakefield.  The Murdoch family is heavily invested in GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), a vaccine manufacturer.

The film has now been posted on the web by ‘ScienceIsrael’ in the original English with Hebrew subtitles.

According to the Vaccine Liberation Army, which is trying to educate the public about the many horrors caused by highly promoted vaccinations, the film, directed by Tim Fywell, “is compelling. It is professional. It is riveting. Missing this movie is to miss an amazing expose of the real life medical cabal’s facility to experiment on the population and to purposely conceal information from the public. And more than that… it’s ability to systematically orchestrate the demise of moral and good men, like Dr. Andrew Wakefield.”

I watched the movie. It became more and more interesting as it progressed and makes a valid point. It strongly mirrors what is happening today with big pharmaceutical companies and their goal of gigantic profits, which is constantly endorsed by the mainstream media, both in their feature stories and through advertising.

On various internet sites, Dr. Wakefield is both crucified and praised. Wikipedia rips him apart. Mercola.com claims that no fraud was committed in the Wakefield study. A site, thedailybell.com, mentions that one of Dr. Wakefield’s partners was recently reinstated after a “witch hunt” and Dr. Wakefield was wrongly “pilloried in 10,000 news stories, his research was discredited, he was labeled a cheat and a fraud; his livelihood was reduced; he was chased out of his home country of Britain; eventually he was disbarred and forbidden to practice medicine.” The article adds, “But his truth is not so easily silenced as it might have been even a decade ago.”

During the interim, there have been additional studies that relate to the same problems with gut disorders and autistic behavior, including a recent Wake Forest University report that determined that 70 of the 82 autistic children they studied had measles virus in their guts, the same strain used in MMR vaccines.

Of course, every type of vaccine should be questioned. For instance, a leading immunologist, Dr. Hugh Fudenberg, in 2010 said that he does not think that flu shots are effective, not worth getting because of the risk of weakening one’s immune system. He mentioned how mercury and aluminum increases the chances of neurological disorders than can inflict a lifetime of disability and pain.

The list of toxins in flu vaccines include mercury, formaldehyde, aluminum, and squalene, among others, not to mention attenuated viruses. Supposedly, these vaccines are dangerous because they impact the outer skin of membranes in the sinuses, bronchial tubes, and various glands and organs that are generally protected by various types of natural bacteria. By injecting directly into the blood stream, these lines of defense are bypassed, often rendering the immune system unable to function.

What The Trenchwalker finds interesting is that recently I watched an old movie recorded on a VHS tape during the late 1980s. There were zero pharmaceutical commercials. Nowadays they are unavoidable, often running back-to-back-to-back. Drug companies produce meds for pennies and sell them for dollars, gigantic mark-ups. National commercials are not cheap. Most promote prescription drugs to “tell your doctor” about, as if all doctors are stupid. Of course, the purpose of the commercials is to sell you on the idea that it is okay to take dangerous drugs after your doctor prescribes them for you, which he is lobbied by drug companies to do. It’s a racket.

Back in the early 1990s, this writer became a diabetic shortly after getting a flu shot, an injection I normally avoided. Prodded by family and friends, I finally gave in and got one. Upon receiving the shot, I became ill, with what I deemed was a reaction to the shot itself. When I asked my doctor what was up, he said that some people get a mild case of the flu after the injection and I should be happy it wasn’t the full-blown flu. I was not happy being sick as a dog for three weeks, running 106° fever, and going through a lot of pain. After it finally trailed off, I had become a diabetic, a condition that does not run in my family.

I recently did some Googling and found numerous blogs where other people experienced the same thing. They got a flu shot and promptly became diabetic. So, for the past 20 years, at three shots of insulin a day, the pharmaceutical companies have made many thousands of dollars off me, not to mention the damage that was done to my immune system.

Three years ago, during the course of a week, I had 73 strokes. Doctors are quick to point out that only three of them were actually strokes, on both sides of the brain, the other 70 merely TIAs (strokes that did not take, although they lasted quite awhile and as a layman they felt like strokes). I was prescribed “must take” drugs that had horrible side effects. I was told to take them or die, so I resigned myself to put up with the side effects.

Just over a year ago, when a generic version of one of these nasty drugs became available, I decided to give it a try, since to me $15 beats $75 any day. After taking one generic pill, I spent the worst 23 hours of my life with monumental side effects that would not go away. Eventually, I was able to trash that drug completely (a long story), but I wanted to find out what caused the side effects. If it was not the main active ingredient, it must have been a “filler” ingredient that differed from the original pill. I wanted to do a comparison of the ingredients and the quantities of each one used to find out just what caused that bad reaction, so I contacted the generic drug company. I was told this was privileged information. Since they compete with other drug companies, this was their secret and the measurement of each ingredient would not be revealed.

So, I contacted the Federal Drug Administration, making several phone calls. No two people gave me the same answers. One said that both the active ingredients and the fillers are all tested, but they could not reveal the detailed information I sought because “we have to protect the drug companies. That’s why we are here.”

I pressed harder on the next call, where a different “team member” finally admitted that the fillers are actually not tested since they are not important. He said that team members simply tell the public they are checked to “keep them calm.”

Another said that the fillers are tested by independent labs, but the FDA could not release their names. This team member also hinted that often the drug companies conduct the tests themselves and the FDA simply signs off on it; therefore, this information cannot be released, again protecting the drug companies. He did say that many people with the FDA do not like this, but it is mandated by Congressmen who profit from pharmaceutical company contributions, so the FDA has no choice but to go along. “Our hands are tied,” he said.

One suggested I fill out an online complaint. I told him I had tried to do that, but in selecting from a list of conditions, I was prompted to select erroneous information in the query before the system would take me to the next page, so after starting over three times I eventually gave up. He said that the online complaint form had been riddled with this ongoing problem for some time and nobody knows how to fix it. He said I should go ahead and fill it out incorrectly and in a space for comments to mention that the complaint contains erroneous information. Huh?

As a customer and a patient, I, of course, feel extremely angered and slighted that I cannot learn exactly what is in that drug and, therefore, learn what “filler” ingredients to avoid. They don’t care about the patient, only the profits. And, to top it off, I have learned that quite often filler ingredients are not monitored for quality as to where that ingredient was obtained and if there are contaminants present. These fillers are bought cheaply in bulk and are mainly designed to make the drug easy to manufacture.

Going back to the “gut” aspect of vaccines, I also wonder about the trend toward obesity during the past few years. Is it related to GMO foods, or is it a side effect of vaccines? Is that why so many medical people, required to get vaccines, are notably obese? Perhaps a study needs to be done.

This brings us back to Dr. Wakefield, who wrote a book entitled “Callous Disregard — Autism And Vaccines – The Truth Behind A Tragedy.”

Now a Texan who lives in Austin, he issued a statement in 2011: “I want to make one thing crystal clear for the record — my research and the serious medical problems found in those children were not a hoax and there was no fraud whatsoever. Nor did I seek to profit from our findings.”

He added, “I continue to fully support more independent research to determine if environmental triggers, including vaccines, are causing autism and other developmental problems. The current rate of autism is 1 in 110 children in the United States and 1 in 64 children in the U.K. My goal has always been and will remain the health and safety of children. Since the Lancet paper, I have lost my job, my career and my country. To claim that my motivation was profit is patently untrue. I will not be deterred — this issue is far too important.”

With the mainstream media, which is largely owned by drug company kingpins, touting the importance of immunizations while also keeping in mind that pharmaceutical companies are their major advertisers, it is more important than ever for independent studies to be conducted and laws changed making details about the drugs we consume transparent, thoroughly analyzed, with this information in the public domain. Drug companies want to keep the ingredients and the outcomes of their products secret while they hoist their goods on an unsuspecting public. The traditional medical oath “to do no harm” has been ripped to shreds. Pharmaceutical terrorism is the code behind those happy-face TV commercials that prompt you to save your health as you help to increase their profits by consuming their “secret” products, their idea being to rope you in for life.

For the past 50 years, the medical community has supposedly been seeking cures for diseases, with billions of dollars donated by the general populace for the effort. In that time, can you name me one disease that has been cured? Sure, they treat the diseases, usually in the process causing another problem due to the side effects of these drugs that requires additional medications. One has to wonder if this is on purpose, to generate more billions of dollars for pharmaceutical companies as they come out with “new” remedies for these new ailments at extremely high costs to the patient. I guess we no longer live in the “space age,” where with modern technology cures for diseases is just around the corner, as we were told for decades. Why cure a disease when you can make a mint just treating it while creating a new disease to cure in the process, and another, and another, and another?

There is definitely an assault on our citizenry, from GMO foods, to radiation in the air, to toxins in everyday products used to slowly kill people, not to mention bad drugs. Americans need to push their elected leaders off their high horses and put into place total and accurate labeling of products, no secret ingredients, with very long test periods involving independent studies and continued monitoring. To allow secret ingredients, especially in medicine and in chemical products, is insane.

Dr. Wakefield is indeed a martyr, perhaps in more ways than is easily recognized. His research on the MMR vaccination and the questions it raised related to autism is one example. Today, his push for independent studies is of extreme importance and yet another example. Let’s hope, for all our sakes, that this is not a lost cause.

 

 

January 2015
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