It’s been a trying month here at VRAN and for anyone who believes it is a basic human right to make a voluntary and educated decision about vaccines. Informed consent is under attack and the call for mandatory vaccination dominates
media articles that accuse non-vaccinators of spreading disease. Recent outbreaks of measles in Canada have unleashed a media barrage vilifying anyone who questions vaccine safety or who chooses an alternative vaccine schedule, or who simply says no to vaccines.
Outbreaks in both
Alberta and
British Columbia where measles has erupted in non-vaccinating religious communities have been linked to imported cases from the Netherlands and the Philippines. In a 2011 outbreak in
Quebec, 52 of 98 high school students who developed measles were fully vaccinated, as were 3 of the 4 people who recently developed the disease in
Calgary. Concerns are being raised that a vaccinated adult in the
Ottawa area has developed measles.
The history of measles outbreaks in highly vaccinated communities spans many decades and is well described in this
article. A
medical report discussing a measles outbreak in a school with a 98% vaccination rate found that,
“Vaccine failures among apparently adequately vaccinated individuals were sources of infection for at least 48 per cent of the cases in the outbreak”. Just released, this
medical article reports failure of the mumps component of MMR vaccine to prevent the disease in fully vaccinated young men ages 18-25 in the Netherlands. Vaccinating against this previously common childhood illness has pushed mumps into adulthood when the risk of sterility increases in males.
Health officials quoted in media articles deny any knowledge of treatment for measles which is remarkable since vitamin A has long been recognized as an essential nutrient for the treatment of measles and is an important deterrent of morbidity and mortality as described in this
medical article,
“The World Health Organization has long recommended vitamin A supplementation for children under 5 and for pregnant and breastfeeding mothers. Vitamin A deficiency increases vulnerability to a range of illnesses including diarrhea, measles, and respiratory infections.” In the pre vaccine era, parents would supplement their children with
cod liver oil, rich in vitamin A & D during the winter months to strengthen their resistance to infectious diseases.
Why would health officials withhold important information about the universally known benefits of
vitamin A & zinc,
vitamin C, and
vitamin D supplementation during outbreaks of measles and other infectious diseases? Do public health officials choose to remain silent on the treatability of the disease in order to promote a sense of fear and helplessness in the population while intensifying the vaccination drumbeat?
Societal memory is short it seems. Only 40 years ago, measles was seen as an ordinary childhood disease. It was not feared nor was the public terrorized when cases appeared in the school or neighbourhood. There was NO mass hysteria over cyclical outbreaks of measles as everyone understood the benefit of getting the disease in childhood. Doctors and parents knew that the vast majority of healthy children who got measles recovered, and went on to develop long lasting immunity into adulthood, thus benefitting society as a whole. Adults exposed to the cyclical outbreaks of measles had their own immunity boosted naturally, thus maintaining strong resistance to the disease.
The 95% or higher vaccination rates required today to uphold artificial “herd immunity” is a sham as is proven by outbreaks among highly vaccinated populations. When measles vaccines were licensed in Canada, the public was told, "one shot will provide life-long immunity". This theory has been proven false as evidenced by many measles outbreaks over the years in fully vaccinated groups. Some researchers fear that vaccine immunity can wane after 25 years or in as little as ten years. Others are concerned that “a booster dose might not have any lasting effect on waning immunity.”
Measles vaccination can only provide temporary immunity with the result that both the vaccinated and unvaccinated will increasingly be at risk of the disease.
Vaccination is a medical experiment which has drastically changed the natural epidemiology of measles and is creating pools of susceptible people in whom temporary vaccine immunity wears off. Health officials are unable to predict who amongst the vaccinated are susceptible to the disease should they come in contact with the measles virus.
Naturally acquired immunity is a precious health resource that develops over many generations. The scuttling of this highly protective natural immunity and it’s replacement with temporary vaccine immunity is a tragic loss both to contemporary society and to future generations. When the present naturally immune adult population (those born pre-1970) dies off, and is replaced by a majority with temporary immunity, it is
predicted that there will be a greater proportion of susceptibles than in the pre-vaccine era resulting in more and more disease outbreaks across all age groups, with increased levels of risks as well. This
article refers to a 2009 study published in
Proceedings of the Royal Society that “investigated what could happen with waning measles vaccine immunity even with high vaccine coverage among children. They predicted that, after a long disease-free period in the population, the introduction of infection will lead to far larger epidemics than predicted by standard models.”
The recent avalanche of belligerent media articles accompanied by the hostile tone of public commentaries implies that those who question vaccine theology are ignorant fanatics endangering the health and lives of children and the population as a whole. Acceptance of the vaccine agenda is so embedded in the public psyche that it has resulted in a mass paralysis of critical thinking skills absent any comprehension of the negative impact on health from artificial manipulation of the immune system.
The few reasoned voices who post comments are shouted down or are blocked from providing published evidence of vaccine risks , vaccine failures, outbreaks of disease in highly vaccinated populations, the vaccine injured, or the individual’s right to vaccine choice. The atmosphere in mainstream media on this issue has disintegrated into an all out attack on anyone with an alternative view about vaccines.
“The public conversation about vaccination, health and autonomy has become ugly and divisive in the 21stcentury because the War on Disease has been turned into a War on Values and Beliefs” observes Barbara Loe Fisher in her recent report on
Measles in America. In her report, Fisher discusses the global push by the World Health Organization (WHO) in partnership with governments, the pharmaceutical industry and medical trade groups to achieve measles eradication by the year 2015 – latest 2020. She writes,
“In order to accomplish that goal in the next two to seven years, the plan is to make sure that at least 95% or more of the world’s two billion children get two doses of MMR vaccine.”
Fisher cites the militarization of disease eradication campaigns and heavy handed police powers used to intimidate families of unvaccinated children as happened a few years ago in Maryland where parents were forced to comply with vaccine mandates. She asks - “
Will the oppression escalate?”
“I don’t think any of us know how far doctors working for government or drug companies and medical trade groups will go to pit citizens against each other in an effort to shun and punish anyone defending the human right to exercise freedom of thought, belief, conscience and informed consent to medical-risk taking, which includes taking risks with liability free pharmaceutical products like vaccines.”
The kicker to all this conflict is that by the time measles vaccines were developed in the 1960’s, mortality from the disease in developed nations had already declined to minimal levels. Alexander Langmuir, MD known as ‘the father of infectious disease epidemiology’, knew that measles was not a disease needing eradication. He described measles as a
“self-limiting infection of short duration, moderate severity, and low fatality…” To those who asked him “Why do you wish to eradicate measles?”, he replied with the same answer that Sir Edmond Hillary used when asked why he wished to climb Mt. Everest –
“Because it is there”. “To this may be added….. and it can be done.”
For an excellent in depth of the history of infectious diseases, measles and vaccine development, we recommend Dissolving Illusions by Dr. Susanne Humphries, MD and Roman Bystrianyk, easily ordered at the
VRAN website bookstore.