Covid: Junk Science and Quackery By Mrs Vera West
Quackery in medicine refers to practices to treat patients and the sick which are untested do not work, using questionable diagnoses based upon questionable diagnostic tests, or no tests at all. Almost always the quest for profits is the motive for pushing such snake oils. The Covid vaxxes fit into this paradigm, since the claim was made that the vaxxes stop transmission, as made by false President Biden. Government policy, from masks to lockdown mandates have been based upon fear, not cool scientific evaluation. In fact, the scientists have been among those quite willing to suppress dissent and critical review.
https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/updated-booster-is-medical-quackery
“Recent Polls from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) suggest many parents will not vaccinate their young children against COVID-19. A relevant topic, given over the summer the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offered the formal authorization needed for the youngest cohort to date—the tender ages of age 4 all the way to 6-month babies are eligible for full series mRNA regimen. To date, however, the vaccination data indicate the polls from KFF aren’t off—about 862,000 children from the age of 6 months to 4 years received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, according to a recent statement by Sarah Mayer, MD, MPH, chief medical officer of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases during a webinar hosted by the COVID-19 Vaccine Education and Equity Project this past Wednesday. According to some sources such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the vaccination figure for this cohort by August 10, 2022, could be 1 million. Overall, the figures are lower than health authorities like, at about 5% to 6% of this cohort, [as well as lower in the age 5 to 11 cohort compared to older groups] because they still operate under the premise that COVID-19 vaccination will control the RNA viral contagion.
Recently reported on by MedPage Today’s Washington Correspondence Shannon Firth, the mainstream medical media updated readers on the recent COVID-19 Vaccine Education and Equity Project online seminar involving Dr. Meyer and other respected physicians advising clinicians on what the course of action should be given the serious reservations out in the parent population.
About half of the parents surveyed by KFF shared that they would get their children vaccinated. But what about the large number of parents that will “wait and see” as to the efficacy of the vaccine? What about fears of safety concerns?
As far as the “wait and see” parental cohort, Ms. Frith noted that one webinar presenter, Edith Bracho-Sanchez, a pediatrician from New York City’s Columbia University Irving Medical Center-NewYork Presbyterian Hospital, declared, “I understand you're trying to make a good choice. But what are we waiting for? Are we waiting for more safety data? Because at this point .... we have millions and millions and millions of adults, teenagers, and children in this country and around the world who have received this vaccine safely.” TrialSite notes that ironically, right at this part of the MedPage Today article was a prominently embedded Moderna advertisement for its COVID-19 vaccine.
Directing Dr. Bracho-Sanchez’s response is the narrative that an urgent countermeasure to a deadly pathogen can be countered, and perhaps controlled now only with administration of the current vaccines. But she misses the point of parental concern. She doesn’t seek to educate parents about the real risk-benefit or “harm-benefit” profile but rather pushes the vaccine as aggressively as possible. Does Dr. Bracho-Sanchez mention anything about safety issues for children? No. Inherent in her replies during this webinar—essentially, there are no safety issues with the vaccines. Of course, parents aren’t as stupid as this apparent quack supposes.
Does she raise the incidence of myocarditis in young people, for example? Not at all. That’s a legitimate concern. While rare, it is occurring at a concerning rate according to some studies.
Does the FDA back or contradict the doctor’s position? First, a link to the agency’s Pfizer BNT162b2 Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) fact sheet. TrialSite has educated that while the product is technically “approved,” and the EUA product (BNT162b2) is in use in America, the product is technically supposed to be the same as the approved product Comirnaty. For the youngest children cohort, the EUA is absolutely the legal mechanism for this countermeasure. So, what does the FDA fact sheet say about safety for this youngest cohort?
The regulatory body notes to healthcare providers contraindications, declaring, “Do not administer Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine to individuals with known history of a severe allergic reaction (e.g., anaphylaxis) to any component of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine (see Full EUA Prescribing Information).” Does Bracho-Sanchez or Meyer have anything to say about this? Not at all.
Before delving into the agency’s safety warnings for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine product, the agency includes an important disclosure buried in page number 11 of the regulatory artifact under “Limitation of Effectiveness.”
The agency declares, “Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine may not protect all vaccine recipients.” This is an important point. While the original effectiveness under the relative risk reduction (RRR) interpretation was quite high, [the absolute risk reduction figure is far lower] those metrics were based on the vaccine’s original development to the original Wuhan spike variant. The RNA virus has mutated many times, much like influenza, and the current vaccine being used on children has not been changed to address these mutations.
This media has chronicled the FDA’s recent greenlight of the Omicron version of the vaccine but that won’t be ready until probably September, if not October. Importantly, the pharmaceutical producer (Pfizer or Moderna) isn’t required to follow the standard approach (e.g., full clinical trial, data collected, aggregated, and analyzed prior to acceptance) for the updated product.
Both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are developing bivalent updates that include the original now extinct spike protein while addressing a previous Omicron version. See "Public Health Leadership becomes more Reckless: Choices Prolong the Pandemic & Pad Pfizer’s Pockets.” for a read as to why this may not be an optimal approach, and in fact, may include some junk science.
On this topic, TrialSite recently provided a link to Pfizer's Phase 2 clinical trial that was just posted on July 25th. The company failed to include a candidate with BA.5 at all. They include two bivalent candidates. The first is Wuhan/BA.1 and the second is Wuhan/BA.2. It's possibly a mistake to include Wuhan since it may reinforce immune imprinting (aka: Original Antigenic Sin). It's an even bigger mistake to then also not use the currently dominant BA.5 which differs markedly from other Omicron subvariants. Two of the amino acid mutations that its codes for are highly correlated with antibody immune evasion.
Compounding the problem, it’s not clear if some new variant will be circulating by this fall. Again see “Public Health Leadership becomes more Reckless: Choices Prolong the Pandemic & Pad Pfizer’s Pockets.” for more on important details.
The current vaccines are less effective against Omicron variants, with high rates of breakthrough infections. This impacts the risk-benefit (or harm-benefit) analysis for young children. Yet the online seminar presenters act as if we are back in December 2020.
Of course, a counter argument is that the current vaccines may still reduce the probability of severe disease in young children, which while rare, can occur, while reducing the chances of long COVID. The former point may have some validity, and vaccination should be considered for at-risk children—e.g., immunocompromised, comorbidities, etc. It's not clear if the latter point is true at this point and given the presenters tendency to omit so much key data they unfortunately cannot be trusted.
Importantly, while severe COVID incidence with children are rare, the government and doctors that are part of countermeasure educational campaigns, nonetheless, push aggressively for vaccination. Yet at the same time, they discount safety problems which they also declare are rare. However, they do occur just as severe illness occurs.
What about adverse event warnings?
Under the “Warnings” category for the youngest cohort age 6 months to 4 years old the FDA shares under “Warnings Management of Acute Allergic Reactions” that healthcare providers must understand to determine what “appropriate medical treatment used to manage immediate allergic reactions must be immediately available in the event an acute anaphylactic reaction occurs following administration of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine.”
The FDA instructs providers to “Monitor Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine recipients for the occurrence of immediate adverse reactions according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines”—See here.
The most notable adverse event type in younger people involves cardiovascular-related issues involving myocarditis and pericarditis. These safety risk, while rare, are quite relevant. The agency guides:
“Myocarditis and Pericarditis Post marketing data demonstrate increased risks of myocarditis and pericarditis, particularly within 7 days following the second dose. The observed risk is highest in males 12 through 17 years of age. Although some cases required intensive care support, available data from short-term follow-up suggest that most individuals have had resolution of symptoms with conservative management.”
Importantly, the FDA acknowledges the absolute void in knowledge as to long term effects declaring: “Information is not yet available about potential long-term sequelae.”
Do you think some parents may think twice about this topic? Shouldn’t Dr. Bracho-Sanchez, and for that matter, Ms. Firth at MedPage Today raise the topic if the FDA deems it material enough to disclose in the EUA fact sheet? Of course, they should if they were objective and unbiased, but they are not. Both have agendas, as does MedPage Today, which subsists off pharmaceutical advertising. The media was acquired by media aggregator EveryDay Health back in 2010 and must bring in the numbers like all businesses.
Back to the FDA on the topic of vaccine safety, “The CDC has published considerations related to myocarditis and pericarditis after vaccination, including for vaccination of individuals with a history of myocarditis or pericarditis.” See here.
Other safety issues are raised from fainting to other issues such as “altered immunocompetence.”
What about concerns of breastfeeding mothers?
The MedPage Today piece authored by Ms. Firth reports on the webinar and the CDC’s Dr. Meyer sharing that “encouraging” data reveals that babies of mothers who were vaccinated during pregnancy have lower rates of hospitalization while they're young.”
MedPage Today furthermore points to a Dutch study published in JAMA Network suggesting antibodies can pass from the mother to baby while breastfeeding yet acknowledge Meyer’s admission “but researchers still need more information to know whether these antibodies provide protection.”
Did the online seminar presenters discuss any risks as disclosed by the FDA itself? Not at all. Did MedPage Today? Ditto.
What do FDA’s EUA fact sheets declare about breastfeeding and pregnancy? TrialSite contributor Sonia Elijah has written a handful of pieces covering this topic. Pregnant women were excluded from the clinical trials that led to the EUA and ultimate approval of Pfizer-BioNTech, for example. Reviewing Pfizer’s disclosed confidential documents Elijah shared “It’s alarming that Pfizer makes the assertion that ‘there were no safety signals that emerged from the review of these cases of use in pregnancy and while breastfeeding.’ Data reviewed despite the heavily redacted nature of the document “appears to contradict this upbeat assessment,” reported Elijah.
What’s the basis for a safety thumbs up—some post marketing data as well as a study on female rats which the FDA outright discloses—see Section 8 “Use in Specific Populations, 8.1 Pregnancy” on page 18 of the FDA disclosure.
The agency notes:
“All pregnancies have a risk of birth defect, loss, or other adverse outcomes. In the US general population, the estimated background risk of major birth defects and miscarriage in clinically recognized pregnancies is 2% to 4% and 15% to 20%, respectively. Available data on COMIRNATY administered to pregnant women are insufficient to inform vaccine-associated risks in pregnancy. A developmental toxicity study has been performed in female rats administered the equivalent of a single human dose of COMIRNATY on 4 occasions, twice prior to mating and twice during gestation. These studies revealed no evidence of harm to the fetus due to the vaccine (see Animal Data).”
What else does the FDA have to say about mRNA vaccination and pregnant persons?
In “VACCINE INFORMATION FACT SHEET FOR RECIPIENTS AND CAREGIVERS ABOUT COMIRNATY (COVID-19 VACCINE, mRNA) AND THE PFIZER-BIONTECH COVID-19 VACCINE TO PREVENT CORONAVIRUS DISEASE 2019 (COVID-19) FOR USE IN INDIVIDUALS 12 YEARS OF AGE AND OLDER“ the FDA recommends that anyone pregnant and/or breastfeeding “discuss your options” with your provider. See the link.
Importantly, in the FDA’s Comirnaty disclosures on breastfeeding the agency declares under 8.2 Lactation, Risk Summary:
“It is not known whether COMIRNATY is excreted in human milk. Data are not available to assess the effects of COMIRNATY on the breastfed infant or on milk production/excretion. The developmental and health benefits of breastfeeding should be considered along with the mother’s clinical need for COMIRNATY and any potential adverse effects on the breastfed child from COMIRNATY or from the underlying maternal condition. For preventive vaccines, the underlying maternal condition is susceptibility to disease prevented by the vaccine.”
Sell…Sell…Sell…
Despite all these uncertainties, risks, and of course potential benefits no risk-benefit analysis is presented—not by any of the physicians, the government representative nor the media. Rather the presenters of this webinar hosted by the COVID-19 Vaccine Education and Equity Project appear to operate in sales overdrive, again driven by the assumption that this deadly emergency needs imminent vaccine countermeasures to control the pathogen.
Meyer tells the audience, “If your baby is 6 months or older, they really should get vaccinated, regardless of if you got vaccinated during pregnancy and including if you're still breastfeeding.” All that matters is that it represents an urgent attempt to boost antibodies. As covered above, there is absolutely no consideration for any risk-benefit or harm-benefit analyses so vital with a novel vaccine (or any medicinal product).
Meyer mentions nothing about possible risks or the disclosure by the FDA that the vaccine may not even work at all. This is not to discount the potential for vaccinating a 6-month-old child, depending on the risk of the particular circumstances.
At least for purposes of this online seminar, the CDC’s Sarah Meyer, Dr. Edith Bracho-Sanchez and countless others are not objective, unbiased actors in the pandemic. They are not squaring with providers nor the public about the true nature of the situation.
They don’t offer practical tools to help doctors, nor the public better understand actual risk-benefit/harm-benefit analyses associated with the mRNA vaccines and the actual virus and its consequences. They operate under the assumption that we are still in December of 2020 and that the effectiveness rates are above 90% and that there are not any safety issues. The purported experts we must depend on fail to acknowledge the actual discloses in the regulatory material owned by the FDA.
TrialSite suggests this set of observations is actually magnified many times over across American society—and beyond—representing a dangerous situation that threatens national security and public health.
Mounting erosion of trust in our public health institutions, health regulators, and apex research institutes not to mention health systems and drug companies portends a dangerous trend that will lead to perverted, radical forms of politics, a movement to avoid absolutely vital vaccines, and other perilous trends.
A Dark Place & Time in America
This pandemic unfortunately, at this point is now being gravely mismanaged. This isn’t a partisan accusation. The grossly negligent response commenced under the Trump administration. It was Donald Trump after all that gutted President Obama’s pandemic response units and countered Obama’s halt on gain-of-function research. Remember, Trump denied the severity of COVID to the entire American public early on. He admitted in the Woodward interview that he didn't want to scare the population--like we were his dumb children? Just Pathetic. Trump’s Operation Warpspeed, while offering the potential pathway for innovative disruption in research, also appears to have represented a massive taxpayer giveaway to much wasteful research with little to no accountability to the public. Lots of people got rich during the pandemic while most of us got poorer.
The politicization of everything health under the Trump regime was apparent, including a sort of “MAGAization” of pandemic response (recklessly pulling out of WHO and allowing the Chinese to take on a leadership role for example).
Yet the Biden administration is equally, if not more corrupt, just in different ways, incompetent, and dangerous to American civil society, reckless in its embrace and intensification of junk science-based decision making. While uniform censorship increased under Biden, this has merely served to ensure a complete lack of any real scientific dialogue and when needed, scientific dissent—vital at times for real science. Will it be liberals that bring fascistic tendencies to America? This author always assumed conservatives would drive that train. Now it's not clear. Or perhaps its clear that both parties have totalitarian leading tendencies.
Publications such as MedPage Today or even the prominent STAT increasingly are reduced to crude outlets for industry propaganda (based on to some extent junk science). Unfortunately, during the pandemic it’s become clear even prestigious medical journals are for sale.
Right wing media like Epoch Times, while embracing alternative narratives which are positive, remain heavily biased, political rags, mostly pouncing on the right's primordial mistrust of government in a true bid to monetize the situation as much as possible.
Also, some fringe right wing outlets promote outlandish concepts--like the vaccines are death jabs created to implant microchips in people, part of a diabolical transhumanism scheme cooked up by the World Economic Forum to depopulate the planet.
Yes, these are dangerous times not just because we are facing a dangerous pandemic but because of the corruption and political polarization. So, you want us to escape from this dark place? This requires transformative, non-partisan, grounded politics that allows for a popular culture supporting true science, as opposed to junk-science propagated and reinforced by industry-government cabals on the one hand (the overpowering players given their money, power and control thanks to the mainstream media's subservience) or fringe loonies and their outlandish theories on the other, which can do a lot of damage. Unfortunately, the prognosis isn’t good for most of us in the middle.”
Here is some information of a new book challenging the very basis of the vaccine paradigm, Turtles All The Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth, the title being based upon the idea of an infinite regress in knowledge:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down
“In 2019, a remarkable book, “Turtles All The Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth,” was published in Israel. The book, originally written in Hebrew, is a comprehensive examination of the evidence behind the assertion that vaccines are safe and effective.
Though it might easily have been lost to obscurity, the book gained initial acclaim when the leading medical journal in Israel, Harefuah (“Medicine”), gave it a positive review.
Writing in the September 2019 issue of Harefuah, two senior academic criminologists, Nati Ronel and Eti Elisha, “found the book to be well-written, serious, scientific and important” offering “a comprehensive view of the issue.”
“Turtles All The Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth” became the first book critical of vaccines to have ever received a positive review from a mainstream medical journal.
Criticism of Ronel and Elisha came quickly from the medical establishment, but as Mary Holland, editor of the book and Children’s Health Defense president and general counsel states in the book’s foreword:
“Their appraisal of the book still stands today, unscathed: in the three years since its (Hebrew) publication, no medical or medical science professional has succeeded in refuting the book’s claims.”
The reason the information offered in the book has yet to be refuted is simple. The book’s 1,200+ citations reference only mainstream scientific journals and health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the World Health Organization.
An attack on the book is ultimately an attack on the medical establishment itself.
The book was recently published in English and has been available since July 2022.
If you wish to productively engage in the vaccine debate that is sweeping the world today, this book is a must-read.
Turtles and COVID-19
Had “Turtles All The Way Down” received its deserved attention from the international medical community when it was written one year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the world may very well have avoided the predicament that we are in today.
Nevertheless, the book is still relevant. Rather than enumerating the obvious failures of the current COVID-19 vaccine campaigns, “Turtles All The Way Down” instead offers a compelling explanation of why we should have predicted the vaccines’ failure from their inception — but didn’t.
I am a doctor and have trained at some of the finest institutions in the U.S. Yet I didn’t know much about mRNA technology or vaccines in general in the summer of 2020.
In other words, I was like most doctors. We knew how vaccines worked in principle and we had, at one point in our education, memorized the recommended vaccination schedule for children.
When the CDC announced that the Pfizer formulation met and exceeded minimum efficacy requirements for Emergency Use Authorization, I witnessed our nation breathe a sigh of relief.
I also witnessed colleagues gleefully planning their visits to vaccination clinics to receive this gift of modern medicine.
None of my colleagues were interested in the results of the trial. Nor were they curious enough to know why our health authorities were so confident in their assessment.
When the results of Pfizer’s multicenter trial of its BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine were published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), it was obvious that there were more questions than answers, at least to the discerning amongst us.
According to the NEJM, yes, the trial data indicated that the “vaccine” had a calculated efficacy of 90% in preventing severe disease — but that was only for a matter of weeks and only if measured from the point of maximum efficacy (two weeks after the second dose).
Moreover, only 10 participants out of approximately 40,000 got severe COVID-19 (nine of whom received the placebo). That meant about 2,500 people had to be vaccinated to prevent a single case of severe COVID-19.
Six of every 1,000 recipients were deemed to have had a reaction that was an imminent threat to their life or limb, needed hospitalization or surgical intervention and/or ended up with a permanent disability.
Why would the public accept a treatment that would result in 15 serious adverse events for every case of severe COVID-19 it prevented?
And what about all of the suspicious withdrawals from the trials? Why did 5 times more vaccine recipients get pulled out of the trial within seven days of getting the second dose compared to those who got the placebo?
What happened to these 311 volunteers and why were they excluded from the trial soon after getting the second dose (VRBPAC Memorandum, Table 2)?
Surely the FDA would ask some hard questions. But it didn’t. Neither did anyone else I knew. Not my friends, my neighbors nor my fellow physicians.
Why on Earth wasn’t anyone asking any questions??
The explanation is rooted in unquestioned beliefs deeply held by our society regarding Western medicine and its apparent winning record against diseases that have historically exacted devastating tolls on our species.
The COVID-19 vaccines were presumed to be an enormous success because vaccines have been regarded by many as the best contribution of modern medicine to humanity. Vaccines have a powerful mystique. They don’t cure illness, they prevent it. They keep us healthy!
And we know they work because such things like polio don’t exist anymore (at least not around here anyway). They are obviously safe, otherwise we wouldn’t be injecting them into human beings from the time they are only a few hours old (Hep B), would we?
In retrospect I now see that simply asking questions about the COVID-19 vaccine trial results was seen as an assault on modern medicine, an institution lauded for using innovative technology and research to reach unassailable truths through objectivity while maintaining the highest standards of ethics and safety through oversight by public institutions like the National Institutes of Health, the CDC and the FDA.
Questioning the COVID-19 vaccines was equated with questioning all vaccines. It wasn’t just seen as unscientific, it was considered unpatriotic. It wasn’t just unpopular, it was heretical. It was an attack on the secular savior of humanity.
In order to see what was transpiring at the time, it was necessary to first examine the lens through which we were looking. Referring people to suspicious numbers in a table in the supplementary material of a published study wasn’t going to change a whole lot of minds. I can personally attest to this.
“Turtles All The Way Down” approaches the issue from the only way possible: from the beginning.
A unique and timely book
The phrase, “Turtles all the way down” is the punch line from an anecdote often told in the scientific community.
As the story goes, an elderly woman, after patiently listening to an astronomer’s lecture about the Earth and its place in the solar system, confronts him to let him know that she disagrees with his “theory” as a better one exists.
When asked to explain, she states that the Earth is actually held upon the shoulders of four very large elephants who stand upon the shell of an even larger turtle.
When the bemused astronomer asks, “But what then does the turtle stand upon?” the woman responds confidently, “Upon an even larger turtle! You see, it’s turtles all the way down!”
The story demonstrates how a myth can substitute for evidence if we abandon logic and our level of inquiry remains shallow.
The “turtles” anecdote is also a commentary on the general tenor of discussion between laypersons and scientists, wherein the rational professional is always able to deftly uncover the defective reasoning behind the foolish ideas held by “non-scientists” by asking the most basic of questions.
But what happens when we turn the tables and demand answers to the most basic questions around vaccine science? How do our agencies of public health know all vaccines are safe and effective?
Could the entire “safe and effective” narrative be no more than a series of interdependent myths that ultimately rest on thin air and not comprehensive and reproducible evidence?
Is it turtles all the way down?
The book succeeds where others have not
Before discussing the merits of this body of work, it is worthwhile to mention another peculiarity: the authors are anonymous.
The reason for this is obvious as Holland explains:
“Whenever someone questions any part of the official narrative, no matter how minor the point or reasonable the argument, that person is immediately attacked — to the point that well-known dedicated scientists in numerous countries have lost their careers for challenging vaccine dogma.”
Beyond protecting their own careers and reputation, maintaining anonymity allows the authors another advantage. When solid, coherent and factual criticism of vaccine safety and efficacy do appear, debunkers and so-called “fact checkers” do not respond with opposing evidentiary arguments because they can’t. There simply aren’t any.
They are left with only one arrow in their quiver: ad hominem attacks, i.e., character assaults against authors by using pejorative terms like “science denier” or “anti-vaxxer” to mislead readers or trick them into believing that any book that leads to unflattering conclusions about vaccines must surely be the product of ignorant minds or of crafty snake oil salesmen with ulterior motives.
Sadly, this has proven to be a very effective method to suppress healthy and needed debate around vaccine science.
By hiding their identity, the authors have side-stepped this predictable line of attack upon their work.
However, by doing so another wrinkle appears: How then is the reader able to determine whether the book is an earnest effort by reputable scientists to present all sides of a long and complicated topic or the musings of quack doctors and pseudo scientists that delight in misleading the public anonymously?
The answer is simple. You have to read it. Check the numerous citations. Discuss it with your friends, your family and your doctor.
Yes. You will have to make up your own mind. In this time where information appears at a dizzying pace and accusations of misinformation erupt just as frequently, we will eventually have to face the reality that sooner or later, we will have to rely upon our own wits to make sense of what is going on right now.
I believe the authors of “Turtles All The Way Down” are aware of the predicament the public is in. This is one reason the book is so powerful. Very little prior knowledge is expected of the reader. This makes the material appropriate for laypersons and medical professionals alike.
The authors were also able to give the book broad appeal by making it understandable to the casual reader, but by including more than 1,200 references from reputable sources, it cannot be dismissed as an oversimplified version of “the facts” by those who wish to get to the bottom of things.
In order to answer the simple question of whether the “safe and effective” vaccine narrative is scientific or merely a myth we have to start with the basics and see what rabbit holes appear and then see where they lead.
The book does just that:
- Chapter 1 describes how vaccine clinical trials are conducted and the limits of what can be gleaned by these kinds of investigations. How much can we know about the safety of the products we inject into our children if no vaccine on the CDC’s childhood schedulewas ever tested against a true placebo?
- Chapter 2 offers another sobering reality. There has been minimal scientific investigation into the mechanism by which vaccines could harm our physiology. Without any understanding of how they might cause adverse effects, how can we possibly know they don’t?
- Chapter 3 delivers unapologetic criticism of the adverse event reporting systems that purportedly serve to capture safety signals after modestly powered clinical trials are conducted and the vaccine is administered to tens of millions or more. They don’t work, but have they been designed that way purposefully?
- Chapters 4 and 5 demonstrate how epidemiological studies can easily be manipulated to produce a desired outcome. The authors take the discussion beyond the hypothetical and dissect several studies widely cited by vaccine proponents to reveal the bias that permeates their methodology and conclusions.
- Chapter 6 attacks our health agencies’ claims that the childhood vaccination schedule has been thoroughly tested. Is this claim founded in fact, i.e., randomized controlled trials? No, it is not. How about through large, long-term observational studies between vaccinated and unvaccinated children? No again. Certainly such studies would quiet vaccine skeptics. Why haven’t they been done?
- Chapter 7 demonstrates the glaring lack of evidence behind commonly held ideas that the timing and quantity of vaccines are not only optimal but safe.
- Chapter 8 delivers a stiff blow to the vaccine dogma by pointing out the elephant in the room: Mortality from diseases that are targeted by the childhood vaccine program had already significantly declined from their peaks prior to the widespread use of these vaccinations. And the elephant’s shadow: Why has the incidence of chronic disease exploded since the childhood vaccine program was expanded?
- In Chapter 9 the authors teach us about herd immunity, the carrot dangled in front of the public to urge us to participate in vaccination campaigns for the greater good. However, only a minority of the vaccines deployed upon our children are good enough to ever deliver herd immunity, no matter how many of them get into line. Yes, that is correct. Herd immunity is first a function of a given vaccine’s ability to prevent infection and transmission. If a vaccine cannot provide this, herd immunity cannot be attained. Period.
An honest examination of the book to this point should open most discerning readers to the possibility that the vaccine narrative may in fact be anchored more in myth than in science.
How can we know that childhood vaccines are safe if none have been tested against a true placebo?
How do we know that the “scare tactics” used by “anti-vaxxers” aren’t accurate stories of previously healthy lives that were devastated by vaccines? How do we know that adverse events are exceedingly rare if the CDC admits that our reporting systems capture only a fraction of them?
Why are so many children suffering from chronic illness today? Where were the inhalers, EpiPens and nut-free tables in public schools 50 years ago?
Why won’t our public health agencies, which are highly funded by taxpayer money and multinational for-profit pharmaceutical companies, conduct proper studies of the appropriate scale to compare the overall health of vaccinated to unvaccinated children to put this whole issue to rest once and for all?
The biggest turtle
We finally arrive at the biggest topic of all in Chapter 10. It’s the hard stop for many vaccine proponents, especially physicians, who may be open to a spirited debate from time to time.
But no diligent critique of vaccine science can circumvent the topic of polio, the poster child of the modern vaccine movement.
The authors do not shy away from this challenge, devoting one-quarter of their book to this polarizing issue. The authors ask very simple questions, like “Why was the incidence of polio already in decline prior to widespread use of the Salk vaccine in the Western World?” and “Why did the incidence of polio-like paralysis triple in Third-World countries coinciding with the World Health Organization’s intensive vaccine campaigns there?”
These questions lead to other questions that lead to other questions still. Unless these questions can be answered we have to wonder what is holding up this last turtle — if anything.
Something for nearly everyone
The book is not for everyone. If you would rather not consider the possibility that we have been misled by our public health agencies for decades I would instead direct you to corporate-funded media and CDC bulletins that ignore the criticism coming from a rapidly growing number of scientists and health professionals around the childhood vaccination program.
On the other hand …
If you wish to avail yourself of the enormous amount of data and studies from reputable sources that challenge the vaccine doctrine I suggest reading this book in its entirety.
If you are a vaccine enthusiast and do not wish to waste your time with foolish vaccine cautionary tales, I would invite you to read the counterargument section at the end of each chapter. This is where the authors take their arguments one step further by listing and directly addressing the most common challenges to their claims.
If you are a parent of a young child I would recommend, at the very least, you read the authors’ suggested questions to pose to your trusted pediatrician or family physician.
Finally, if you are a healthcare professional, this book is essential. Sooner or later your patients will ask you the same questions the authors are asking — and answering.
At the very least it will provide you with links to hundreds of key publications organized by topic in one place for future reference.
“Turtles All The Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth” is not an anti-vaccine manifesto. The authors did not present evidence that every vaccine is unequivocally deleterious.
Instead, they very effectively demonstrate there is no evidence proving any vaccine is safe. This despite the deluge of official public service announcements, social media campaigns, billboard ads on our turnpikes and posters in our pediatricians’ offices that say otherwise.
The authors invite us to dig deeper and ask the obvious question: Why? Why, after seven decades, do we not have any proof that vaccines provide more benefit than risk?
Why are all vaccines on the childhood schedule tested against other vaccines or non-placebos to establish safety when a true placebo would be safer and offer more information?
Why is the CDC unwilling to replace the inadequate Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System or VAERS with a working solution that was modeled a decade ago?
Why hasn’t a study that compares the overall health of unvaccinated children to vaccinated children ever been done?
The authors politely refrain from answering these questions. They can’t, and they have nothing to gain by speculating.
However, these are not questions to be asked of the authors — they need to be asked of our public health authorities who apparently have no interest in answering them.”
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