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Letters to the Editor Issue 217
listed in letters to the editor, originally published in issue 217 - October 2014
CDC Whistleblower: Widespread Manipulation of Scientific Data - Higher Autism Rate Among African-American Boys Receiving MMR Vaccine
August 18, 2014
A Study by Focus Autism Foundation Finds: CDC Whistleblower Reveals Widespread Manipulation of Scientific Data and Top-Down Pressure on CDC Scientists to Support the Fraudulent Application of Government Policies on Vaccine Safety
Whistleblower Says CDC Knew in 2003 of Higher Autism Rate Among African-American Boys Receiving MMR Shot Earlier Than 36 Months
A top research scientist working for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) played a key role in helping Dr Brian Hooker of the Focus Autism Foundation uncover data manipulation by the CDC that obscured a higher incidence of autism in African-American boys. The whistleblower came to the attention of Hooker, a PhD in biochemical engineering, after he had made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for original data on the DeStefano et al MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) and autism study.
Dr Hooker's study, published August 8 in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Translational Neurodegeneration, shows that African-American boys receiving their first MMR vaccine before 36 months of age are 3.4 times more likely to develop autism vs. after 36 months.
According to Dr Hooker, the CDC whistleblower informant - who wishes to remain anonymous - guided him to evidence that a statistically significant relationship between the age the MMR vaccine was first given and autism incidence in African-American boys was hidden by CDC researchers. After data were gathered on 2,583 children living in Atlanta, Georgia who were born between 1986 and 1993, CDC researchers excluded children that did not have a valid State of Georgia birth certificate - reducing the sample size being studied by 41%. Hooker explains that by introducing this arbitrary criteria into the analysis, the cohort size was sharply reduced, eliminating the statistical power of the findings and negating the strong MMR-autism link in African American boys.
Dr Hooker has worked closely with the CDC whistleblower, and he viewed highly sensitive documents related to the study via Congressional request from US Representative Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The CDC documents from Congress and discussions that Hooker had with the whistleblower reveal widespread manipulation of scientific data and top-down pressure on CDC scientists to support fraudulent application of government policies on vaccine safety. Based on raw data used in the 2004 DeStefano et al study obtained under FOIA, Dr Hooker found that the link between MMR vaccination and autism in African-American boys was obscured by the introduction of irrelevant and unnecessary birth certificate criteria - ostensibly to reduce the size of the study.
The results of the original study first appeared in the journal Pediatrics which receives financial support from vaccine makers via advertising and direct donations, according to a CBS News report. The DeStefano et al study is widely used by the CDC and other public health organizations to dismiss any link between vaccines and autism - a neurological disorder on the rise.
Dr Hooker stated "The CDC knew about the relationship between the age of first MMR vaccine and autism incidence in African-American boys as early as 2003, but chose to cover it up." The whistleblower confirmed this.
When asked if there could be any scientific basis for excluding children born outside of Georgia, Hooker responded, "I know of none, and none has been provided by the authors of the DeStefano study." He added, "The exclusion is reminiscent of tactics historically used to deprive African-Americans of the vote by requiring valid birth certificates."
Dr Hooker concluded further study is needed to determine why this specific effect (3.4-fold increase when MMR is administered prior to 36 months) is seen exclusively in African-American males, and determine whether delaying the first MMR vaccination should be advised for this population. A link between the MMR vaccine and autism has been conceded in cases compensated by the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
The CDC whistleblower informant, who has worked for the government agency for over a decade, remarked to Dr Hooker in phone calls: "We've missed ten years of research because the CDC is so paralyzed right now by anything related to autism. They're not doing what they should be doing because they're afraid to look for things that might be associated." The whistleblower alleges criminal wrongdoing of his supervisors, and he expressed deep regret about his role in helping the CDC hide data.
According to David Lewis PhD former senior-level microbiologist with the US EPA's Office of Research & Development, skewing scientific data to support government policies is a major problem at federal agencies, including EPA, CDC, and USDA. Lewis, who was terminated by EPA for publishing papers in Nature that questioned the science the agency uses to support certain regulations, believes top-down pressure on federal scientists and researchers working on government-funded projects in academia is jeopardizing public health.
"Working for the government is no different than working for corporations. You either toe the line or find yourself looking for another way to make a living," Lewis says. "No one would be surprised if Merck published unreliable data supporting the safety of its products. Why would anyone be surprised that the CDC is publishing skewed data to conclude that the vaccines it recommends are safe? We need a better system, where scientists are free to be honest."
The Focus Autism Foundation is dedicated to providing information to the public that exposes the cause or causes of the autism epidemic and the rise of chronic illness - focusing on the role of vaccinations. Read the complete story:
Learn more at www.Focusautism.org
Further Information
Watch this highly revealing Video http://vimeo.com/user5503203/review/103711143/91f7d3d4d8
Contact Information
Jenny Kefauver, Phone: +1 703-842-7405; +1 703-850-3533, jenny@jkpublicrelationsdc.com
Source
Breaking News: CDC Whistleblower Text Messages To Andy Wakefield: Study Would Have “Supported His Scientific Opinion”
September 2, 2014 By Celia Farber
“I apologize again for the price you paid for my dishonesty…”
CDC Whistleblower Dr William Thompson
The last desperate effort when the CDC whistleblower story broke last week was for the vaccine establishment and media to drive a wedge between Dr Thompson and Dr Andrew Wakefield, whose “fraud” (according to British journalist Brian Deer) has been made to carry the sins of the entire vaccine industry for many years.
Dr Wakefield shared two text messages with The Truth Barrier that he and his wife received from Dr Thompson. The first one was to Dr Wakefield’s wife, from August 20, 2014, Carmel, and it read:
“I do believe your husband’s career was unjustly damaged and this study would have supported his scientific opinion. Hopefully I can help repair it.”
The second one is a JPG, here:
Polly Tommey, Director of Autism Media Channel, told The Truth Barrier there are more whistleblowers trying to find the courage, and or, the legal protection, to speak.
“There are more whistleblowers coming out,” she said. “We know who they are and we’ve spoken to them. They’re petrified. These sources make Thompson pale in comparison, some of them. They know the MMR is a massive problem, data has been corrupted, they’ve been told to hide things…”
About Celia Farber
Celia Farber is a journalist, author, and editor based in New York City, who grew up in Sweden and New York City. Farber has written on a variety of subjects for SPIN, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Harper’s, Salon, New York Press, and many more. In 2008, Celia Farber won the Semmelweis International Society’s Clean Hands Award For Investigative Journalism.
Further Information
Source: Bolen Report
www.bolenreport.com/autism/Whistlblower%20apology%20to%20Wakefield.htm
Truth Barrier - Celia Farber
The Fox Guarding the Henhouse
by Jamie Deckoff-Jones MD
It’s been quite a while since I’ve had the urge to blog. Throughout the years when I was writing regularly, even when very angry, I always had a positive feeling that awareness was growing and answers would be found. However, I’ve lost that feeling in a growing realization of just how corrupt the people we need to save us actually are. I haven’t wanted to write from a place of negativity, because God knows there’s already enough bad news, but the recent CDC whistleblower scandal, dismissed by the mainstream media, has given me twitchy fingers again.
As far as I can tell from the various sources on the internet, Brian Hooker PhD an engineer, autism dad and board member of an organization called Focus Autism, after years of trying to exercise his Freedom of Information Act rights, managed to obtain the original data set for a study published by the CDC in 2004: Age at first measles-mumps-rubella vaccination in children with autism and school-matched control subjects: a population-based study in metropolitan Atlanta by DeStefano et al, 5 authors including one William Thompson. Apparently, late last year, Thompson contacted Hooker and in a series of conversations confessed privately to fraudulent manipulation of data to cover-up a 340% increase in autism in African American males who were given the MMR vaccine on time compared to those vaccinated later. However, the decision was made to use only children with a valid birth certificate, thus eliminating enough black children to dilute the increase to below statistical significance. Some email by Thompson expressing his concerns at the time have also come to light. All of this is very well covered on the Age Of Autism website.
Brian Hooker recently published a paper reanalyzing the original data and showing the association: Measles-mumps-rubella vaccination timing and autism among young african american boys: a reanalysis of CDC data. In a YouTube, Dr Thompson was outed, initially with his voice disguised electronically, then a couple of days later, without the distortion, including this quote, “Oh my God, I did not believe that we did what we did, but we did. It’s all there… This is the lowest point in my career, that I went along with that paper. I have great shame now when I meet families of kids with autism, because I have been part of the problem.”
Despite a chillingly complete black out by the mainstream media, Dr Thompson issued a statement published on his lawyers’ website, which included this admission of guilt. “I regret that my co-authors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the journal Pediatrics. The omitted data suggested that African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 months were at increased risk for autism. Decisions were made regarding which findings to report after the data were collected, and I believe that the final study protocol was not followed.” Then the predictable backpedalling. He believes vaccines have saved millions of lives, blah, blah, blah. What can he say to ameliorate his admission that he is personally responsible for publishing disinformation, a lie, when the truth could have spared how many black boys from relentless suffering? Thousands? Tens of thousands?
According to the CDC website, Coleen Boyle, the senior author of the paper in question went to work at the CDC in 1984 and now “serves as Director of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD)”. She was appointed to this position in 2004, the same year the DeStefano paper was published. It was on her watch, working as a visiting researcher in Boyle’s department, that Danish researcher Poul Thorsen, was financed by the CDC, in part to study the relationship between autism and vaccine exposure. 22 publications come up when PubMed is queried with his name and “autism”, two in high impact journals (Pediatrics and NEJM) purporting to prove that thimerosal and the MMR vaccine don’t cause autism. In 2011, he was indicted on 22 counts of wire fraud and money laundering for diverting over a million dollars of CDC money to his personal accounts. His papers have not been retracted. In fact, he is still publishing. Here is his listing on the Office of Inspector General’s Most Wanted Fugitives list (scroll down the page). The combined efforts of these fraudsters constitutes much of the literature on vaccine safety.
If they had been honest, how might the world be different today? Might vaccinations have been questioned in an even broader context than black boys with autism? What about the combined effect of all vaccines on innate immunity, in not just black children, but all children? What about children with ME? What about children with autoimmune diseases? 5 authors took responsibility for that paper. How many papers did they publish collectively which state unequivocally that vaccines are safe (even though the various package inserts state pretty clearly they are not)? More than half of our children have a chronic disease. Is this one of the reasons why? I say one of the reasons, because there are so many confounders, so many ways our children have been poisoned in our toxic world, in addition to vaccines. Since some unvaccinated children are autistic, does that mean that vaccines don’t cause autism? Of course not, but that is what our vaccine experts would have you believe.
Data falsified, drug companies indemnified from consequences, media outlets proving beyond a shadow of doubt that their talking heads are shills for industry, eye witnesses of the damage done discredited as nutcases or worse. It can only be called a conspiracy.
I have no expectation that this will play out in a just manner. First there was a media blackout, then Dr Hooker’s paper was removed from the web, with a statement that it might be incorrect or endanger the public; it is back up today with a disclaimer that it is a troubled paper. CNN finally reported, concluding vaccines are absolutely safe, except in the rarest of cases, and people who decide not to vaccinate are the problem. The only other mainstream media report seems to be Time Magazine, a few days ago. It is behind a pay wall, but here is the headline and subtitle, “Whistleblower Claims CDC Covered Up Data Showing Vaccine-Autism Link: The claim, however, may just be more unsubstantiated fuel from the anti-vaccination movement.” That sounds unbiased, doesn’t it?
So there you have it, folks. Even when the evil doing is exposed, actually admitted, there is no interest. Dr Hooker and Dr Thompson will both be discredited in different ways. Dr Hooker will be called a liar and not competent to evaluate the data because his degree isn’t in statistics. Dr Thompson will be deemed unstable and his guilt delusional. Whatever it takes. The vaccine program is a sacred cow. It is thought of as the one unequivocally good thing modern medicine has accomplished. Anyone who questions that meme is an antivax crazy person. All the parents that witnessed their children regress into autism from their vaccines are too ignorant to understand what really happened.
The doctors administering the shots have been rendered comatose with explicit instructions not to worry about all the harm they are doing, since, like the drug companies, they are indemnified by the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. Kangaroo Court, created by necessity, because vaccines are dangerous, but designed to perpetuate the myth that they are not. If we made doctors responsible for the bad outcomes, things would change in a hurry. If every doctor had to consider the merits of each shot, what is actually in the shot and what is the risk to the particular child sitting in front of me right now if I do or don’t give it, what would happen then? I can feel paediatricians shuddering from here. At this moment, how many paediatricians are even aware of exactly what is in each of those shots or how they are manufactured? Do they know that some of them contain adventitious replication competent retroviruses and pieces of retroviruses, when we know only too well that retroviruses have a propensity to recombine and rescue one another? Let’s not forget the Recombinant origin of the retrovirus XMRV and its riveting sequel, Recombinant origin, contamination, and de-discovery of XMRV.
The fact that good things happened because of the vaccine program for small pox and polio in the mid-20th century does not justify what has come since. And just because good things happened, doesn’t mean bad things didn’t happen too. Millions of people were infected with SV40 for example; that mishap is acknowledged, but any possible adverse consequences denied. The retroviruses that inevitably were present in the first yellow fever and oral polio vaccines aren’t even acknowledged. Even now, when we have the technology to know what we are doing, we are still doing it. For example, we know that live attenuated virus vaccines grown in chick embryo fibroblasts contain avian leukosis virus and other retroviral nucleic acid sequences, but our CDC scientists have determined it is safe to inject these viruses and pieces of viruses into babies, in order to prevent diseases which, in fact, most individuals would be better off getting naturally. Here is a paper where they found bad stuff, but conclude it is safe anyway. Viral Nucleic Acids in Live-Attenuated Vaccines: Detection of Minority Variants and an Adventitious Virus.
Mutations and minority variants, relative to vaccine strains, not known to affect attenuation were detected in OPV, mumps virus, and varicella-zoster virus. The anticipated detection of endogenous retroviral sequences from the producer avian and primate cells was confirmed. Avian leukosis virus (ALV), previously shown to be non-infectious for humans, was present as RNA in viral particles, while simian retrovirus (SRV) was present as genetically defective DNA. Rotarix, an orally administered rotavirus vaccine, contained porcine circovirus-1 (PCV1), a highly prevalent non-pathogenic pig virus, which has not been shown to be infectious in humans. Hybridization of vaccine nucleic acids to a pan microbial microarray confirmed the presence of endogenous retroviral and PCV1 nucleic acids.
The “extensive proof” that avian leukosis virus (ALV) does not pose a threat to human health consists of three small studies, published from 1999 to 2003, all by the CDC and all by the same senior author, W Heneine. Interestingly, his name also appears on the Lipkin XMRV study. His 1999 paper said, “Our data indicate that the sources of RT activity in all RT-positive measles and mumps vaccines may not be similar and depend on the particular endogenous retroviral loci present in the chicken cell substrate used.”, but PCR of PBMCs on 33 children after measles and mumps vaccines were negative, so they concluded this should “provide reassurance for current immunization policies.” In 2001, 206 recipients of the MMR were negative by PCR for 2 known avian retroviruses and had negative serology to an antibody developed specifically for the study. In 2003, studying adventitious retroviruses contaminating 3 brands of the yellow fever vaccine, they found there were 3 kinds of RT, more than expected from the 2 retroviruses they knew to be there; nevertheless, they concluded, “None of the samples were seropositive by an ALV-E-based Western blot assay or had detectable EAV or ALV-E RNA sequences by RT-PCR. YF vaccines produced by the three manufacturers all have particles containing EAV [Equine arteritis virus] genomes and various levels of defective or nondefective ALV-E sequences. The absence of evidence of infection with ALV-E or EAV in 43 YF vaccine recipients suggests low risks for transmission of these viruses, further supporting the safety of these vaccines.” 282 cases from the millions of doses given where they couldn’t find evidence of anything shortly after inoculation, with technology that is now 15 years old? Are we comforted yet?
This work isn’t science. It is religion. There is no room for the precautionary principle here. Vaccines are good. Necessary. Period. No need to discriminate which babies might be at greater risk for complications, because we need our herd immunity. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Only it isn’t just a few anymore. That logic might make sense if the health of the species had actually improved during the period in question, but it is quite the opposite. More than half of everyone in the US has a chronic disease, including our children. Our infant mortality rate is 34th in the world, despite, or perhaps because, of the fact that we give more vaccine doses before the age of 1 than the 33 countries ahead of us. Take a look at this paper: Infant mortality rates regressed against number of vaccine doses routinely given: Is there a biochemical or synergistic toxicity?
I am in no way saying that vaccines are to blame for everything, just that the vaccine program is one of a long list of high risk things we have done blindly, uncritically, while the health of our species has dramatically deteriorated. But what can we expect when the fox is guarding the henhouse?
About Dr Deckoff-Jones
Dr Deckoff-Jones is a 59 year old physician. Her daughter, Ali, and she both have ME/CFS. She had insidious onset of a neuroimmune illness in 1995, after giving birth to her second child at age 41. She was an emergency physician, working in a major trauma center, until 1996, when she had to quit due to intractable hypertension and a long list of seemingly unrelated symptoms. After a year, she recovered spontaneously to the point where she was able to have a private practice in which she treated the late effects of brain injury with HBOT and neurofeedback. She also treated “chronic Lyme Disease” patients in the hyperbaric chamber. Her daughter Ali had acute Lyme Disease at age 10 with an EM rash and CDC positivity. It was properly treated, but she became chronically ill at 12, with antibiotic responsive ME/CFS. Her symptoms became refractory to treatment for tick borne diseases over a period of several years. In January 2010, after a few very grim years of aggressive Lyme treatment, they had positive XMRV cultures from VIP Dx and started antiretroviral drugs that had been shown to inhibit XMRV in vitro. They were both housebound when they started. they have done very well, as chronicled here. In June 2011, Dr Deckoff-Jones returned to private practice treating the illness that she know best.
Note: Dr Deckoff-Jones is not prescribing for herself or her daughter. Ali is 22 years old and makes her own medical decisions.
Sources
www.x-rx.net/blog/2014/09/the-fox-guarding-the-henhouse.html
via www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/fox-guarding-henhouse-cdc-vaccine-safety
and Martin Walker www.facebook.com/frakatime?fref=nf
Further Information
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