From the January 2003 Idaho Observer:

U.S. Public Health Service admits “substantial uncertainty” exists regarding vaccine safety

Admission indicates vaccinated masses subjects in ongoing public health experiments

Mandated vaccinations, or vaccinations administered without the recipient's knowledge or fully informed consent, begs what is perhaps the most fundamental of all questions: Who owns our bodies? We believe that we are in control of our lives and, therefore, “own” ourselves. But, if someone outside of ourself has the authority to subject us to medical experimentation without our knowledge or fully informed consent, then we cannot logically argue ownership of ourselves any more convincingly than a laboratory animal, can we?

By Michael P. Wright

An article entitled “The Complicated Task of Monitoring Vaccine Safety” appeared in the Public Health Reports of January/February 1997. This is a publication of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The authors were Susan Ellenberg and Robert Chen. Below is an excerpt from their rather revealing synopsis:

Yet despite vaccines' clear effectiveness in reducing risks of diseases ... vaccination policies are not without controversy. Vaccines, like all other pharmaceutical products, are not entirely risk-free; while most known side effects are minor and self-limited, some vaccines have been associated with very rare but serious adverse effects. Because such rare effects are often not evident until vaccines come into widespread use, the Federal government maintains ongoing surveillance programs to monitor vaccine safety. The interpretation of data from such programs is complex and associated with substantial uncertainty. A continual effort to monitor these data effectively and to develop more precise ways of assessing risks of vaccines is necessary to ensure public confidence in immunization programs.

The writers admit that the clinical trials of vaccines are not sufficient to identify and measure the risk levels associated with adverse events. In effect, the vaccinated population itself becomes an experimental group. They also admit that there is “substantial uncertainty” associated with interpretation of data from surveillance programs.

Further, the writers do not see any need to assess the belief that vaccines are effective and good for public health. They accept this view as a postulate. They see the questioning of vaccination programs by some members of the public as a problem, and the only challenge for them is to defeat the skepticism.

For those who remain skeptical, consideration of problems of vaccine safety should take place with the common statistical concept of the normal distribution (bell-shaped curve) in mind. An old statistics book from my college days provides a good starting point for the argument:

...it is interesting to note that a very large number of random variables observed in nature possess a frequency distribution which is approximately bell-shaped or, as the statistician would say, is approximately a normal probability distribution.

~William Mendenhall
Introduction to Statistics, p. 116

In nature we have all kinds of measureable events and phenomena. Some humans are tall, some are short, but most are of medium height. Regarding adverse events to vaccines, some are very mild, and some are very serious. We can expect the normal adverse event to be somewhere in between. If all adverse events were known and scored by severity level, the results expressed as a graph most likely would form a bell-shaped curve. At one end of the curve would be the “rare” catastrophic adverse effects and at the other end the mild effects such as temporary redness and swelling without other problems. The big question is: What do we have under the hump of the curve?

The writers for Public Health Reports use the phrase “known side effects,” and assure us that most are “minor and self-limited.” Are there unknown adverse effects which develop later in childhood or adult life and which have not been recognized as consequences of vaccination? (See bell curve above right)

From what we know about normal distributions we would expect that in the middle would be the most common types of adverse events -- those less serious than the rare catastrophes noted contemporaneously with vaccinations but still serious enough to be figured into the process of weighing risks versus benefits (if there are any) of vaccination. I propose that the adverse effects include neurological damage from repeated doses of mercury and other factors in vaccines and that these problems manifest at a later stage of childhood development in the form of behavioral disorders and learning disability in many of our youth. This kind of adverse event has not been recognized by the vaccine-pushers in government and industry. It needs to be researched and the risk levels need to be measured.

How I came to question official wisdom about vaccines

In the 90s I was awarded four federal grants from the Small Business Innovation Research program of the U.S. Public Health Service. My general task was the creation and testing of microcomputer software which provided anonymous assessment of risk for current infection by HIV. I also applied the concept to chlamydia and hepatitis B.

One of my tasks, reported in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine (Sept/Oct 1997), was to conduct a hepatitis B vaccination project using a computer-operated telephone interview. In 1996 I also attended an immunization conference in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and there was a preliminary report of my project published in the conference abstracts.

My computer system was successful in persuading anonymous callers to present themselves at a clinic for vaccination, if assessed to be at elevated risk of contracting hepatitis B, due to behavior or occupational circumstances. I was interested only in promoting voluntary vaccination of adults and adolescents. The software's rule-based decision-making system incorporated guidelines published by the CDC in the early 90s.

As reported in the Am J Prev Med, 47% of those so instructed by the computer followed up at a collaborating clinic for vaccination. My system was very innovative and, in fact, state-of-the-art for the use of computers for medical diagnostic decision support (MDDS). I was the first in the medical press to report using a system of this nature, operated over a telephone, to persuade callers to follow up at a clinic and to track the success rate in doing so.

American public health agencies not interested

Unfortunately, I learned at the 1996 CDC conference that my system did not have a chance of being implemented by American public health agencies. Other literature at the conference indicated that the big push was on for indiscriminate universal vaccination of infants for hepatitis B. Since the virus is blood-borne and contracted by behaviors and risk situations that usually don't emerge until adolescence or adulthood, I think this practice is both wasteful and hazardous from the standpoint of adverse effects from vaccination. At the conference I noticed many booths of pharmaceutical companies.

British vaccine-pusher calls me “Hopelessly wrong”

In particular I remember one meeting in which there was a discussion about vaccine safety. During the question and comment period I made the statement that the decision to vaccinate for a particular disease should be based upon the comparison of two risks:

1. the risk of contracting a serious illness if not vaccinated; and

2. the risk of a serious adverse event if vaccinated.

I recall that two CDC officials expressed stern disagreement with my statement. I also remember being told by an arrogant British doctor that I was “hopelessly wrong.” Vaccine safety advocate Kristine Severyn identified him to me as being on the payroll of a pharmaceutical company. She is with the Ohio Parents for Vaccine Safety.

This was a disillusioning experience. I notice recently that my same concerns about comparing the risks on both sides of the decision were expressed in a USA Today article of December 13, 2002 (page 5A). This article was about the smallpox vaccine. The headline was very dramatic: “For 60 Million, the Cure May Kill.” Writer Steve Sternberg describes the ordeal of a sickly child named Melissa Schweitzer:

Doctors didn't figure out until Melissa was 11 that she lacked a natural supply of three infection-fighting antibodies, [a condition] which put her at risk of massive infection -- from the live virus, called vaccinia, used to make the smallpox vaccine.

AIDS dissent

Two of my grants for computer software were for the purpose of providing assessment of risk of current infection by HIV. This is a long story which I would like to tell before an investigatory congressional committee. Suffice it to say for right now that the waste, fraud, and mismanagement in the federal AIDS program, which I believe is based upon seriously flawed science, also obstructed the implementation of this project. For details see this part of my AIDS dissent website:

http://members.aol.com/mpwright9/aids10.html

Planned Parenthood promotes AIDS scare with disinformation

In the fall of 2002, “health educators” at the University of Oklahoma were distributing a Planned Parenthood brochure, probably paid for by CDC AIDS money, which erroneously reports that there are from one to two million HIV-infected persons in the USA. In fact, the upper limit of the last CDC estimate was 900,000. There was never any justification for an estimate of “1 to 2 million.” The brochure is entitled “Some Things You Should Know About HIV & AIDS” and was produced by Planned Parenthood of Central Oklahoma. It also says it was revised in November 2000.

There is much to criticize about the flaws in American medical culture. We are over-medicalized, over-drugged, over-vaccinated, and over-diagnosed. A good argument was made along these lines by Richard D. Lamm, former governor of Colorado. It is entitled “The Ethics of Excess,” and is in Public Health Reports, May/June 1996. No. 3.

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The author invites readers to see his AIDS dissent website. From there readers can link to government websites confirming his grant history and publication record: http://members.aol.com/mpwright9/aids.html