HighWire Dispels Misinformation About Measles
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | February 28, 2025
Del does a deep dive into the science behind the measles virus, dispelling decades of misinformation from public health agencies, as well as what is actually driving the recent measles outbreaks in the U.S. See a shocking scientific equation comparing the number of individual deaths that would occur if the measles vaccine had never been introduced based on pre-vaccine stats to the number of deaths from MMR injury.
The Press Falls to Another Record Low in Public Trust
By Jonathan Turley | March 1, 2025
We have previously discussed polling showing the media at record lows in public trust. Well, the latest survey from Gallup shows that the media hit another all-time low. What is most impressive is that plummeting readers, revenues, and layoffs have done little to convince the mainstream media that the problem is not the public but themselves. The only institution with a lower level of public trust is Congress, and that says a lot. It is like beating Ebola as the preferred communicable disease.Some 69 percent of Americans now say that they have no or little trust in the media. Only 31 percent say that they have a great deal or fair amount of trust. The trending line looks like the sales of buggy whips after the introduction of the Model T Ford. Gallop put it into sharp terms:
“About two-thirds of Americans in the 1970s trusted the “mass media — such as newspapers, TV and radio” either “a great deal” or “a fair amount” to “[report] the news fully, accurately and fairly.” By the next measurement in 1997, confidence had fallen to 53%, and it has gradually trended downward since 2003. Americans are now divided into rough thirds, with 31% trusting the media a great deal or a fair amount, 33% saying they do “not [trust it] very much,” and 36%, up from 6% in 1972, saying they have no trust at all in it.”
In my book, The Indispensable Right, I discuss how journalists and journalism schools have destroyed their own profession by rejecting objectivity and engaging in open advocacy journalism. The mainstream media has long echoed the talking points of the left and the Democratic Party, particularly in its one-sided coverage of the last three elections.
While Bob Woodward and others have finally admitted that the Russian collusion coverage lacked objectivity and resulted in false reporting, media figures are pushing even harder against objectivity as a core value in journalism.
We have been discussing the rise of advocacy journalism and the rejection of objectivity in journalism schools. Writers, editors, commentators, and academics have embraced rising calls for censorship and speech controls, including President-elect Joe Biden and his key advisers. This movement includes academics rejecting the very concept of objectivity in journalism in favor of open advocacy.
Columbia Journalism Dean and New Yorker writer Steve Coll decried how the First Amendment right to freedom of speech was being “weaponized” to protect disinformation. In an interview with The Stanford Daily, Stanford journalism professor Ted Glasser insisted that journalism needed to “free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.” He rejected the notion that journalism is based on objectivity and said that he views “journalists as activists because journalism at its best — and indeed history at its best — is all about morality.” Thus, “Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.”
The Washington Post’s former executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward released the results of their interviews with over 75 media leaders and concluded that objectivity is now considered reactionary and even harmful. Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle said it plainly: “Objectivity has got to go.”
Lauren Wolfe, the fired freelance editor for the New York Times, has not only gone public to defend her pro-Biden tweet but published a piece titled “I’m a Biased Journalist and I’m Okay With That.”
Former New York Times writer (and now Howard University Journalism Professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones is a leading voice for advocacy journalism. Indeed, Hannah-Jones has declared “all journalism is activism.”
This is why the whole “Let’s Go Brandon” chant was as much a criticism of the media as President Biden. There is clearly an effort by owners like Jeff Bezos to change this culture rather than bankroll newspapers like the Washington Post vanity projects for the left.
Robert Lewis, a British media executive who joined the Post earlier this year, reportedly got into a “heated exchange” with a staffer. Lewis explained that, while reporters were protesting measures to expand readership, the very survival of the paper was now at stake:
“We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around,” Lewis said. “We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”
The response from staffers was to call for the new editors to be fired. One staffer complained, “We now have four White men running three newsrooms.” The Post has been buying out staff to avoid mass layoffs, but reporters are up in arms over the effort to turn the newspaper around.
The question is whether viewers and readers can still be brought back into the fold. New media is expanding as citizens have looked elsewhere for news. In the meantime, some media outlets and organizations seem to have doubled down on the bias. Just last year, Washington Post reporter Cleve Wootson Jr. appeared to call upon the White House to censor the interview of Elon Musk with former President Donald Trump. The newspaper did not say a thing about the incongruity of one of its leading reporters calling for censorship.
After Trump was elected, NBC selected Yamiche Alcindor to return to the White House despite a history of alleged bias. Alcindor, who also worked for PBS, was criticized for often preceding questions with attacks on conservatives or over-the-top praise for Joe Biden or Democrats. While others saw raw political bias, Alcindor explained that it was her job to use journalism to bend the “moral arc toward justice.”
Recently, the White House Correspondent’s Association picked an anti-Trump comedian who promptly encouraged Trump not to come to the dinner, saying that no one wants to be in the same room with him.
In the meantime, “J schools” continue to dismiss objectivity and crank out journalists who are told to embrace activism as the public flees legacy media for new media.
For the moment, it seems like journalists are content to write for each other and about 30 percent of the public. The echo chamber is getting smaller and smaller. So are the staffs on the outlets. Without public trust, the media is just talking to itself as the public turns to citizen journalists and new media on blogs and social media.
As someone who has worked for three networks and written as a columnist for three decades, the decline of American media has been painful to watch. The industry has operated like a ship of fools with no regard for their viewers or readers. However, we need the media. The press plays a central role in our democracy as reflected in the press protections afforded under the First Amendment.
The effort to break this culture at outlets like the Post and L.A. Times is encouraging, but these polls indicate that time is of the essence.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
Will Trump succumb to European pressure as MSM launches another North Korea fake?
By Drago Bosnic | February 28, 2025
The EU/NATO’s desperation to keep pushing with its crawling aggression against Russia is slowly turning into the rather pathetic “begmanding” we usually see from the Neo-Nazi junta and its frontman Volodymyr Zelensky. This gives even more credence to the hypothesis that NATO-occupied Europe is taking on the role of “the next Ukraine”.
If we don’t count the Baltic Chihuahuas, it seems that Europeans who are the furthest away from Russia are the most belligerent, namely the United Kingdom and France. On the other hand, even Poland is reluctant to get involved as its most experienced military leaders are aware that the Kremlin wouldn’t fight NATO with one hand tied behind its back as it does in Ukraine. Western Europe also understands this, but it still wants escalation. To accomplish this, it needs the US, which is in the middle of a major shift under Trump.
America is currently negotiating with Russia and it seems both sides are largely content with how things are progressing. It can be argued that Moscow is cautiously optimistic, but that’s hardly surprising given the fact that the previous administration was effectively waging a war against it. On February 27, Russian and American delegations concluded their six-hour meeting in Istanbul. This is the second round of peace talks after the previous one in Riyadh.
Expectedly, this meeting also excluded the participation of the EU/NATO and the Kiev regime. The talks included much more than Ukraine and have been focused on fully restoring diplomatic ties between the US and Russia. On the same day, President Vladimir Putin praised this as a positive development in a meeting with the representatives of the Federal Security Service (FSB).
“We all see how rapidly the world is changing, the situation in the world. In this regard, I would like to note that the first contacts with the new US administration inspire certain hopes,” he said, adding: “There is a mutual dedication to work towards restoring interstate relations and gradually resolving the enormous volume of accumulated systemic and strategic problems in the global architecture.”
Putin stressed that these issues provoked both the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict and other crises around the world. Other top-ranking Russian officials also demonstrated cautious optimism, but reiterated that the Kremlin will achieve all state goals and that this is non-negotiable. However, presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow doesn’t see any immediate breakthroughs in the ongoing talks.
“No one expects easy or quick solutions – the problem is too complex and has been neglected for too long. However, if both countries maintain their political will and willingness to listen to each other, I believe we will be able to navigate this working process,” he said, adding: “There is no need to jump ahead. Information on the outcome of the negotiations will be provided in due course.”
And indeed, Russia is in no hurry and it seems Trump isn’t either. However, the EU/NATO is, as they’re terrified of what’s effectively bound to be a strategic defeat. This is why we saw both Emmanuel Macron and Kier Starmer in Washington DC, desperately trying to persuade Trump to “take action”. France even expressed interest in the rare-earth minerals deal. Some are arguing that Macron’s visit was “awkward” and a “waste of time”, but it seems he persuaded Trump not to cancel Zelensky’s visit to the US.
The same can be said for Starmer whose meeting with Trump also seemed “mildly unpleasant”, but still resulted in the latter toning down his usually unrestrained rhetoric on the Neo-Nazi junta’s frontman. Trump is certainly aware that the EU/NATO need him, as evidenced by his comments on the UK’s ability to “take on Russia by itself”, resulting in a sour smirk on Starmer’s face.
However, while Trump’s exchange with both Macron and Starmer was unpleasant, he still seems rather ambivalent. At one moment, he’s calling for “the killing to stop”, but praising “American weapons and good Ukrainian soldiers” in another, stressing that his decision to supply the “Javelin” ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles) was supposedly “instrumental”. It should be noted this is another myth that even the endemically and pathologically Russophobic UK recently admitted, pointing out that these weapons are so useless that the Kiev regime troops are abandoning them en masse, resulting in the Russian military now possessing more “Javelins” than the British Army itself. Trump’s ambivalence could certainly be attributed to an attempt of strengthening his negotiating position, but his unpredictability makes it difficult to rely on much of what he says.
This was quite evident during his first presidency, when it often seemed like he’s pushing back against the war party in Washington DC. However, he’d then change the tune and do exactly what they expected from him, as evidenced by the direct attack on the formerly sovereign Syria in 2018. It should also be noted that precisely France and the UK convinced him to do so and also participated in this illegal aggression against Damascus.
This was coordinated with the mainstream propaganda machine that launched yet another campaign of blatant lies about the Syrian government’s supposed “use of chemical weapons”. Interestingly, the same media are now recycling the long-debunked fakes about the supposed participation of North Korean troops in the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict, spreading lies about “European security in jeopardy due to Kim Jong Un”.
Just like the last time, the mainstream propaganda machine is quoting “South Korean intelligence” that allegedly said that “at least 1,000 more North Korean troops have been sent – with some regional media reports saying 3,000 – though the exact number is unknown”. These reports insist that “South Korean intelligence also said other North Korean troops have been re-deployed to frontlines in the western Kursk region after initial reports they had withdrawn from frontline areas in January”.
It should be noted that the Pentagon itself debunked these claims back in December last year. And yet, here we are again. The timing is quite convenient, as the US previously (ab)used these reports as an excuse to “draw red lines regarding North Korean presence in Ukraine”. It remains to be seen whether Donald Trump will use this to escalate or continue along the path of actual peace negotiations.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
FDA Calls Off Meeting to Select Flu Strains for Next Season’s Flu Vaccine
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 27, 2025
The committee that advises the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on which flu strains to target for the upcoming flu season will not meet as scheduled next month, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
In a statement provided to CNN, the FDA said:
“A planned March 13 meeting of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee [VRBPAC] on the influenza vaccine strains for the 2025-2026 influenza season in the northern hemisphere has been cancelled. …
“The FDA will make public its recommendations to manufacturers in time for updated vaccines to be available for the 2025-2026 influenza season.”
The FDA sent VRBPAC members an email on Monday informing them of the cancellation, the Times reported. No reason was given for its cancellation.
According to CNBC, the VRBPAC meets each March to select the strains for the upcoming season’s flu shots.
Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and member of the committee, told CNBC he wasn’t sure why the meeting was cancelled.
“Who canceled this meeting? Why did they cancel the meeting? Will manufacturers now turn to the World Health Organization to determine strains for this year’s influenza vaccines?” Offit asked.
According to the FDA, VRBPAC “reviews and evaluates data concerning the safety, effectiveness, and appropriate use of vaccines and related biological products which are intended for use in the prevention, treatment, or diagnosis of human diseases.” The committee is composed of 15 voting members.
The Times tied the meeting’s cancellation to the recent confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., former chairman of Children’s Health Defense, as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). HHS oversees federal health agencies, including the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“The cancellation plays into fears among scientists who worry that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will use his position as health secretary to sow doubts about vaccines,” the Times reported.
Offit, in an interview with Inside Medicine, also connected the meeting’s cancellation to Kennedy’s recent confirmation.
“Is it part of RFK Jr.’s cleansing project of removing anyone whom he presumes to have a conflict of interest related to vaccines? I don’t know. But I feel like the world is upside down. We aren’t doing the things we need to do to protect ourselves,” Offit said.
On Monday, Offit told MedPage Today that VRBPAC members were asked to fill out conflict-of-interest forms in advance — a routine process before every meeting — “and we weren’t told the meeting was canceled.” He said members were told to set time aside for the meeting.
But late Wednesday, Offit phoned Medpage and said, “If we are not going to have the meeting, I guess it means we will be looking to the WHO [World Health Organization] for a flu shot formulation.”
Last week, a meeting of another key public health committee — the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — was postponed. The meeting was supposed to take place Feb. 26-28.
Valerie Borek, associate director and policy analyst for Stand for Health Freedom, said, “it’s not unreasonable” for an incoming HHS secretary to place advisory meetings on hold.
“We have a new HHS Secretary who has promised to expose and eliminate conflicts of interest that tend to lurk in groups like these,” Borek said. FDA and CDC advisory committees do not have final decision-making power; however, the agencies typically rubber-stamp their recommendations.
‘Time to stop pretending the flu vaccine is effective’
Offit said cancellation of the meeting could delay production of next season’s flu vaccines.
“It’s a six-month production cycle,” Offit told the Times. “So one can only assume that we’re not picking flu strains this year.”
Another VRBPAC member, Dr. Stanley Perlman, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, told Reuters that “we don’t have much time” to produce the next season’s flu vaccines.
Perlman said a separate meeting of a VRBPAC subcommittee scheduled for March was also canceled.
Door to Freedom founder Dr. Meryl Nass, who follows FDA and CDC vaccine advisory meetings and often blogs about them, welcomed the meeting’s cancellation and expressed skepticism about flu vaccines.
“The purpose for the U.S. flu vaccine program is shrouded in mystery,” Nass said. “The CDC creates models of influenza mortality and then tells us how many deaths occur from flu each year by citing its own models.”
Nass described the VRBPAC’s annual meetings to select strains for the following season’s flu vaccines as “a crapshoot.”
“The VRBPAC are there to give cover to U.S. government officials who do not want to pick the wrong strains,” Nass said.
Nass referred to a 2005 study published in JAMA Internal Medicine that could “not correlate increasing [flu] vaccination coverage after 1980 with declining mortality rates in any age group” and that “observational studies substantially overestimate vaccination benefit.”
A CDC report issued today found the flu shot less effective for some children this year. According to CBS News, “Effectiveness was 32% for children and adolescents, from the CDC’s U.S. Flu VE network of health care systems. That’s down from 67% in last year’s estimates.”
Biologist Christina Parks, Ph.D., said it is “time to stop pretending the flu vaccine is effective.” She added:
“The extremely low efficacy of flu vaccines call into question whether they should keep being offered at all. Studies have shown that receipt of flu vaccines over multiple years actually increases your risk of contracting a severe case of the flu and ending up in [an intensive care unit].
“The cancellation of the VRBPAC meeting suggests to me that the new Secretary for Health and Human Services understands that flu vaccines exist to line the pockets of vaccine manufacturers, not to actually protect people from getting the flu.”
According to CNBC, the cancellation comes during a “particularly brutal flu season in the U.S.” that, according to CDC data, has resulted in up to 910,000 hospitalizations since October 2024.
But Nass said those claims are overstated. She said that contrary to CDC claims of up to 52,000 flu deaths annually in the U.S., data from death certificates indicate “only about 2,000 Americans per year die from influenza.”
“I worked for many years as a hospitalist and yet it is hard for me to think of anyone who died of influenza in the hospital. They may have died of a secondary bacterial infection,” Nass said.
Discussion of flu vaccine-related deaths missing from mainstream narrative
Albert Benavides, founder of VAERSAware.com and an expert on the U.S. government-run Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), said a discussion of deaths caused by the flu vaccines has been missing from the mainstream narrative.
“There are currently 2,652 deaths associated with flu vaccines in VAERS back to 1990,” Benavides said. He noted that 697 of these deaths have been received and published in the VAERS database since January 2021, calling this development “concerning.”
Benavides said the data showed that “many elderly flu deaths are comingled with COVID-19, Pneumovax, Shingrix, Zostavax and now even some RSV and Monkeypox vaccines and in every combination,” suggesting that interactions between the vaccines may be deadly for some people.
A study published in October 2024 in the journal Scientific Reports found that 17 vaccines, including flu vaccines, were associated with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare condition that attacks the peripheral nervous system.
Nass questioned the U.S. spending of “billions of dollars” yearly. “Other countries don’t do this,” she said.
VRBPAC members ‘often team up with industry’
According to the Times, Kennedy has “repeatedly warned of ‘regulatory capture’ — the idea that federal regulators are captive to industry.”
In an interview with Fox News earlier this month, Kennedy said several public health agency panels that develop policies such as vaccine guidelines are composed of “outside experts,” almost all of whom “have severe … conflicts of interest.”
The Times acknowledged that the members of committees like VRBPAC “often team up with industry,” citing the example of Offit, “an inventor of a rotavirus vaccine that was later developed by the pharmaceutical giant Merck.”
Parks said she thinks it’s “good that VRBPAC meetings have been put on ice until the members of these advisory committees are actually properly vetted and determined not to have conflicts of interest. Currently, it appears that many members are there to rubber-stamp the agenda of vaccine manufacturers.”
The cancellation of the VRBPAC meeting came just days after HHS announced the end of the CDC’s “Wild to Mild” advertising campaign promoting flu vaccines. HHS called on the CDC to instead develop “advertisements that promote the idea of ‘informed consent’ in vaccine decision-making.”
“I am hopeful that better data on the flu and flu vaccines will help Americans make truly informed choices about whether to get flu vaccines,” Nass said.
Related articles in The Defender
- HHS Tells CDC to Yank ‘Wild to Mild’ Flu Vaccine Ad Campaign, Shift Focus to ‘Informed Consent’
- Is Kennedy’s HHS Preparing to Shake Up CDC’s Vaccine Advisory Committee?
- RFK Jr. Pushes Back on Chronic Disease, Autism and Agency Corruption
- Guillain-Barré Syndrome Associated With 17 Vaccines, Including COVID and Flu Shots
- Breaking: RFK Jr. Sworn in as HHS Secretary
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Media Panic Over Measles Distracts From Real Threats to Kids’ Health and Safety
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 27, 2025
Measles outbreaks in Texas and New Mexico, with one new case reported in Kentucky and two in New Jersey, are fueling media stories that the U.S. is poised for an epidemic.
On Wednesday, Texas health authorities announced the death of a child who tested positive for measles, setting off a spate of media reports blaming the measles outbreaks on declining vaccination rates.
However, some doctors warn the situation isn’t as dire as the headlines suggest.
Dr. Lawrence Palevsky, a pediatrician, said it is a tragedy anytime a child dies. But he also said there isn’t “enough information to know whether the child had an underlying medical condition, whether the child had measles and what diagnostic criteria were being used to make the diagnosis of measles.”
Palevsky said it remains unknown “what treatment the child received in the hospital that may or may not have had anything to do with the deterioration of this child’s health. More information is needed.”
Outlets like Vox, The Washington Post, and The New York Times warned that the outbreaks herald a coming “public health crisis” that will be made worse by the fact that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has raised questions about the safety and efficacy of vaccines on the childhood vaccination schedule, is now secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Some accused Kennedy of downplaying the news after he said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is watching what is happening and that measles outbreaks happen every year.
Should we panic over measles outbreaks?
Leana Wen, writing in the Post, said people aren’t alarmed enough about measles because they don’t see the illness often enough. She warned it is a dangerous disease with high hospitalization rates and serious long-term health consequences that may include immune system destruction and death.
However, according to a 2018 publication by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) measles is a respiratory disease characterized by a fever, a head cold, pink eye and a rash of small red and sometimes itchy bumps that can cover the body.
Complications from measles such as an ear infection, diarrhea, croup, or bronchopneumonia, can occur — and bronchopneumonia can be quite serious — but they are rare in developed countries like the U.S, the AAP said.
It is “self-limiting,” meaning that it goes away on its own. By 1962 — prior to the introduction of the first measles vaccine a year later — the CDC described measles as a disease with low mortality.
By that time, the death rate had declined 98% since the beginning of the century due to improvements in public health. It carried a hospitalization rate of 11.5 per 1,000 cases and a mortality rate of 0.2 per 1,000 cases. Parents and medical practitioners considered measles an inevitable stage of a child’s development.
“We have a forgotten history of measles,” Children’s Health Defense (CHD) Senior Scientist Karl Jablonowski told The Defender. “The 1950s Vital Statistics report states, ‘measles are poorly reported because a large proportion of the cases are never seen by a physician.’ This, at a time when 600,000 annual reports of measles was normal.”
Despite Wednesday’s tragic reported death of a child in Texas, deaths from measles in the U.S. are extremely rare. Typically, people who die from measles have some other serious underlying condition.
Dr. Liz Mumper, a pediatrician, said it is “very uncommon” for a child to die from a measles infection in developed countries such as the U.S. that have access to clean water and good sanitation systems.
Although the CDC reports that the U.S. death rate from measles is 1 to 3 deaths out of every 1,000 reported cases, prior to the reported death on Wednesday in Texas, the last U.S. measles death was in a young immunocompromised woman in 2016. The last time a child died of measles in the U.S. was in 2003.
Hospitalization rates for measles are high, but that’s partly because people are often hospitalized to keep them isolated to stop transmission of the contagious illness, according to the CDC.
Treatment in hospitals typically involves keeping people hydrated and lowering their fevers.
“Effective treatments include vitamin A in high doses and attention to hydration status,” Mumper said. “Many natural methods to help the body fight viruses, like extra vitamin D and vitamin C, are effective but not widely recommended by mainstream medicine.”
Is the measles vaccine effective?
Most media reports blame the recent outbreak on unvaccinated people — mostly children — and claim the only way to resolve the crisis is to get the vaccination rate up to the professed target of 95% through mass vaccination campaigns.
This approach implies that without the measles vaccine, measles complications and deaths would be rampant.
CBS News suggested that if people can’t find their vaccination records or are worried about exposure, they should get a booster — because they are “safe and effective,” implying there’s no risk.
However, Mumper said it can’t generally be assumed that outbreaks are caused by unvaccinated people — cyclical outbreaks still occur even in populations, such as college students, with nearly 100% vaccination. The vaccine’s protection is not complete and wanes over time.
Measles vaccines come with a long list of serious side effects
The measles vaccine, like all vaccines, can cause serious side effects in some people, according to the author of “The Measles Book.”
Today, there are two measles vaccines available in the U.S. — Merck’s MMRII and GSK’s Priorix. Neither were safety-tested against a true placebo, according to pediatrician Dr. Paul Thomas, co-author of “Vax Facts: What to Consider Before Vaccinating at All Ages & Stages of Life.”
MMRII was tested against the vaccine components without the virus — which included the adjuvant — and Priorix was tested against the MMRII.
Merck’s label for MMRII, the most commonly given measles vaccine, reports that clinical trials and post-marketing studies identified a wide range of adverse reactions affecting almost every system in the body.
Examples include atypical measles and measles-type rashes, pancreatitis, thrombocytopenia, myalgia, respiratory illnesses like pneumonia, skin disorders, encephalitis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, convulsions or seizures, syncope and many other possible reactions.
The possible side effects for Priorix are similar. During the drug’s trials, there were high rates of serious adverse events and emergency room visits. New onset of chronic diseases occurred in both groups.
“To any sane mind, that means both the MMRII used as placebo and the new Priorix are dangerous,” according to Thomas.
A series of studies by the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine) conducted in the 1990s to 2000s found similar adverse effects associated with the MMR vaccines.
Since the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) was established in 1990, there have been 115,849 adverse events associated with the measles vaccine reported, including 572 deaths.
All reports in VAERS are not necessarily verified and vary in completeness. However, underreporting is a known and serious disadvantage of the VAERS system. Researchers have found that the number of injuries reported to VAERS is less than 1%.
In addition to VAERS reports, many thousands of parents who saw their children regress into autism after taking the MMR vaccine have filed claims in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP).
Even though research shows a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, the VICP denied those claims en masse — and that denial is used to justify the now-common claim that there is no link between vaccines and autism.
An ongoing lawsuit alleges that the U.S. Department of Justice committed fraud to cover up the potential link between vaccines and autism. The case is pending in federal court.
The vaccine ‘propaganda playbook’
Measles outbreaks in the U.S. happen every year, but only some of them make headlines.
Stories circulate periodically about measles outbreaks, blaming them on low vaccination rates. Often, these outbreaks and the news reports sensationalizing them are followed by changes in vaccine laws to eliminate vaccine exemptions.
“The Measles Book” calls this fearmongering used to drive policy changes a “highly effective ‘propaganda playbook.’”
“We’ve seen this playbook in California in 2015 and in New York in 2019,” CHD CEO Mary Holland said. “We know that Hawaii’s legislature currently has bills to repeal its religious exemption.”
Holland added:
“The measles repeal playbook is well-worn and has been effective in the past, not because of a real threat to children’s health, but rather in large part due to media hype from corporate funding and government fearmongering.”
In 2015, allegedly prompted by a measles outbreak at Disneyland — blamed on unvaccinated children and low vaccination rates — California passed a controversial bill, Senate Bill No. 277 (SB 277), which eliminated the “personal belief exemption” for mandatory vaccination.
The passage of SB 277 in 2015 made California the first state in nearly 35 years to eliminate nonmedical vaccine exemptions.
In 2019, following a measles outbreak in 2018-19 in Brooklyn and Rockland Counties in New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed legislation ending nonmedical exemptions from school vaccination requirements for children.
What’s really killing children today? It’s not measles.
Measles is not — and has never been — a leading cause of death, according to Jablonowski.
The most common cause of death in non-infant children in 2023 was assault by firearm (2.2 per 100,000), motor-vehicle accident (1.3 per 100,000), self-harm by hanging, strangulation and suffocation (0.9 per 100,000), suicide by firearm (0.7 per 100,000), accidental overdose (0.7 per 100,000), drowning (0.5 per 100,000).
Over the past decade, children have also faced increasing rates of anxiety and depression, stress, asthma, autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or ADHD, obesity, and other chronic diseases, many of which can be linked to toxic exposures from pesticides, plastics, vaccines and other pharmaceutical products, water fluoridation, and electromagnetic radiation.
“Any childhood disease is scary, and measles can lead to complications like pneumonia,” Jablonowski said. “However, diseases like anxiety and depression, which are a serious threat to children’s health, do not have a Mayo clinic ‘self care’ section that begins with ‘take it easy,’” Jablonowski said.
“Any death of a child is tragic,” Holland said. “We grieve for this child and the child’s family. “That said, measles is not a grave threat to America’s children.”
Holland added:
“There are well-established protocols to treat it and healthy children can resolve a measles infection easily. This was the norm until 1963 when a single measles vaccine came into use. The notion that somehow measles is a scourge among well-nourished children with sanitation is diverging on the absurd.
“The real threats to America’s children are chronic health conditions: allergies, asthma, autism, ADHD, bipolar, and on, and on and on. The media would do well to start focusing its attention on the real risks to America’s children.”
Related stories in The Defender
- Texas Reports Death of Child Who Tested Positive for Measles, But Releases Few Details
- MMR Vaccine Debate Heats Up as Media Claim ‘Vaccine Hesitancy’ to Blame for Recent Outbreaks
- A New York County Pays $750,000 to Families Whose Unvaccinated Kids Were Barred From School During Measles Outbreak
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Tulsi Gabbard labels CNN ‘propaganda arm’ of spies
The Director of National Intelligence says the network’s anonymous CIA sources are exactly the people “we need to root out”
RT | February 27, 2025
Newly confirmed Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard has accused CNN of acting as a “propaganda arm” for disloyal intelligence agents, calling the network’s report on potential retaliation by dismissed spies an “indirect threat” to President Donald Trump’s administration.
As part of Trump’s broader effort to downsize and restructure the federal government, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has recently offered so-called buyouts to its agents. In a report published Monday, CNN, citing unnamed sources, claimed that some senior CIA officers were “quietly discussing” how the dismissals “risk creating a group of disgruntled former employees who might be motivated to take what they know to a foreign intelligence service.”
“I am curious about how they think this is a good tactic to keep their job,” Gabbard told Fox News on Tuesday.
“They are exposing themselves, essentially, by making this indirect threat – using their propaganda arm, CNN, that they’ve used over and over again – to reveal their hand,” she continued. “Their loyalty is not to America, not to the American people or the Constitution; it is to themselves.”
The director of national intelligence stressed that such disgruntled employees are “exactly the kinds of people we need to root out, get rid of, so that the patriots who do work in this area, who are committed to our core mission, can actually focus on that.”
Gabbard also claimed that many within the intelligence community had reached out to her personally, expressing support for Trump’s efforts to “clean house” and refocus on the core mission of serving the American people.
A former US congresswoman from Hawaii, Gabbard rose to national prominence in 2016 when she resigned as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to endorse Bernie Sanders for president. She later ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, advocating against US military interventions abroad, which she argued were harmful to service members like herself and detrimental to national interests. As tensions with the Democratic Party escalated, Gabbard left the party in 2022. After two years as an independent, she joined the Republican Party and endorsed Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign.
Trump’s nomination of Gabbard for the top intelligence role in November sparked criticism from establishment figures, who labeled her a security risk. Despite the backlash, she was confirmed earlier this month by a 52-48 Senate vote, with only one Republican, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, opposing her appointment.
In January, the Senate also confirmed another Trump nominee, John Ratcliffe, as director of the CIA in a 74-25 vote. Ratcliffe, a former Texas congressman and ex-director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term, is known for his skepticism of intelligence agencies and his criticism of investigations into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Hamas denounces New York Times distortion of Marzouk’s comments on Op Al-Aqsa Flood
Press TV – February 25, 2025
Hamas has rejected a report by the American daily newspaper The New York Times that has misrepresented recent remarks by a senior official of the Palestinian resistance movement, emphasizing that the comments are “inaccurate” and “taken out of context.”
In a statement released on Monday, the Gaza-based group said the interview conducted with Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior member of its political bureau, and published several days ago did not contain the full content of the answers, and his exact remarks were quoted out of context.
Hamas stressed that the published interview did not include the true remarks made by Abu Marzouk, and did not convey the true meaning of what he had said.
On Monday, The New York Times ran an article titled: “Hamas Official Expresses Reservations About Oct. 7 Attack on Israel” claiming that Abu Marzouk voiced doubts regarding the October 7 attack.
According to the article, Abu Marzouk admitted he would not have endorsed the assault had he been aware of the destruction it would cause in Gaza.
Hamas in its statement stated that Abu Marzouk confirmed that the large-scale surprise attack, dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, against the usurping Tel Aviv regime on October 7, 2023, reflected the Palestinian people’s right to resistance and their rejection of Israel’s siege, occupation, and settlement expansion activities.
Abu Marzouk also emphasized that the criminal Israeli regime had committed appalling war crimes and genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.
Abu Marzouk told the New York Times that Hamas would not give up its positions and Palestinian people’s right to use all forms of resistance, including armed resistance, to fight off the Israeli occupation and liberate their land.
“The resistance weapon belongs to our people and its purpose is to protect our people and our holy sites, so it is not permissible to drop or surrender it as long as the [Israeli] occupation exists on our land,” the high-ranking Hamas official told the newspaper.
Backed by the United States and its Western allies, Israel launched the war on Gaza, after Hamas and other Gaza-based Palestinian resistance movements carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against the Israeli regime in response to its decades-long campaign of oppression against Palestinians.
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has led to the killing of at least 48,346 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injury of 111,759 others since early October 2023.
A ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement went into effect in Gaza on January 19, halting Israel’s aggressive campaign against the coastal region.
They Think We Are Stupid, Volume 14
Everything you need to know about our ruling class’s opinion of you. As always, these headlines are presented without commentary.
By Aaron Kheriaty, MD | Human Flourishing | February 24, 2025
Wrong, Politico, Climate Change Does Not Threaten the EU’s Survival, But Climate Policy Does
By Linnea Lueken | Climate Realism | February 19, 2025
A recent Politico article, “Climate change threatens EU’s survival, German security report warns,” claims that “global warming will exacerbate conflicts, hunger, and migration worldwide, with growing risks for Europe.” Evidence undermines these claims. In reality, the world is not suffering destabilization due to climate change, but European populations are far more likely to suffer from climate policy, as Politico briefly mentions.
Politico reports on a “landmark” political report from the German federal intelligence service (BND) that attempts to assess “the dangers climate change poses to German and European security over the next 15 years.” The report concludes that “climate change’s destabilizing effects will drive up migration and food prices, threatening economic and political upheaval,” and “the unequal impact of rising temperatures in the EU — with southern countries hit worse than others — risks tearing the bloc apart.”
Politico goes on to claim that as global average temperature rises, “so do the frequency, severity and intensity of flood-triggering extreme rainfall, deadly heat waves, harvest-destroying droughts and the conditions that allow wildfires to spread easily.”
These claims are false, as available data proves.
While rainfall has modestly increased over northern latitudes that contain the European Union member states, extreme rainfall that causes flooding has not. Claims that recent flooding events were “supercharged” or worsened by climate change are pure speculation based on attribution modelling. Data and historical records of flood frequency and severity debunk claims of unprecedented flooding. Recent flooding in Spain, for instance, was blamed on climate change by attribution groups, but the storm that hit Spain was consistent with a long history of similar storms that are not becoming more severe or frequent. In the Climate Realism post, “Flooding Facts Drowned by Climate Hysteria: The BBC Ignores Spain’s Weather History,” meteorologist Anthony Watts and H. Sterling Burnett describe the history of the region struck by the floods:
Valencia, which sits along and at the mouth of the Turia River on the Mediterranean Sea, suffered similar flooding, for example, in 1897, 1957, and 1996, 127, 67, and 28 years of warming ago, respectively, when temperatures were cooler than at present.
…
As Caroline Angus’ account of the 1957 Valencia flood reveals, these conditions are neither new nor unprecedented. The BBC’s focus on “climate change” and a warmer atmosphere as the primary cause of the recent flooding ignores the atmospheric mechanics behind these storms and downplays the recurrent pattern of similar natural events.
Likewise, Climate Realism debunked other regional European flooding events, here.
Heatwaves and drought are likewise not getting worse, and contra Politico and the German report’s claims, crop production is not declining in Europe due to those conditions, as pointed out in numerous Climate Realism posts, here, here, and here, for example. Wildfires are also on the decline globally.
Interestingly, Politico and the German report do admit that government response to climate alarmism may also cause tension. Politico reports that policies meant to address climate change “will cause tensions, noting that carbon pricing — the backbone of EU climate efforts — disproportionately affects poorer households.” This fact should be obvious to anyone. Carbon pricing does not bother the elites, who can afford higher energy prices.
Politico and the report authors also warn “the cost of decarbonization and its (perceived) unfair distribution … provide space for populism, right-wing and left-wing extremism, and disinformation campaigns[.]”
That claim should be taken further, it already has caused tensions, and has contributed to a growing threat to European food supplies, resulting in frequent mass protests in multiple countries by farmers. Not only that, but its not a perception that the distribution of the costs is unfair, it is a fact. Looking beyond carbon taxes, the push for electric vehicles is a subsidy for a luxury product that most cannot afford. London’s “ultra low emission zones” (ULEZ) are basically a tax on the poor who cannot afford to purchase new electric or low emitting hybrids.
What is true for Europe with regards to crop production is also true for other major crop producing parts of the world, and so climate change is not driving or likely to drive mass migration that could destabilize Europe. Climate Realism has debunked claims that climate change was causing mass emigration in multiple posts, here, here, and here, for instance.
If Politico and German leaders are worried about “populism” and right leaning sympathies rising in their nations due to concerns about mass immigration from unstable parts of the world, then perhaps they could impose restrictions on immigration, no need to blame climate change.
It’s shameful that Politico and the German government are downplaying the harm that the unnecessary, unjustified, climate policies which they have supported have had on Europeans. Extreme weather is not getting worse, but the impacts of government overreach and taxation in the name of climate change are.
EU Wildfire Trends 2024
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | February 23, 2025
Wildfire activity in southern Europe was below average last year, according to the latest data from the EU. The trend is clearly downwards since 1980, contrary to the disinformation spewed by the establishment media.
The BBC’s Matt McGrath, for instance, recently claimed that a warmer world increased the chances of devastating wildfires occurring, while the Guardian’s Damien Carrington also falsely stated that “globally, scientists agree that climate change is increasing the global risk of wildfires starting and spreading”.
Last summer the BBC went into full propaganda mode over some fires in Greece, even though the burnt area was actually below average:
And in December, a BBC World Service broadcast falsely claimed that a warmer earth was making “deadly fires in Spain and Greece increasingly common”.
The BBC – the place where facts go to die!
Sources
1) Data for 2024 is from Copernicus: https://forest-fire.emergency.copernicus.eu/apps/effis.statistics/seasonaltrend
2) Earlier data id from the EEA: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/daviz/burnt-forest-area-in-five-4/#tab-chart_5
and EFFIS:
https://effis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/reports-and-publications/effis-related-publications
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From the Archives
Is America behind the massive surge in Kiev regime’s child trafficking?
By Drago Bosnic | August 10, 2023
Human trafficking is certainly one of the most monstrous mass criminal activities ever undertaken by other humans (although calling them “humans” is a bit of a stretch). And yet, there’s a special kind of this deeply repulsive crime that pushes it to diabolical proportions – child trafficking. Underage kids, particularly those who were abandoned, sold or have very poor/abusive family backgrounds, are by far the most vulnerable group. The depraved criminals who engage in such illicit activities specifically target unfortunate children and given there are millions of them all around the globe, particularly in war-torn areas, the “recruitment pool” is effectively endless. Unfortunately, the demand on the black market also seems to be constant and growing, making it a very lucrative and appealing prospect for criminals. … continue
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- The Israeli Right Portrays Islam as Murderous. It Serves a Political Purpose
- Jordan Has Had Enough: King Abdullah’s Scathing Warning to Israel
- Israeli Colonizers (i.e. Settlers) Kill Palestinian Man Near Salfit
- New Google Maps images reveal massive scale of devastation in Gaza
- Jewish supremacy, anti-Palestinian bigotry on display in Israel – Daily Update
- Israeli Soldiers Abduct At Least 22 Across Occupied West Bank
- Eight Palestinians Killed in Israeli Attacks on Gaza
- Israeli former leaders and security chiefs threaten legal action over ‘Jewish terrorism’
- Israel map in LA Times ad includes all land from the river to the sea
- No Tricks Zone
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
