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Primodos: another example of MHRA’s failure to “put patients first”

UK took 20 years to withdraw drug after harms were first made known

Health Advisory & Recovery Team | October 4, 2023

Most people are aware of Thalidomide, many are aware of Valproate, but there are several other drugs that have caused birth defects in children that are less well known including Debendox, Carbimazole and Primodos.

Primodos families achieved a main house parliamentary debate on 7th September led by Yasmin Qureshi. Whilst the House was not well attended, every single MP in the Chamber was on the side of the families and little effort was made to defend Government and regulator action.

Yasmin Quereshi explained:

“Children were born with serious deformities due to the hormone pregnancy test drug Primodos, which was taken by expectant mothers between 1953 and 1975”

“The UK regulator first received a warning about the drug in 1958. A definitive study was published in 1967, which linked birth defects to the synthetic hormones in Primodos. Baroness Cumberlege concluded that Primodos should have been removed from the market in 1967. The UK regulator failed in its duty of care to women: Primodos was eventually withdrawn in 1978, 20 years after the first warning.”

Finland, Sweden, Holland and Norway banned the use of hormone pregnancy tests at least 7 years earlier by 1971. MPs passionately recounted many stories of harm caused to their constituents, including Allan Dorans who explained the impact on Nan’s daughter Michelle in 1975, 4-5 years after it was withdrawn in other countries.

Why is the UK always so late to act on medicine harm?

You may say “that was 50 years ago”, things have changed, but MHRA’s lack of action on AstraZeneca covid vaccines resulted in patient deaths as recently as 2021. If anything, the MHRA’s recent transformation from “From watchdog to regulator” (as proclaimed by June Raine) is making things worse. As was pointed out several times during the debate, Primodos was 40 times the strength of the contraceptive pill, this is a risk a lay person can understand, why didn’t the regulator?

Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg stated “The drug was used in South Korea and Germany as an abortifacient. It was used to procure abortions.” Why would MHRA allow a drug that is used overseas for abortions, as a pregnancy test? It would be reasonable to assume there could be a risk of miscarriage. Why did MHRA reject Professor Carl Heneghan’s (director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University) report showing “a clear association” between Primodos and several forms of malformation? Why hasn’t MHRA taken the actions recommended by the Cumberlege report? The yellowcard system is clearly not fit for purpose and is resulting in unnecessary harm to patients.

The Perseus Group believes that a large part of the problem is that medicine safety doesn’t follow the best practice safety management practices of other safety critical sectors like aviation or nuclear. For example, MHRA does not set safety thresholds for the number of deaths/injuries which is allowed before a medicine is suspended. Previous Inquiries, such as the Cumberlege Inquiry, do little or nothing to improve the fundamentals of MHRA’s safety management because there is no input from those involved in managing safety in other safety critical sectors.

The Government committed to take action on Primodos after the Cumberlege report (if fact Primodos was a key driver resulting in the commissioning of the report), but they have limited that action to pelvic mesh and Valproate. The Patient Safety Commissioner role was created to close the gap but again her scope has been limited to mesh and Valproate. Primodos families have been fighting for decades for redress but the system is against them, they have been failed by the Government, the legal system and the regulator.

There are dozens of medicine and medical device victim groups (antidepressants, morning sickness medicines, vaccines etc) fighting their own battles for justice, what is the underlying theme?

A regulator failing to do their duty to keep people safe, influenced by pharmaceutical companies and defended by the Government.

Esther McVey stated “Sadly, Primodos is not an isolated case, and we have seen many examples over the years of our regulatory bodies failing to keep patients safe from new medicines and medical devices. In 2013, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency listed 27 medicines that had been withdrawn on safety grounds. The average time they were on the market was 11 years. I wonder how many times we will allow history to repeat itself. There have been reports and reviews calling for reform, and back in 2004 the Health Committee undertook an inquiry into the influence of the pharmaceutical industry. It noted, of drug companies, the ‘closeness that has developed between regulators and companies’”

Of MRHA’s 16 board members, 6 have Declarations of Interest relating to healthcare companies including pharmaceutical giants such as Sanofi, AstraZeneca and Pfizer. Pharmaceutical companies have been given immunity for several medicines by the Government, incentivizing them to support the pharmaceutical companies position rather than the victims. Pharmaceutical companies already have deep pockets, why are the Government willing to support them rather than those harmed?

Sitting from the outside, I see many victim groups fighting their individual battles in silos. Imagine their power if they all came together as a single voice demanding reform of MHRA? 22 MPs spoke in the Primodos debate, every single one of them wanting justice for the victims. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Maria Caulfield has agreed to meet with families and review the findings of the Cumberlege report, so this looks like a small step forwards for this group or at least a little more hope.

Do we now have the critical mass to demand reform of MHRA? If everyone came together, could we get a regulator that prioritises patient safety over pharmaceutical company profits?

Will the media start joining the dots?

October 6, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

HPV vaccine on trial – the making of another drug tragedy, Part 1

By Sally Beck | TCW Defending Freedom | October 4, 2023

Sally Beck has been investigating the HPV vaccine since it was introduced; here she serialises sections of a new book called The HPV Vaccine on Trial by Mary Holland and Kim Mack Rosenberg. Since its authorisation in 2006, Merck’s HPV vaccine has left thousands of girls and women damaged or incapacitated. Part 1 covers the background to its introduction and what happened to two of the girls on whom it was tested in Europe.

MORE than 270 million doses of the human papilloma virus vaccine have been administered in over 125 countries worldwide since it was introduced in 2006. It was supposed to prevent cervical cancer but instead we have yet another emerging scandal with manufacturers and drug regulators doing their best to suppress the evidence.

The late Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier, who discovered the HIV virus, said of the HPV: ‘The side effects are underreported by medical personnel, while there are a growing number of parents suing manufacturers and governments for inducing lifelong handicaps, even death, of their loved ones.’

The percentage of adverse events reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting system (VAERS), in the US between 2007 and 2013 represented between 42 per cent and 80 per cent of adverse events for all vaccines administered to females aged nine to 29. Following its introduction to the UK in 2008, our Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has received 4,000 reports of serious adverse reactions.

Sadly, the UK has yet to sue on behalf of injured women here, but lawsuits have now been filed by many countries including the US, India, Colombia, Japan, Spain, and France against government health agencies, and the two manufacturing companies Merck and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). Despite this, boys and girls as young as nine still receive the HPV in the US, and from age 11 to 26 in the UK.

A new book, The HPV Vaccine on Trial, makes it clear that trial participants were lied to and the results were skewed. Women who volunteered to take part were told they would receive a saline placebo. In fact it was a ‘fauxcebo’, a potentially toxic aluminium adjuvant that could cause devastating side effects.

Merck hoped the HPV vaccine, Gardasil, would distract from its expensive Vioxx scandal and replenish its coffers. Vioxx, a painkiller, provided it with $2.5billion (£2.04billion) in revenue, but its side effects caused heart attacks, strokes and death. Merck was showered with 24,000 lawsuits and entered a $4.85billion (£3.96billion) settlement with injured plaintiffs. The HPV vaccine, supposed to be a blockbuster drug, was dubbed ‘Help Pay for Vioxx’. Now Merck is being investigated for making false marketing claims, failing to disclose material information to consumers, and more.

The most affecting stories come from two young Danish women who volunteered to take part in what should have been a double-blind placebo-controlled trial – but there was no saline placebo.

Kesia Lyng was 18 and still at school when she received a brochure in the mail inviting her to join the trial. It said the vaccine had no side effects as it had already been thoroughly tested, and that half of the participants would receive saline – a trial protocol recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Six months earlier, her beloved grandmother had died of cervical cancer at 68. Kesia wanted to help prevent others suffering such a loss and although her worried parents discouraged her, Kesia was determined.

She had her first shot in 2002. It hurt, a lot. Later that day she felt tired, her arm was weak and she felt disconnected. Kesia had her second shot two months later. After this she developed flu-like symptoms, muscle pains, and for most of the week felt like her head was in a vice. Then, for the first time, she had trouble sleeping. Exhausted, it took her hours to drift off and she awoke every hour, as she would do for the next 14 years.

Kesia remembers her third appointment vividly. The corridor looked long, and she walked slowly. She told the trial nurse she wasn’t feeling well, was tired and in pain, and about the headaches that lasted all day. The nurse said not to worry, some headaches were normal.

Reluctantly, she took the third shot. She felt dizzy, nauseous and her arm hurt even more. Kesia went to see her GP, who was concerned enough to put a double exclamation mark in her notes next to details about the trial. Trial staff simply said these were the symptoms they would expect to see after the vaccine and Kesia had no reason to disbelieve them.

However, she became so ill that she missed exams and was unable to graduate from school. She could not get through the day without headache or pain in her joints and muscles. It was a struggle to get out of bed. She had wanted to study as an interior designer or window dresser in Copenhagen. Instead, she lost count of doctors’ visits; they could never find a reason for her pain and fatigue.

Kesia struggled on, married and had two children, and in 2007 learned she had not had the placebo.

Then she met Sesilje (pronounced Cecelia) who had been in the same trial. Their stories were remarkably similar, but Sesilje had received the placebo.

She was a 21-year-old undergraduate at the time who was also told the vaccine was safe. Her first shot was painful, and she had an unusual menstrual period. After her second and third shots she experienced not just another heavy period; her skin hurt, she had headaches and flu-like symptoms. Her stomach hurt and she lost 12lb in two weeks. She developed allergies. She was baffled, so were her doctors. Trial staff said all symptoms were unrelated.

In 2007, she discovered she had received the placebo and her doctor found she had abnormal cervical cell growth. Trial staff put her under pressure to take the vaccine and she was more afraid of cancer than the jab, so she did. Her health plummeted and her other symptoms worsened.

Both women connected the dots after a controversial Danish documentary, The Vaccinated Girls, in 2015, shone a spotlight on many who suffered neurological symptoms following Gardasil injections.

Sesilje then read that Merck had used an aluminium solution as a control. A clinical researcher by now, she discovered there was no saline group and realised that the aluminium had caused her first symptoms, compounded by the jab.

Denmark’s trial investigators knew that the placebo was the adjuvant amorphous aluminium (a known neurotoxin) hydroxyphosphate sulphate (AAHS) and, inexplicably, did not object. The vaccine also included the potentially toxic components polysorbate 80, which crosses the blood brain barrier and is associated with health problems including infertility in men and women, and cardiac risk. Also sodium borate, a genetically modified yeast used in cleaning products and banned in food products by the US Food and Drink Administration (FDA) because of its risks, and L-histidine, an essential amino acid important for tissue repair and growth, blood cell production and the development of embryos and organs. There’s scant data on L-histidine in vaccines but it may cause the immune system to malfunction, attacking the body’s own L-histidine. Low L-histidine levels are associated with autoimmune disease, particularly rheumatoid arthritis.

So, how essential is the HPV jab? HPV infections are endemic throughout the world and 90 per cent of infections resolve within two years without intervention. Around 0.18 per cent progress to cervical cancer. In a press release the FDA said most HPV infections were neither serious nor life-threatening, they were ‘short-lived and not associated with cervical cancer’. It advised women to have regular cervical screening.

There was no health emergency, which means the vaccine should not have been fast-tracked, which it was in 2002. Instead there was an aggressive marketing campaign which induced fear and created a market out of thin air. Merck sold fear of cervical cancer, not the vaccine itself, to consumers. The vaccines do not prevent infections from all HPV types associated with cancer, and not all cervical cancer is associated with HPV.

Merck’s ‘One Less’ campaign urged girls and teens to be one less cervical cancer victim. It featured athletic girls and young women skateboarding, playing basketball, surfing, dancing and swimming while their mothers showered them with affection.

The ads conveyed that ‘good mothers vaccinate’ but said nothing about sex, how the virus was acquired, potential side effects from the vaccine, or safer alternatives for cervical cancer prevention. Now the FDA and the WHO have received over 100,000 reports of adverse events, including deaths, from around the world. Are we supposed to believe these are all unrelated coincidences?

Part 2 tomorrow turns to the vaccine’s unauthorised testing on tribal Indian girls in 2009-10 which led to the deaths of seven of them. 

The HPV Vaccine on Trial  was written and researched by Children’s Health Defense legal expert Mary Holland, lawyer and advocate for autistic children Kim Mack Rosenberg, and vaccine safety advocate Eileen Iorio.

Read our previous articles on HPV vaccine injured here and here.

October 6, 2023 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

“Not About Nato” | “Never About NATO” | “Nothing to Do With NATO” | UKRAINE WAR

Matt Orfalea | October 2, 2023

We were told the Ukraine War is “Not About NATO,” was “Never About NATO”, and has “Nothing to do with NATO”. Until now…

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October 6, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

Anatomy Of A Protection Racket

Money, Medicine, And Madness

By David Marks | Report From Planet Earth | October 5, 2023

Few who consider the recent history of medicine are surprised by the heavy-handed tactics of health regulatory agencies and the attempt by international organizations to dominate the formation of medical policies.

Recent developments are a culmination of practices implemented over many years, that have been and continue to be — strikingly apparent.

The ethos of modern healthcare is exemplified in an anecdote about Dr. Max Gerson when he first came to the United States. Dr. Gerson was a respected physician in Europe, who had great success in treating arthritis, tuberculosis, and cancer with diet. He escaped from Nazi Germany just as his knowledge and techniques were being hailed as effective and revolutionary. Dr. Gerson’s reputation preceded him, and many doctors were seeking his opinion and assistance — until he was confronted by the mentality of the American medical establishment.

Dr. Gerson was called to New York as a consultant for a wealthy industrialist who had arthritis. He had successfully treated the patient’s brother-in-law in Europe. In a Park Avenue penthouse, he joined the house physician and another consulting specialist to see the patient. After the examination, the three physicians retired to discuss the case. Dr. Gerson proceeded to explain the treatment for arthritis he had so successfully used in Europe, then described the manner in which he expected the patient to recover. There was an awkward pause. Finally, one of the other doctors said, “Dr. Gerson, you don’t understand. This man is a wealthy member of the W.R. Grace family. They own steamship lines, banks, chemical companies, and so on. You don’t cure a patient like this, you treat him.”

This simple, insidious message drives most aspects of the medical world. The motivation to keep people healthy is completely undermined by the permeation of profiteering throughout a deeply corrupted industry that depends on the vulnerability of the suffering.

Dr. Gerson’s conclusion that most illness is related to poor diet — and thus correctible, particularly in the early stages of disease — continues to be minimized and ridiculed.

The Confidence Game

There are certainly well-meaning and brilliant physicians; some nobly struggle to practice outside the constraints of conventional wisdom and financial incentives. Most attempt to do the best they can for their patients. But most are thwarted by the theft of their moral compass; their compassion has been hijacked by the greed of corporate interests that have taken healthcare into a destructive realm.

Practitioners and clinics are cornered into using a narrow set of profitable, yet ineffective treatments in changing the course of disease.

Doctors with the best motivation are powerless against the assault from corporate forces. Even if they have the will to cure someone, the structure of the business manipulates them into seeing patients as their source of income. An inextricable relationship with pharmaceutical companies provides an endless supply of products that treat symptoms rather than supporting immunity and good health.

Discussions of the true causes of illness and what is needed to cure them are outlawed. Anyone who strays outside the corporate guidelines is deemed dangerous and a quack — and threatened with losing their license to practice medicine.

Within this restricted environment, all traces of fair compensation have disappeared from healthcare. There is no other service or product that doesn’t provide some estimate of pricing in advance; a model for compensation has no equal. Those with acute or chronic conditions enter the doors of a doctor’s office or hospital without a clear opportunity to ask what they will need to pay. And this happens — with no guarantee that they will be helped — while defenseless against a hurried and fearful dynamic.

The integrity of any healthcare system can be evaluated by whether or not it takes advantage of those who are suffering — and further appraised by the devotion of the necessary time and effort to give lasting support to individual patients.

Suffering Means Profits

People with illness or pain are hostages to the medical establishment. Most who are in physical or mental agony easily give up their autonomy to authorities who apply symptomatic solutions that often suppress illness.

Pharmaceutical interests and government agencies have steadily displayed how their merger has little to do with the well-being of individuals. The muted reaction of the public to this damaging corruption exposes the culmination of a conditioned response that has been developing for decades.

The ability to choose one’s preferred methods of prevention and treatment had been diminishing long before the global efforts to enforce isolation, masking, and vaccination. The doctor-patient relationship has been manipulated and defiled by the same, increasingly powerful economic and political forces.

This ethical depravity of modern medicine has become more apparent in recent years. The increasingly restrictive economic structure that doctors work within is a symptom of this degradation — most obvious during a public health crisis.

Those who dominate the sales of drugs rely on a simple concept: The greater the threat of severe symptoms or death, the narrower the scope of treatment is deemed appropriate and viable, with more potential for profits.

This skewed prioritization has allowed the largest part of gargantuan healthcare profits to be pocketed during the last few weeks of a patient’s life.

Whether for acute, chronic, or infectious diseases, the general public blindly embraces the orders of agencies and doctors who inform them of their vulnerability and the need for medicine. They are simply threatened; drug protocols must be strictly followed, or pandemonium will ensue. Seemingly incontestable facts and decrees overwhelm any personal discretion.

This unprecedented plethora of harmful actions causes incalculable damage to society. A consortium of drug pushers and authoritarian leaders have created an endless war on disease, coercing physicians to peddle their potions — while lifting them from pedestals to the pulpit of supreme medical arrogance.

Poison

Long before the advent of vaccine injuries, an untold number of medical problems were caused by prescribed drugs. These iatrogenic disorders continue to be a leading cause of suffering, hospitalizations, and death.

Within any medicine chest in America, a hideous picture is revealed. The addiction to pharmaceuticals is so entrenched that a good diet, fresh air, balanced living, and restful sleep are minimized and overwhelmed by bogus and suppressive products.

The height of this dehumanizing sales effort has been the description of some narcotics as non-addictive; causing the deaths and destruction of millions of lives.

The flagrant marketing of noxious medications to the ill is only surpassed by the mandating of untested drugs for healthy people. No hawking is necessary; vaccines are hailed as an unassailable defense against sickness and death. Whereas other medications require patients to be diagnosed to sell a product, vaccines can be dispensed to those who have no symptoms, merely using the threat of disease to push inoculation. The government has ensured that while they are experimental, liability is diminished.

That they are described as free is a staggering lie. The inverse is true; inoculations have a special status as a commodity with unrivaled profitability as they can be forced on anyone, particularly when distributed by governments — whose revenues come from taxpayers.

This corruption is relentless. The marketing of vaccines to those who receive no benefit and are likely to suffer subtle or life-changing damage has no limitations. Without the restraint of any truth, the definitions of vaccine and adverse reaction have been changed to maximize proceeds and diminish liability.

This boundless world of profiteering has allowed the vaccination of healthy infants and children; an unmatched, abominable, unforgivable crime.

The illicit behavior of the heavy-handed forces in the medical establishment only becomes more apparent. The recent escalation in threats to streamline and mandate public health policy overtly confirms the blind faith that has been given to an industry that has lost the ability to care for patients and nurture self-healing.

The same foundations, corporations, and organizations that pretend to have humane priorities have consistently promoted poisonous pharmaceuticals and repressed all forms of natural and alternative medical care. This is simply because preventative and remedial methods have minimal cost and lasting effects — and return responsibility for good health to the individual.

The eradication of personal medical autonomy has been a priority of the forces of pharmaceutical interests and corporate medicine for well over a century. The dispensing of poisonous medications is a critical element of this disastrous scheme.

Conclusion: This Is Organized Crime

It is no secret that money is the primary driver of the pharma and medical industries; monopolizing healthcare is the priority of investors. This obvious defect of modern medicine in facing human suffering and disease is rarely discussed. Within the ceaseless debate about overhauling the healthcare bureaucracy, few dare to mention how orientation toward profits has completely corrupted the ethics of medicine.

Almost every challenge and crisis in healthcare has been engendered by the relentless effort to diminish the availability of rival products or treatments. An industrial competitive mindset has been applied to promoting lucrative symptomatic drugs and therapies. The profits from a vast range of prescribed pharmaceuticals that impact symptoms rather than causes — are only exceeded in damaging effects by unnecessary and dangerous inoculations — distributed by the same criminal racket.

As the proceeds of the medical and pharmaceutical industries increase directly with the threat or escalation of disease, complicit authorities show no concern for engendering a healthy world.

Although personal health and general welfare are invoked as reasons to follow medical orders or join the cult of the vaccinated, there is a spurious insistence to accept instructions without question or doubt. This militaristic state of healthcare remains unchecked. Rather than providing safeguards and supporting wellness, ultimatums demanding toxic treatments are sabotaging the vitality of those who fearfully obey coercive dictates.

Reasons for compliance are explicitly described by the enforcers — you need our protection, or else — anyone who doesn’t obey is threatened, degraded, and ridiculed for not surrendering to the edicts of the mafia-like, medical-industrial complex.

The abhorrent means of extortion of an organized crime protection racket are now the standard practices of the pharmaceutical industry and their cronies; government agencies and doctors are their enforcers. This reckless atmosphere allows associated criminal activity, including the engendering of disease through negligent oversight of toxic causes and experimentation with pathogens.

The insidious machinations of a criminal consortium reveal the pernicious influence of money on medical policy and practice. Until this primary failure in providing support for the suffering is recognized and addressed, human health will continue to deteriorate.

October 5, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Russia not looking for ‘new lands’ – Putin

RT | October 5, 2023

The conflict with Ukraine is not the result of a territorial dispute, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a speech at the Valdai International Discussion Club on Thursday.

Putin stressed that Russia is already the largest country in the world and therefore is not seeking to obtain new territory.

He noted that Russia still has a lot of work to do in developing Siberia and the Far East.

“This is not a territorial conflict and is not even the establishment of a regional geopolitical balance,” the president said. “This question is much broader and more fundamental. We are talking about the principles of a new world order.”

The Russian leader insisted that a lasting peace can only be established when “everyone feels safe and knows that their opinion is respected.”

Elsewhere in his speech, Putin said that Russia was not the one that initiated the conflict in Ukraine, but is instead trying to put an end to it.

“We were not the ones who organized a bloody coup in Kiev; it wasn’t us who intimidated the Crimeans and Sevastopol residents with purges; we weren’t the ones who tried to force the Donbass to obey and threatened violence against those who wanted to speak their native language. It is the Kiev regime that has been waging war on Ukraine for the past ten years,” Putin said.

October 5, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Eight years since US forces turned Afghanistan hospital into slaughterhouse

By Ajmal Barakzai | Press TV | October 4, 2023

In the pitch darkness of night, on October 3, 2015, a hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) in northern Afghanistan’s Kunduz city came under high-precision, indiscriminate airstrikes, shattering the deafening silence.

Kunduz Trauma Center – including its intensive care unit, emergency rooms, laboratory, x-ray unit, outpatient department, mental health and physiotherapy ward – were all reduced to rubble.

At least 42 people, including patients, staff and caretakers, were killed in the devastating attack carried out by an American gunship, marking one of the deadliest chapters in the 20-year-long American war.

Tuesday marked the eighth anniversary of the tragic incident, and yet another reminder of how the US-led coalition perpetrated horrendous war crimes in the South Asian country following the invasion in 2001 and how the victims of America’s longest war that lasted two decades were denied justice.

The only thing Americans did was “apologize” to MSF – apologize for destroying dozens of lives and families, making more children orphans and filling more graveyards in Afghanistan.

How did the attack unfold?

At the end of September 2015, there was fierce fighting between the government and rebel forces in the north of the country, and the Taliban managed to capture the city of Kunduz.

The Afghan National Army responded to it with a counter-offensive in an attempt to regain control of the city, so they called in the US Air Force for help.

The Kunduz Trauma Centre was located in the city center, operated by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) since 2011. It catered to the local population in Kunduz.

Although it was in the middle of a rapidly changing frontline, MSF personnel had informed all warring parties of the location of its hospital complex.

Medical facilities are protected under international humanitarian law, so MSF officials and doctors had considered themselves relatively safe until all hell broke loose.

American military officials were also informed, and precise GPS coordinates were sent to them four days before the airstrike, according to multiple reports.

At 2:08 a.m. on October 3, the US Air Force started precise and repeated airstrikes on the Kunduz Trauma Centre complex that lasted for around one hour.

A US AC-130 Hercules gunship fired 211 shells on the main hospital building where patients were sleeping in their beds or being operated on in the operating theatre.

The surrounding buildings were left mostly untouched. During an hour of horror, MSF teams desperately called both Afghan and US military authorities to stop the airstrikes.

In a report at the time, the Washington Post admitted that US AC-130 gunship aircraft circled the hospital in the darkness of night, loaded with 25mm and 40mm cannon as well as a 105mm howitzer.

Every time the aircraft passed, approximately every 15 minutes, it fired and hit the main hospital building “repeatedly and precisely”, MSF said at the time, suggesting that it was not accidental.

US commander in Afghanistan John F Campbell later admitted that the hospital was “mistakenly struck”, without a shred of remorse and without any promise of justice and accountability.

Who were the victims?

Amid the fighting between two warring sides, the MSF staff were overwhelmed with hundreds of wounded patients whose number increased as the fighting intensified.

In the five days leading up to the airstrike, they treated 376 patients in the emergency room.

On the night of the fatal air attack, there were 105 patients in the hospital building, as well as 140 of the MSF staff, of whom 80 were on duty, according to reports.

According to official MSF data, at least 42 people were killed, including 24 patients (among others three children), 14 staff and 4 caretakers. An additional 37 people were seriously injured.

The killed staff were all Afghan nationals, which was a significant loss for a nation that had and continues to have an extremely low doctor-patient ratio.

Their patients burned in their beds, their medical staff were decapitated or lost limbs, and others were shot from the air while they fled the burning building.

The US airstrike made the hospital unusable and all surviving critical patients were referred to other providers, and all MSF staff was evacuated from the war-torn Kunduz.

It was the only health facility of its kind in northeastern Afghanistan, according to MSF, which provided free high-level life and limb-saving trauma care, especially during the years of war.

After the attack, MSF demanded an independent investigation by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission (IHFCC.org) to establish the facts of the devastating attack.

The call was summarily rejected by Washington. A US report concludes that it was not a war crime.

“The investigation concluded that certain personnel failed to comply with the rules of engagement in the law of armed conflict,” Joseph Votel, commander of US Central Command, said after the attack.

“However, the investigation did not conclude that these failures amounted to a war crime. The label war crimes is typically reserved for intentional acts — intentional targeting of civilians or intentionally targeting protected objects or locations.”

In response, MSF President Meinie Nicolai said the report amounted to “an admission of an uncontrolled military operation in a densely populated urban area, during which US forces failed to follow the basic laws of war”.

Human rights activists say the demand for an independent investigation was fair but it could have exposed the US military adventures in Afghanistan and that was a reason enough for them to reject it.

How did the US push it under the carpet?

US officials tried hard to downplay their role in the undeniable crime and even pushed it under the rug, changing the story several times and giving contradictory information to the media.

The first official reaction was that they were targeting Taliban positions and that the airstrike may have resulted in “collateral damage” in a nearby hospital, which is a long-standing US euphemism for civilian casualties.

MSF immediately denied US claims of an “accident,” stating that the building was hit precisely and repeatedly, despite giving coordinates to the Pentagon and their desperate calls during the attack.

Multiple examples appeared in the media when the US military did not show humanitarian principles towards doctors, destroying and invading numerous hospitals and even interrupting surgical operations.

As a result, the official story was changed and it was no longer a stray bomb or an accident, but a deliberate airstrike targeting the Taliban fighters at the hospital.

Once again, MSF denied US claims as none of its staff at the hospital heard or saw Taliban fighters engaging US or Afghan forces. MSF has issued this statement:

“Today the US government has admitted that it was their airstrike that hit our hospital in Kunduz and killed 22 patients and MSF staff.

Their description of the attack keeps changing, from collateral damage to a tragic incident, to now attempting to pass responsibility to the Afghanistan government. The reality is the U.S. dropped those bombs.

The US hit a huge hospital full of wounded patients and MSF staff. The US military remains responsible for the targets it hits, even though it is part of a coalition.

There can be no justification for this horrible attack. With such constant discrepancies in the US and Afghan accounts of what happened, the need for a full transparent independent investigation is ever more critical.”

The Pentagon’s final report released in April 2016 changed the story again and called the attack an “accident,” arguing it thus did not amount to a war crime.

After the investigation, 16 members of the US military were disciplined in the form of suspension and removal from command, though none were criminally charged.

The victims were offered money as compensation, $6,000 for dead and $3,000 for wounded people, which tells us how much Washington values Afghan life.

A similar compensation of $5,000 was offered by the German government for the victims of the 2009 German airstrike in Kunduz that killed between 100 and 200 Afghan civilians.

For comparison, in 2018 a federal judge in New York set damage awards for 9/11 victims according to the following scale: $12.5 million per spouse, $8.5 million per parent, $8.5 million per child and $4.25 million per sibling.

Ajmal Barakzai is an Afghan activist currently living in Europe.

October 5, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

The Real Anthony Fauci – The Movie

Watch at Bitchute

“2022 The Real Anthony Fauci – Everyone Deserves To Know The Truth. Different experts make a stand against today’s putatively criminal and harmful health system, focusing on Anthony Fauci and his role in the shaping of the AIDS and COVID-19 epidemics.”

THE REAL ANTHONY FAUCI: Movie based on the 2021 RFK jr book “The Real Anthony Fauci”.

Written and directed by Kala Mandrake
Production: Jeff Hayes Films

October 5, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Police Detective: 50% of sudden infant deaths happen within 48 hours of vaccination — But no one’s allowed to say it

By John-Michael Dumais | The Defender | October 2, 2023

A former police detective claimed that around 50% of the 250 sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) cases she investigated over seven years happened within 48 hours after the infant received a vaccine. About 70% happened within one week.

She argued this timing proves vaccines are behind SIDS because the correlation would not be observed if the deaths were occurring randomly.

The detective, who worked in a “major city” of over 300,000 people and identified herself simply as “Jennifer,” shared her story with Steve Kirsch in a video and Substack article published last week.

Kirsch, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and philanthropist and executive director of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, said he contacted the police station where Jennifer worked and verified her identity.

The detective’s information is independently verifiable in the police records “for any health authority who has any doubts,” Kirsch said, adding that he is actively working with the police department to make the statistics public.

Describing her department’s policy to “leave no stone unturned” when investigating sudden infant deaths, Jennifer wrote:

“Standard police policy was to ask about any pharmaceuticals … and ask every single thing that a person was doing in the moments, hours, days and weeks leading up to their death …

“So, with a baby: ‘When was the last time he saw a doc? Was he healthy? Any meds or shots? What has he been eating? What kind of soap do you wash them with?’ …

“The coroner we had to often report to was especially a stickler on everything that went into that kid, food- and drug-wise.”

Dr. Elizabeth Mumper, president and CEO of The Rimland Center For Integrative Medicine, told The Defender, “Many parental reports about a baby dying suddenly start with the phrase, ‘He just was at the pediatrician’s office — they said he was healthy.’”

“If there were no correlations between vaccines and SIDS, then sudden death cases would be evenly distributed throughout the month,” Mumper said.

“Instead, we see clusters of unexpected deaths in the first week after shots are given. Reports from police officers and first responders are supported by this published evidence,” she added.

Vaccines never mentioned in coroner reports

Despite the comprehensive data gathering required by the coroner, Jennifer told Kirsch vaccines were never listed as the cause of death — or even mentioned — in the final reports.

It took a couple of years before she learned why. “It’s because it’s a pharmaceutical that doesn’t carry liability,” she said, referring to the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986.

That the coroner’s report would mention parents “put Johnson & Johnson baby lotion on the baby the day before they died” but never mention vaccines is what got her “triggered,” she said.

“Nobody in my office had an answer,” Jennifer said. “I’m like, ‘Why isn’t the medical examiner putting this on here?’ And they were like, ‘I don’t know.’ … They thought it was as crazy as I did.”

The Defender recently reported on the case of a Maine couple whose 7-week-old child died the day after receiving multiple vaccines. The state medical examiner refused to investigate vaccines as a possible cause, but a later toxicology report confirmed the infant had toxic levels of aluminum in his blood.

The conspiracy of silence does not end with coroner’s offices, according to Jennifer, but extends to law enforcement policy.

Jennifer told Kirsch about her husband attending a conference for police investigators in St. Louis, where the presenters never mentioned vaccines as a possible cause of SIDS.

“There’s always … some sort of symptom of suffocation or brain bleed associated with a SIDS stamp on a death report or an autopsy report,” she said.

However, in side conversations at the conference, detectives would admit the connection. “It’s kind of a common thing for detectives who investigate SIDS deaths to know at least SIDS is a kind of false diagnosis,” she said.

Kirsch shared the story of forensic police detective Helen Grus from Ottawa, Canada, who is being prosecuted for investigating the link between sudden infant death and vaccines.

Grus is facing misconduct hearings for allegedly accessing files of infant death cases in which she was not previously involved.

According to a Rebel News report, Grus was investigating reports that the sudden infant death rate had increased by a factor of two or three after the introduction of the COVID-19 vaccines.

The detective was subjected to a smear campaign casting her “as the problem, rather than the vaccines,” according to Kirsch.

Grus also was suspended without pay for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine and for questioning the usefulness of masks.

AAP trains docs to gaslight parents so they ‘don’t start questioning vaccinations’

When Jennifer and her husband, who also is a police detective, were shopping around for a pediatrician, they were upfront about their concerns regarding the SIDS-vaccine connection.

They eventually found a pediatrician who, after hearing their observations of infant deaths from their investigations, “didn’t even change expression,” Jennifer recalled. “He’s like, ‘I’m not shocked at all.’”

He said, “You have a really valid reason to not want to do this [vaccinations] with your kids. And I support whatever decision you make,” she told Kirsch.

But the pediatrician told them that the American Academy of Pediatrics “actually trained them to talk to parents so that they don’t start questioning vaccinations,” she said.

“He started so many sentences with, ‘According to the AAP, I’m not supposed to say this, but I don’t lie to my patients,’” she recalled.

Kirsch pointed out the difficulty doctors face when they believe vaccinations are necessary to prevent diseases like polio and meningitis.

If doctors admitted to the connection between vaccines and SIDS, he said, “that would destroy the public confidence in the vaccination program. People wouldn’t get vaccinated.”

“So we’ll basically keep our mouth shut about that,” doctors reason to themselves, Kirsch speculated, and “minimize the vaccine hesitancy by telling parents that it wasn’t the vaccine, these things just happen.”

“That’s how they’re trained,” he said.

Dr. Paul Thomas, pediatrician and author of “The Vaccine-Friendly Plan: Dr. Paul’s Safe and Effective Approach to Immunity and Health-from Pregnancy Through Your Child’s Teen Years,” told The Defender, “Pediatricians don’t recognize the link nor would they consider SIDS vaccine-related. They just don’t know what they don’t know.”

AAP, in its treatment of sleep-related infant deaths, does not mention vaccines as a possible cause of SIDS, instead claiming it is best explained by the following “triple risk model”:

“SIDS occurs when an infant with intrinsic vulnerability (often manifested by impaired arousal, cardiorespiratory, and/or autonomic responses) undergoes an exogenous trigger event (e.g., exposure to an unsafe sleeping environment) during a critical developmental period.

“The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a safe sleep environment to reduce the risk of all sleep-related deaths. This includes supine positioning; use of a firm, noninclined sleep surface; room sharing without bed sharing; and avoidance of soft bedding and overheating.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that “studies have found that vaccines do not cause and are not linked to SIDS.”

The Public Health Collaborative, citing Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, states that “the condition’s exact cause is unknown,” but that “numerous studies have shown that vaccines do not cause SIDS.”

‘No other viable explanation’ 

A review of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and the medical literature between 1990-2019 analyzing the correlation between vaccines and SIDS, found that “of all cases post-vaccination, 75% occurred within seven days.

Kirsch noted this number is a close match to Jennifer’s estimate of around 70% over her 250 cases.

“This is impossible if the vaccines aren’t causing SIDS,” Kirsch said. “There is simply no other viable explanation for the association,” adding “But of course, you won’t get your paper published if you say that.”

Thomas told The Defender, “The studies showing that most SIDS cases are in the first 3-10 days after a vaccine, make it clear that the vaccines are killing babies.”

Thomas said he did not witness SIDS cases in his pediatric practice, likely because none of his parents were giving their infants the hepatitis B vaccine on day one, and families were not following the CDC vaccine schedule but were spacing out the time between shots or avoiding them altogether.

In another paper, “Deaths Reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, United States, 1997–2013,” the CDC researchers reported, “For child [0-17] death reports, 79.4% received >1 vaccine on the same day; among infants … 86.2% received >1 vaccine.”

Despite this, the authors concluded, “No concerning pattern was noted among death reports submitted to VAERS during 1997–2013.”

Nonetheless, they stated that, because vaccine use is expanding and new vaccines are being added to the childhood schedule, “it is important to continue to monitor death reports to VAERS.”

In a peer-reviewed study published in PubMed, researchers studied infant mortality rates around the world and found a “high statistically significant correlation between increasing numbers of vaccine doses and increasing infant mortality rates.”

The authors reported 33 nations had infant mortality rates lower than the U.S., which has the highest vaccination rate of any country.

Mumper told The Defender, “Evidence of striking temporal correlations between vaccines and SIDS in a series of studies should lead to people in high places to consider vaccines as a cause of SIDS in a subset of babies.”

Kirsch’s article links to additional studies confirming the SIDS-vaccine connection.

‘I’ve seen what happens to people who tell the truth’

Although Jennifer chose to appear fully visible in the video interview, Kirsch asked her why she hadn’t yet disclosed her full identity.

She responded that sharing this kind of information could “shut down an entire industry,” adding, “I’ve seen what happens to people who tell the truth.”

She and her husband discussed the potential impact on their children’s safety in light of her stepping forward to share what she knows.

She paraphrased what she recalled Ice Cube saying during a recent Tucker Carlson interview: “If you go along with the agendas, nobody bothers you, you’re fine. It’s when you tell the truth that you get in trouble.”

Jennifer and Kirsch discussed the blowback to doctors and nurses who’ve been fired over the past several years for telling the truth.

Parents of children injured or killed by vaccines who are passionate activists also “get treated like garbage,” she said.

Mumper wrote such parents must feel like “modern-day Cassandras” because their observation of the obvious connection between the administration of vaccines and the deterioration of their children’s health within one or two days was most often received as unwelcome news if not outright disbelieved.

Not all parents make the connection, however, or necessarily want to. Jennifer said she recognized the difficult position her testimony puts some parents in.

She said:

“I see parents on both sides of it with vaccine-injured children. Some of them hold on to the lie so strong, because admitting that this was true means that they had a hand in their child’s death or their child’s injury. And I understand that. I understand how hard it is to come to grips with that.”

The current medical consensus on SIDS may also leave parents with the impression they contributed to their child’s death.

John-Michael Dumais is a news editor for The Defender. He has been a writer and community organizer on a variety of issues, including the death penalty, war, health freedom and all things related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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.

October 4, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Why are we so afraid of 1918?

What really happened that created this phantom behemoth?

Health Advisory & Recovery Team | October 4, 2023

Every time someone tries to whip up a frenzy about a new bug the 1918 influenza pandemic will be referenced. People will say there were a huge number of deaths including of the young and therefore you must be terrified. But what if this whole story was not what it seems?

The novel virus lie

1918 influenza did not spread like a tsunami as if everyone was susceptible. It came in 3 waves affecting 11% of the population each time. The deaths were spread over two years.

Similarly, seasonal influenza infect 5-15% of the population with each wave as does SARS-CoV-2.

The huge number of deaths

Kate Bingham trotted out the line that 50 million people died of the 1918 flu. (She also threw in that 20 million had died of COVID for good measure when the official figure is 6 million).

But 50 million is a lie.

Wellcome Trust would claim it was too low. In fact they claim the total was a stratospheric 100 million.

There were 1.8 billion people, of whom 600 million were infected. If 100 million really did die, that would mean an infection fatality rate of 1 in 6! If 50 million died, it would be an infection fatality rate of 1 in 12. Both are ludicrous claims that do not match with reality.

The consensus from every reasonable measure is that 1-3% of the infected died. This figure was based on extrapolating backwards from hospital fatality rates – people a hundred years ago were already very good at recording deaths and statistics.

Based on a mortality rate of 1-3% the deaths would have amounted to 6-18 million, still bad, but a fraction of the claim.

Estimates at the time were in that range. The US estimated 675,000 deaths from a population of 103 million. That means 0.65% of the population died.

The estimates for global mortality were exaggerated right from the start. China and Japan did not have the same problem as the West. However, when calculating global mortality it was assumed such places had fared as badly or worse than the USA and Europe. Consequently, modelling from 1920 already exaggerated deaths to 20 million globally.

Deaths in the young

Importantly there was more than one way to die in 1918. Some developed a viral pneumonia and then a bacterial pneumonia and then died. But there were unusual deaths in the young – unlike other pneumonias.

The second way to die was to develop a blue tinge – “heliotrope cyanosis” and then to die quite rapidly with haemorrhagic wet lungs. This is not the typical picture for a viral death.

Some have suggested other causes e.g. war related chemical exposure. There were huge movements of poorly nourished troops living in unsanitary conditions and thinking this was not a factor is surely naive. At the time there was a belief that influenza was a bacterial disease and a variety of bacterial based “vaccines” were concocted and injected during the second two waves. Whether that contributed to the harm is uncertain, other vaccines result in a temporary immune deficit to fight off infection, but it certainly couldn’t have helped. But aspirin toxicity is the most compelling argument.

Aspirin was new and was presented as the saviour drug. It was widely given in toxic doses of 8 to 31 grams per day, far beyond today’s maximum recommended dose of around 4 grams. It is now known that high doses can lead to lung damage, fever, seizures and death. The more fever the more aspirin would be given.

This story epitomises the problem:

1918 was a story of iatrogenic harm (harm caused by medics). And yet it is being used to promote yet more iatrogenic harm. Do not be scared of 1918. It did not happen the way it was presented.

When looking at the bigger picture, 1918 does stand out as a bad year for deaths – as bad as 20 years before but better than almost every year preceding that.

The people exaggerating the claims about it all have something to gain from doing so. That’s how the deaths rose from 20 million (which assumed higher mortality in China and Japan than USA!) to 50-100 million. Stop believing them!

October 4, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

“NOBODY IS SAFE!”

Matt Orfalea | May 20, 2023

@0rf

October 4, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

CDC Recommends Everyone Getting Flu and COVID-19 Shots Together Despite No Safety Data

BY ROBERT KOGON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | OCTOBER 2, 2023

The U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) is recommending for everyone six months of age and older to get vaccinated against both flu and COVID-19 this autumn, and in a new ‘Check-In with Dr. Cohen‘ video, CDC Director Mandy Cohen even suggests you can make life simple and get the shots at the same time. See the below screen shot.

In a would-be humorous ad featuring American football star Travis Kelce on doing ‘Two Things At Once,’ Pfizer is likewise promoting the idea of topping up the annual flu shot with a COVID-19 shot.

Note that the ad contains a caption which states, “The CDC recommends getting your COVID and FLU SHOTS at the same visit if you’re due for both” (capitalisation in original).

But is it safe to get the Covid and flu shots at the same time?

Well, neither the CDC nor the manufacturer know. An August 30th BioNTech press release on the EU’s authorisation of Pfizer and BioNTech’s “XBB.1.5-adapted” COVID-19 vaccine includes the following paragraph in the ‘Important Safety Information’ section.

Interactions with other medicinal products or concomitant administration of COMIRNATY, COMIRNATY Original/Omicron BA.1 or COMIRNATY Original/Omicron BA.4-5 with other vaccines has not been studied.

Apparently, this is “important safety information” which has not reached Mandy Cohen and the CDC.

October 3, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Vaccines Grown in Lettuce? Rep. Massie Asks House to Bar FDA, USDA From Funding Transgenic Edible Vaccines

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 27, 2023

The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday passed an amendment that would prohibit funding for transgenic edible vaccines — vaccines grown in genetically engineered plants for consumption by humans or animals.

The amendment, introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to the agricultural appropriations bill H.R. 4368, would bar the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from funding the vaccines for fiscal year 2024.

A vote on the full bill in the House is still pending as of this writing.

In an interview with The Defender, Massie said he introduced the amendment after learning about a recent project in California, funded by a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, that involves growing lettuce and trying to get the lettuce to produce mRNA vaccines that are intended to be consumed by humans who eat the lettuces.

Massie said he is concerned “that plants cross-pollinate and pollen from these modified plants, food-producing plants, could carry in the wind to other fields and contaminate them. And we could really contaminate a lot of our food supply with unknown doses of vaccines that would deliver unknown dosages.”

“Plants release pollen and it can go anywhere with the wind or with insects, and I just think it’s a bad idea,” he added.

“Rep. Massie is right to be concerned,” Claire Robinson, managing editor of GMWatch, told The Defender. “Genetically engineering a potent immunogen into food plants is irresponsible in the extreme.” She added:

“All the usual risks of GM [genetically modified] plants — the DNA-damaging effects of the GM transformation process leads to changes in gene expression and biochemistry of the plant, which can include the production of toxins or allergens — apply to these vaccine-producing plants, with additional risks on top.

“In the case of vaccine-producing plants, you are intentionally engineering a plant to elicit an immune reaction. This increases the level of risk exponentially.”

‘Either they don’t work, or they are not safe, or both’

According to a 2013 scientific paper, transgenic edible vaccines “are prepared by introducing selected desired genes into plants and inducing these genetically modified plants to manufacture the encoded proteins.”

Such vaccines offer “several potential advantages” to conventional vaccine production techniques according to the paper, including a potentially lower cost of production that would be suitable for developing countries.

Efforts to develop transgenic edible vaccines are not new — scientific literature on the topic dates back to at least 1999.

What is new with some current attempts to develop transgenic edible vaccines is that they would be geared to deliver mRNA vaccines orally.

“These are all genetically modified crops,” Massie said. “They’ve been injected with mRNA or spliced with DNA, with the intent of creating copies of that RNA or DNA. The plants are pretty effective at that.”

Robinson said this approach is not new. “Scientists have been trying to produce edible vaccines in plants for many years and some testing has occurred in animals and humans.”

However, she added, “Thus far, not one plant-produced vaccine has been approved anywhere, as far as I know. What does that tell us? Either they don’t work, or they are not safe, or both,” Robinson said.

California project is ‘utter madness’

The California lettuce project that drew Massie’s attention, conducted by scientists at University of California (UC), Riverside, is described as an effort to develop “The future of vaccines,” which “may look more like eating a salad than getting a shot in the arm” via turning “edible plants like lettuce into mRNA vaccine factories.”

“The project’s goals … are threefold,” according to UC Riverside. “Showing that DNA containing the mRNA vaccines can be successfully delivered into the part of plant cells where it will replicate, demonstrating the plants can produce enough mRNA to rival a traditional shot, and finally, determining the right dosage.”

This may help overcome challenges currently facing mRNA vaccine technology, namely, “that it must be kept cold to maintain stability during transport and storage.”

Plant-based mRNA vaccines “could overcome this challenge with the ability to be stored at room temperature,” university researchers said.

Juan Pablo Giraldo, Ph.D., an associate professor at UC Riverside’s Botany and Plant Sciences Department, is leading this research project alongside scientists from UC San Diego and Carnegie Mellon University. He said, “Ideally, a single plant would produce enough mRNA to vaccinate a single person.”

“We are testing this approach with spinach and lettuce and have long-term goals of people growing it in their own gardens,” he added. “Farmers could also eventually grow entire fields of it.”

Robinson called such efforts “utter madness,” telling The Defender :

“Scientists are talking about people growing vaccine-containing plants in their gardens and farmers growing them in their fields. It is utter madness to propose to release such plants into uncontrolled conditions in this way.

“Vaccines are medicines, and their use and dosage must be carefully controlled. With any medicine, only the target patient should be treated, with their informed consent. How will these safeguards be in place if people are growing vaccines in food crops in their gardens and open fields?”

Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., a bioweapons expert and professor of international law at the University of Illinois who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, said that such research may also violate international law and globally recognized ethical standards.

“The deployment of these transgenic edible vaccines would involve a gross violation of the Nuremberg Code on Medical Experimentation, and thus constitute a crime against humanity,” he said. “Their release into the environment would violate the Precautionary Principle of customary international environmental law. They would also be subject to the same human health objections to GMO foods that are too numerous for me to list.”

“What about cross-pollination and cross-contamination?” Robinson questioned. “People will ingest immunogens without their consent or knowledge.”

Risk of prion diseases, ‘dangerous immune reactions’

Robinson said there may also be several other unintended consequences for human health from the use of transgenic edible vaccines.

She said:

“Plant-produced vaccines will have what is known as post-translational modifications to the intended protein product. You will not end up with just the desired protein product as it exists in its native form in the pathogen. These post-translational modifications will be specific to the plant, and in humans or other animals they will produce dangerous immune reactions.

“Even the responses to the desired protein product — the ‘vaccine’ — will vary from person to person because people respond differently to different proteins. Also, you can end up with proteins that are toxic or that are not folded properly, with the latter property meaning that they could cause prion diseases.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, prion diseases “are progressive neurodegenerative disorders that affect both humans and animals,” and include Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker disease, fatal familial insomnia, kuru and, in animals, chronic wasting disease.

“In addition, it’s possible that the novel proteins will sensitize people to other things, such as foods,” Robinson said. “In an age where food allergies are increasing rapidly, do we really want to risk worsening that trend?”

Massie said there are other ways in which the human food supply could be contaminated by plant-based vaccines, noting that animals could eat plants and “that could eventually contaminate food that humans eat.”

“How do you control the dosage when you put it in food?” Massie asked. “I think it’s just a really bad idea. Even if you’re not against vaccines in general, I just think this is a really bad way to deliver vaccines to people or animals,” he said.

He added:

“I think we should have learned our lesson. If we believe that COVID-19 was a lab escape and the result of human experiments, which I do and most Americans do, then I think you should be concerned about these outdoor labs … Here we’re talking about greenhouses or open fields.”

Along similar lines, Boyle said, “We know that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines have produced a massive number of deaths and adverse events that have been thoroughly documented in the professional literature.”

“These transgenic edible vaccines would likewise be more dangerous than useless, so I wholeheartedly support Massie’s amendment,” he added.

In drawing another parallel with COVID-19, Massie likened the UC Riverside study to “science fiction.”

“Unlike some of the other research that’s been done for vaccines for animals to be grown in plants, this project in California is intended to develop vaccines for humans … I have no idea what they’re doing with this stuff. It sounds like something out of a science fiction movie,” he said.

He added:

“I think we learned from the COVID virus that you’ve got to be careful with this stuff. When you start playing God and you start modifying genes and merging DNA that’s never been merged before, you can get some unintended results. And if those escape, you can have some really bad implications or consequences.”

Similar experiments went awry

According to Massie, similar experiments with transgenic edible vaccines were conducted in the past, sometimes with government funding and support — including a project to develop transgenic alfalfa plants for edible vaccine production.

That five-year project, launched in 2016 by Fort Valley State University in Georgia, sought to “develop transgenic alfalfa plants expressing the CTB gene, which can be used in plant-based edible vaccination systems.”

The project was supported by an unspecified level of funding from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and resulted in the publication of at least one scientific paper.

“And then there’s another instance where things went very bad,” Massie said. “About 20 years ago, they were trying to grow a vaccine to prevent diarrhea in pigs and they were using corn to grow this vaccine. The field the next year was used to grow soybeans, but the corn sprouted again.”

According to Massie, “There were some leftover kernels … and the corn was mixed with the soybeans, and it contaminated 500 bushels of soybeans that were then mixed with 500,000 bushels. And so, they had to destroy all of those soybeans.”

The New York Times reported in December 2002 that ProdiGene, the biotechnology company that developed the corn crop, agreed to pay the U.S. government a $3 million fine “to settle charges that it did not take proper steps to prevent corn that was genetically engineered to produce pharmaceuticals from entering the food supply.”

While it is unclear whether this particular project was granted U.S. government funding, an archived version of the website from 2007 of Texas A&M University’s Food Protein R&D Center, which hosted the research, said the center “collaborate[d] contractually with … state and federal research laboratories” and was “partially funded by the Texas Food and Fibers Commission.”

In November 2000, ProdiGene received an unspecified grant amount from the National Institutes of Health for the development of a transgenic edible vaccine intended to “develop genetically enhanced corn that could serve as an oral delivery system for an AIDS vaccine.”

In October 2000, ProdiGene received a U.S. government patent (#6,136,320) for the development of pharmaceutical products in plants for human and animal consumption. The company appears to be defunct since the mid-2000s, not having issued press releases since 2004, while its website became inactive in February 2006.

More action needed to stop government funding

Massie told The Defender he’s not passing a law that would prevent private organizations from doing this research, “but I’m using the appropriations process this week to try to defund the use of taxpayer dollars to develop these things.”

He said the amendment is in the form of a limitation agreement. “It doesn’t institute a law,” he said. “It will only prohibit government funding from being spent on this. So even if it’s successful, it will only last for the term of the appropriations bill, which is one year.”

“If we’re successful in stopping this through the appropriations process, we would have to do this every year,” Massie said, adding that “this amendment … only constrain[s] the FDA and USDA from doing this research. It wouldn’t actually constrain the NSF.”

For that to happen, Massie said “We’ll have to have another amendment on a different appropriations bill to keep that agency from funding this research.”

Massie pledged to introduce similar amendments if this happens.

“If that appropriations bill comes to the floor, I will offer an amendment to limit the funding for this type of research on it as well,” he said. “If the appropriations bill that funds the NSF should make it to the floor, I’ll offer this identical amendment to keep them from funding it.”

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

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.

October 2, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

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