During Dec. 2-3, 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) held a Global Vaccine Safety Summit in Geneva, Switzerland. It was billed as an event for “vaccine safety stakeholders.” Attendees included current and former members of the Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS), which provides “independent, authoritative, scientific advice” to WHO on vaccine safety issues of international concern that may have a short- or long-term impact on national vaccination programs.1 2
Other attendees at the summit included WHO pharmacovigilance staff from all regions, vaccination program managers, national regularly authorities and representatives of United Nations agencies, academic institutions, umbrella organizations of pharmaceutical companies, technical partners, industry representatives and funding agencies.1 It appears that everyone who is anyone with regard to national or global vaccination programs and public policy was at this event, so it was a big deal in the world of vaccines.
In her opening comments to the attendees, the WHO’s Deputy Director-General Dr. Zsuzsanna Jakab characterized the summit as a “very very important” meeting involving the “highly important” and “very crucial” issue of vaccine safety. She stressed the importance of the WHO investing “a lot” into vaccine safety.1 Dr. Jakab explained:
Because vaccines are given to millions of healthy people, including healthy children, it is very important that we maintain high safety standards. And this is the role and responsibility of different experts. First of all, monitoring the safety of the vaccines is a joint responsibility between the immunizations programs and the regulators. The immunization programs have to inform the patients and the caregivers and ensure the safest administration of the vaccines. The regulators validate the quality, the safety and the efficacy of the products that are licensed in the countries. And vaccine safety surveillance also requires open minds and open mindedness, considering and respecting that everybody’s safety concerns are well considered and all the necessary measures are taken to respond to this.1
Dr. Jakab added: “There are sometimes wrong perceptions, poor science or vaccination errors that are the main vaccine safety problems.1 This simple admission was significant, given how often the mantra “vaccines are safe and effective” is recited by many doctors, public health officials, legislators and representatives of the vaccine industry. But it was nothing compared to the remarks of some of the attendees.
Perhaps the most enlightening remarks about vaccine safety were made by Heidi Larson, PhD, professor of anthropology and director of the Vaccine Confidence Project. Dr. Larson stressed:
There’s a lot of safety science that’s needed. Without the good science, we can’t have good communication. So, although I’m talking about all these other contextual issues and communication issues, it absolutely needs the science as the backbone. You can’t repurpose the same old ‘science’ to make it sound better if you don’t have the science that’s relevant to the new problems. So we need much more investment in safety science.3
You cannot repurpose the same old science to make it sound better? That says a lot because it essentially undermines another common mantra in the debate about vaccines—that vaccine science is settled. Dr. Larson pointed out what would seem obvious to even the lay person, and that is that there are such things as poor science and old science. Consequently, there is always a need to continually revise and update scientific knowledge, including scientific knowledge about vaccines.
Soumya Swaminathan, MD, chief scientist with the WHO, confirmed that there is much that is not known about vaccine safety because surveillance is often not what it should be. Dr. Swaminathan said:
I think we cannot overemphasize the fact that we really don’t have very good safety monitoring systems in many countries, and this adds to the miscommunication and the misapprehensions because we’re not able to give clear-cut answers when people ask questions about the deaths that have occurred due to a particular vaccine….3
One should be able to give a very factual account of exactly has happened and what the cause of [the] deaths are, but in most cases there is some obfuscation at that level and, therefore, there is less and less trust, then, in the system.3
The acknowledgement here is that some people die after getting one or more vaccinations. This is not a common admission within the medical community and public health profession because it tends to weaken the “vaccines are safe” half of the “vaccines are safe and effective” mantra. The implication is that, most often, when someone dies following vaccination, there is an effort by health authorities to ignore or conceal the truth of what may have happened in relationship to recently received vaccinations. The logical question is, “Why?” and “If so, then how is it possible to have any certainty about how safe vaccines really are?
Dr. Stephen Evans, professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, further speculated about the difficulty in fully understanding the safety of vaccines. He made comments about the unpredictability of the potential reactogenic effects of the adjuvants added to vaccines. He said:
It seems to me that adjuvants multiply the immunogenicity of the antigens that they are added to, and that is their intention. It seems to me they multiply the reactogenicity in many instances, and therefore it seems to me that it is not unexpected if they multiply the incidence of adverse reactions that are associated with the antigen, but may not have been detected through lack of statistical power in the original studies.3
Martin Howell Friede, PhD, coordinator for the WHO’s Initiative for Vaccine Research, agreed with Dr. Evans on this point. However, he noted that the main concern was not about local adverse reactions to vaccinations, but rather about related “systemic” adverse events. “[T]his is not the major health concern. The major health concerns which we are seeing are accusations of long-term, long-term effects,” Dr. Evans said.3
In other words, not only is it possible that immediate and observable adverse reactions to vaccines are being underestimated, it is possible that acute vaccine reactions may lead to and eventually manifest as more serious and systemic long-term poor health outcomes.
These and other uncertainties about vaccine safety are one of the reasons that many doctors and other medical personnel are, increasingly, questioning vaccines. “The other thing that’s a trend and an issue is not just confidence in providers but confidence of health care providers,” Dr. Larson observed. “We have a very wobbly health professional frontline that is starting to question vaccines and the safety of vaccines.”3
In part, Dr. Larson attributed the problem of waning confidence in vaccines by health professionals and their lack of confidence in answering patient questions about vaccine safety to their lack of expertise on the issue. “I mean most medical school curriculums, even nursing curriculums… I mean, in medical school you are lucky if you have a half day on vaccines, never mind keeping up to date with all this,” Dr. Larson said.3
References:
2 WHO. The Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety.
3 The Highwire with Del Bigtree. Caught on Camera: WHO Scientists Question Safety Of Vaccines. YouTube Jan. 12, 2020.
22 Responses
Finally the truth is beginning to leak out that vaccines are not always that safe particularly the aluminum and mercury and other fillers. So why are state governor’s being tyrannical And mandating so many dangerous vaccines? And what can we do about it as a citizen?
Amen sister!! The problem is that if they get rid of the dangerous Al, they will just find another dangerous alternative That’s what happened when they got rid of the Mg, we went to Al.
I mean Hg
(Mercury)
Well it’s about time they recognize that there is an issue. Vaccine safety is what we’ve all had a problem with & even with this big of a problem they have to take baby steps towards a solution.
Finally someone seems to wake up
At long last.
However this is still not at the heart of the matter. The question is: where is the research which proves that vaccines are effective?
multiple shots of vaccinations at one doctor visit probably one of the main reason for the dramatic increase of autism. Many autism parents noticed the direct link but dismissed by governments and medical industries. Yes, the truth will come out eventually, at the sacrifice of many innocent killed or disabled by excessive amount of vacinations
I feel the same o both those comments, 1) finally a large international and more or less trustworthy organization speaking up and questioning what has been outlined for years; and 2) how long will it take to filter to public policies and finally giving back the freedom of choice to private citizen!. and yes there is a crucial need for updated curriculum in medical, nursing and any schools with programs dealing with the health of the public (including dentists constantly pushing fluoride treatments on patients).
thank you for posting a synopsis of this very important meeting
“Science will eventually win out” – I get it – we hope that a conversation between the experts will put a crack in the wall. But big pharma is standing by with thousands of cement mixers, shovels, and workers, ready to repair the cracks in the wall. They can cover over the entire discussion and make it look like it never happened. We’re underestimating the opposition and the amount of money involved. Not a bad cause, just a weak strategy.
Perfectly said! Unfortunately true! However, we can’t give up!
The medical regulating system has been “captured” by the pharmaceutical industry which profits by keeping us sick and buying their products. We The People must call these liars and criminals out and expose them in every way we can, boycott their toxic products and create alternatives like clean water, organic food, homeopathy, naturpathy, and many others.
And true Nathalie, WHO cannot be trusted on numbers….wild assumptions during the AIDS “crisis” that proved to be pulled out of thin air. And swine flu and bird flue…..
Levi Quackenboss has created a condensed version of the “WHO IS LYING TO YOU?” broadcast from the Highwire Youtube channel that focuses specifically on the comments made by the WHO scientist at the December 2019 World Health Organization Vaccine Safety Summit for Lawmakers : It’s on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1xey8zlyQo&t=.
Here is the breakdown:
This 56-minute video is condensed from Highwire for easy sharing with your state Representatives, Senators, and US Congressmen and women. Markers are below for skipping ahead.
2:00 Dr. Heidi Larson, PhD, Director of the Vaccine Confidence Project says the biggest factor in vaccine hesitancy is vaccine safety.
4:26 Dr. Larson says that doctors and nurses are “very wobbly” and “starting to question the safety of vaccines,” and it’s a “huge problem.”
6:20 Dr. Larson admits doctors don’t have confidence in vaccine safety to stand up mothers asking questions. Doctors only got a “half day of vaccine instruction in medical school.”
8:06 Dr. Larson admits that the WHO’s issue with social media is not vaccine “misinformation,” but that the information “seeds doubt.”
10:24 Dr. Larson admits that global health replaced natural immunity with dependence on vaccine-induced immunity on the “assumption that populations would cooperate.” People got the 6 vaccines in the 1960s-1980s, but now it’s a problem. But since they got the world dependent on vaccines, global health has no choice but to continue pushing vaccines.
13:10 Dr. Larson says there is a lot of safety science needed, they can’t keep repurposing old science that isn’t relevant to the new problem that vaccines are causing.
16:04 Dr. Marion Gruber, FDA admits that vaccines NEED to have safety monitoring specifically tailored to the one vaccine under consideration. Risk management plans WILL need to take into account all of the safety evidence they have. These safety measures do not exist.
19:40 Dr. Martin Howell Friede, WHO cautions vaccine makers from using adjuvants because they cause adverse events. If makers must use an adjuvant, they should use an old one with a “history” (that allows the vaccine maker to say the adverse event wasn’t the adjuvant.) The new adjuvants will be accused of causing adverse events, but there will be no new vaccines without adjuvants. His solution is to build confidence, not make them safer.
25:15 Professor Stephen Evans says “It seems that adjuvants multiply the immunogenicity of the antigens they’re added to; they multiply the reactogenicity, so it’s not unexpected they multiply the adverse reactions. Is my thinking is correct?”
27:22 Dr. Friede, says the “major health concerns they see are the long term effects of vaccines,” not the sore knot on your arm. Adjuvants act differently with every antigen, and impurities. We need larger studies and we need to measure the appropriate things.
31:28 Dr. Friede, admits that it’s necessary that we figure out how adjuvants work so they can start to asses how plausible it is that adjuvants are causing the major health concerns.
31:38 Dr. David Kaslow, Center for Vaccine Innovation and Access admits that they do their studies on very small groups of people. Says that “one of the things they need to invest in” are better biomarkers and mechanistic understanding of how adjuvants work so they can understand the adverse events.
32:25 Dr. Gruber states that one issue that complicates the safety evaluation is the length of follow-up because the longer you study the group, the more “coincidental” adverse events pop up. Giving adjuvants to the elderly may do nothing, but be reactive in younger people.
38:13 Dr. Kaslow, “Coming down the pike relatively quickly is a new target population for us in vaccines: maternal immunization. We don’t have a strong pharmaco-epidemiologic baseline in that target population to say ‘is this an expected adverse event due to pregnancy, or is this the vaccine?’ We need an investment in that study so we don’t derail our pregnancy vaccines as they go into low-resource settings.”
40:07 CDC ACIP meeting vaccinating pregnant women is “off-label.”
41:24 The FDA admitted they have no studies about vaccines and pregnancy.
41:55 Nigerian doctor asks if there are any safety studies on injecting multiple vaccines, from multiple makers, with multiple adjuvants, into a child at once.
44:12 ACIP meeting, the CDC admits they have no data on injecting multiple adjuvants at once, but they recommend it anyway, in different limbs.
45:22 Dr. Robert Chen admits no, they don’t have data on injecting multiple adjuvants at this time, they need to link databases together to “start to answer these types of questions.”
50:01 Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist with the WHO, says in a commercial that vaccine safety tracking is robust, and examining the data lets them promptly address problems. They are “thoroughly monitored.”
52:40 Dr. Swaminathan admits, “We really don’t have very good safety monitoring systems in many countries. We can’t give answers about the deaths. We need to put mechanisms in place to monitor what’s going on. With many drugs, we only learn about adverse events after they are introduced to the populations.”
Thanks
Michael, the way that we can win is to focus less on their lack of safety and more on a) fear of germs; and b) vaccine efficacy. Importantly, the arguments need to be of the kind that individuals can observe or think through for themselves, rather than based on esoteric studies.
1) Tell people that if they are so scared of sick people germs, then they would *never* visit a doctor. And if they are not scared of sick people germs then why would they get a vaccine for anything?
2) Tell people that doctors use vaccine status as a part of their differential diagnosis (so the diseases get renamed rather than reduced).
Both statements can be supported by simple observations/logic. And they both completely demolish the case for vaccines.
Interesting that they admit that the adjuvants are part of the problem- but don’t they do “studies” where the “control” group is still given the adjuvant without anything else…??? That seems to be evidence to studies being frauds- if my understanding if correct about how studies are, in fact, conducted. I feel like the way they are speaking about this is coded, they don’t mean to make them safer. They are just looking for ways to make them seem safer- pull the wool over the doctors eyes and therefore the public as well. Such a scary world.
It’s too bad that all the authorities involved cannot be totally honest that there are many adverse effects from vaccines — and the results is worse: when several are given together, at a very young age, or when the vaccination schedule for children is excessive (as in the U. S.)
There is too much money involved for this to happen. The vaccine industry has become corrupt and influences the medical industry. The truth is that vaccines only convey immunity through antibodies. This immunity is not as good or long lasting as natural immunity. Natural immunity can last a lifetime.
It is clear that there is enough evidence to be able to question the safety and efficacy of vaccines. This is based on people with experience and professionals challenging the assumptions of the past. We need to implement the right science and do the unbiased testing to oust those sacred cows that no one is allowed to question. Pharma and doctors pushing the status quo.
In the 80’s I never questioned vaccinating our kids. There was no awareness on our part, of any issues and fully trusted our doctors. When I look at our 3 year old grandson….I’m concerned with vaccination issues. They live a vegan lifestyle and are the healthiest people I know…he has not been sick with anything, ever in his life.
This vaccination issue will not have a short term solution, however, fear, ignorance and a herd mentality is attempting to remove the rights of parents to control the well being of their children. First NY and now in CT, headed by liberal governor Lamont, is attempting to remove all religious objections to vaccinations with the purpose of blackmailing parents with the prevention of their children from attending any school in the state (in their future).
I realize that some politicians want government to control people and remove rights, with excuses about the greater good, using a Marxist attitude that ‘the need of the many outweigh that of the few’….not in a constitutional republic. These are the same people who would defend the right of a women to terminate a birth but yet when he is born that same woman has no say in what is to be injected in that child, if the ‘state’ wants it so.
If you vaccinated your kids and they are doing great, be thankful….what are you worried about, they are not going to catch anything from those un-vaccinated kids. So if its good for you it then needs to be good for everyone else? Go out and speak with the hundreds and hundreds of folks who went to the CT statehouse to give testimony to the ills that they or their kids have faced after a variety of vaccines.
Look at the influenza vaccine….less than 10% effective (this from the doctors in the hospital). Imagine buying a car who’s brakes worked 10% of the time, but yet children will be forced to have it. If they cannot control the influenza virus (10’s of thousands die each year) do you really think the corona virus vaccine will really be effective?
Fear and ‘mob rule’ should not take the place of our constitutional rights as citizens, regardless of the state you live in. Keep our rights intact.
At last the deft are beginning to hear and the blind are beginning to see. How many more need to die, or be injured from so-called vaccines before before Gov. stops mandating them? In the US they are breaking our constitutional rights by doing so. One being, the right to freedom. As for mandating no jab no school if its a public school it is paid for by tax payers therefor its owned by the people and not Gov. So Gov. should have no say in who goes, or who doesn’t. Its a very strange world I live in, but I wouldn’t hold out my arm to have poisons injected into my system even if someone wanted to pay me millions.
They’ve had this for 20 times, it doesn’t change at all to what has happened recently. It’s painstakingly obvious that the article here is trying to use certain words to appeal to one side of the argument, while not even acknowledging the side of the other.
People tell us that pro-vaccinator’s are shills that don’t listen to both sides of the argument, when it seems that this information does just that!
If you opened your eyes for just a second, you’d realize that these vaccinations have saved COUNTLESS lives! There are children dying of Tetanus, Measles, and you think that it’s now all of a sudden that *Just* when there is an influx of anti-vaccination protesters, that we see *MORE* Measles outbreaks! And somehow you have the nerve to say it’s MY Child’s fault that your children is sick?!
No.
I get it, vaccination’s aren’t 100% safe. But let’s be honest. Literally nothing in medicine is 100% safe. In fact, I’ll do you one better, nothing in LIFE is 100% safe. And the whole point of this conference is to make sure we can make them the best they can be, and the safest they can possibly become.
There isn’t a conference to tell everyone, “we were wrong, vaccines are horrible!” The conference was there to make sure that everything they are doing is RIGHT. And if it isn’t, then they’ll make sure that it becomes as efficient as possible!
Stop looking at our children as people who endanger lives, we’re doing not what, “Big Pharma” wants. We’re doing what our children want. And what our grandchildren want.
@Claire Clark -Don’t presume to know what my children or my grandchildren want. Are you really blind enough to confidently have your offspring injected with these things after Bill Gates hits out with jaw-dropping admissions like:
“The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about 9 billion. If we do a really great job on vaccines, health care, reproductive services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 to 15 percent”
Do I need to go into how involved in vaccine advocacy Bill Gates is?
I think it is you who needs to “open your eyes for just a second”, Claire.
“The world today has 6.8 billion people, That’s headed up to about 9 billion. if we do a really great job on vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 to 15 percent.” -Bill Gates, TED2010 Feb 2010.