Never Put Yourself Between a Mother and Her Baby
Years ago my grandfather and uncle were fishing in the Yellowstone River in Montana. Wearing overall type waders, my grandfather was able to stand in waist-high water in the center of the river, while my uncle fished from the bank. My grandfather, focused on casting his rod and keeping his balance in the fast moving water, didn’t notice that upstream from him a mama bear and her two cubs had begun to cross the river. Being lighter, the current carried the little ones downstream faster than the mama, which quickly placed my grandfather between them and their protector.
Vaccines in America: So There Is a Debate After All
One of the last questions that came up during the CNN-sponsored Republican presidential primary debate on September 16, 2015 had to do with vaccines. Moderator Jake Tapper asked candidate and former pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson: A backlash against vaccines was blamed for a measles outbreak here in California. Dr. Carson, Donald Trump has publicly and repeatedly linked vaccines, childhood…
Despite High Child Vaccination Rates, CDC Calls for Shaming Schools
With military precision, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced at an Aug. 27, 2015 press conference that national vaccination rates among young children in the U.S. continue to be very high but that more must be done to tag and track down children without every government recommended vaccine and publicly shame schools that fail to maintain a 95% plus vaccine coverage rate. Assistant Surgeon General Anne Schuchat, MD (RADM, USPHS) made the siren call to all states to require public and private schools to publicly post vaccine coverage and exemption rates.
The Price of Medical Denialism
Every morning I wake up, and every evening right before I fall asleep, a thought enters my mind about all the children around the world who will receive or have received vaccines that day. The thought nags at me… until I finally get up or doze off. It’s a huge number of kids whose lives are being subjected to medical Russian roulette. According to the VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System), maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA), “More than 10 million vaccines per year are given to children less than…
On the Question of Vaccine Effectiveness
On February 26, 2015, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its vaccine effectiveness estimates for the vaccine against the influenza A and B H3N2 viruses for the 2014-2015 season. The CDC announced that the vaccine was 18% effective against the predominant A strain of the flu and 45% effective against the B strain. An earlier CDC estimate (on January 16) of the vaccine’s effectiveness against the A strain was 23%.
Vaccines: A Stacked System
The “system” with regard to vaccines and vaccination policy is stacked against truth finding and truth telling. Vaccine makers, by law, are not liable for any harm caused by their products. When people seek compensation for vaccine harm from the US government’s Vaccine Court under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) and, after years and years of litigation, they happen to win their case, they are prohibited by law from talking about their case to anyone.