The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy (26 page)

Almost half of those polled indicated they did not expect their kids to become infected or did not believe in the seriousness of the flu pandemic. Dr. Matthew Davis, University of Michigan professor of pediatrics and internal medicine and the poll’s director, noted differences along racial and ethnic lines in parents’ responses. More than half of Latino parents said they would bring their kids to get vaccinated, whereas only 38 percent of white parents and 30 percent of African American parents said they would do so.

A September 2009 Canadian study from researchers at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control and Laval University also called into question the effectiveness of the swine flu vaccine. The study indicated that people vaccinated against seasonal flu are twice as likely to catch the swine flu. The lead researchers from the study were prevented from speaking in public until their study is reviewed and published.

Despite skepticism over the study’s results (which contradict previous governmental assurances that swine flu inoculations are safe), several provincial Canadian health agencies announced that they were suspending seasonal flu vaccinations.

“It has confused things very badly,” said Dr. Ethan Rubinstein, head of adult infectious diseases at the University of Manitoba. “And it has certainly cost us credibility from the public because of conflicting recommendations. Until last week, there had always been much encouragement to get the seasonal flu vaccine.” He said the study methodology appeared sound. “There are a large number of authors, all of them excellent and credible researchers [of this study]. And the sample size is very large—12 or 13 million people taken from the central reporting systems in three provinces. The research is solid.”

Many people were objecting to the hype over the pandemic. Though it was not reported much at all, the results of a mid-2009 survey of Hong Kong health-care workers indicated that more than half of the doctors and nurses questioned would decline the swine flu vaccine if they were offered inoculation. In fact, an initial study of 2,225 health-care specialists in the Hong Kong public hospital system showed that only 28.4 percent indicated an “overall willingness to accept pre-pandemic H5N1 vaccine.” The most prevalent reasons that the health-care workers declined shots were a fear of side effects and doubts about the vaccine’s efficacy. Only after the media started spreading fear about the flu and after the WHO raised the pandemic alert level to Phase 5 did a second survey show the above percentage rise to 47.9. The most common reasons that respondents gave for why they would accept the vaccine were “wish to be protected” and “following health authority’s advice.”

Apparently, some American workers won’t even get a choice when it comes to vaccinations. Albany Medical Center spokesman Gregory McGarry confirmed that “corrective action” might be taken against workers who did not follow orders to get a flu shot by October 16, 2009. Under emergency regulations adopted by the State Hospital Review and Planning Council in August 2009, officials for Capital Region hospitals in New York State threatened disciplinary action and even termination if all workers (including janitors, food service workers, doctors, and nurses) refused to take the vaccination shots. Elmer Streeter, a spokesman for St. Peter’s Hospital in Albany, told newsmen in August, “There are very few exceptions. We will be requiring [flu shots] of all our employees as a condition of employment.” Local news reports stated that workers first would be suspended for five days if they refuse the shot. After another five days, they would face possible termination.

Despite the fact that President Barack Obama declared swine flu a national emergency and despite the WHO’s classification of the disease as a worldwide pandemic, serious researchers and some mainstream news outlets, such as CBS, reported that the counting of swine flu victims was widely overestimated and that many people diagnosed with the flu did not have it at all.

According to CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson, “In late July [2009], the CDC [Centers for Disease Control] abruptly advised states to stop testing for H1N1 flu, and stopped counting individual cases. The rationale given for the CDC guidance to forego testing and tracking individual cases was: why waste resources testing for H1N1 flu when the government has already confirmed there’s an epidemic?…CBS News learned that the decision to stop counting H1N1 flu cases was made so hastily that states weren’t given the opportunity to provide input.”

CBS requested state-by-state information on swine flu victims, but the news organization was stalled for some time by the CDC. Everyone was shocked when figures for state flu cases were finally released. “The vast majority of cases were negative for H1N1 as well as seasonal flu, despite the fact that many states were specifically testing patients deemed to be most likely to have H1N1 flu, based on symptoms and risk factors, such as travel to Mexico,” CBS reported.

Even real cases were hyped by a compliant corporate media. One headline in September 2009 stated: “H1N1 Flu Infects Over 250 Georgetown Students.” Yet a closer investigation at Georgetown University showed the number of sick students came only from “estimates” made by counting students who went to the Student Health Center with flu symptoms, students at the emergency room, and even those who called the H1N1 hotline or the Health Center’s doctor on call, not from laboratory tests.

In early February 2010, the whole stressful pandemic of swine flu was unraveling, with vaccines being returned to manufacturers unsold. Sanofi Pasteur in Swiftwater, Pennsylvania, issued a nationwide recall of its H1N1 vaccine after it was discovered to have a lack of potency. The discovery was made after allotments had been shipped to all fifty states.

THE KANSAS CITY PANDEMIC OF 1921

T
HE SWINE FLU PANDEMIC
may be just the latest occurrence in a history of instances where powerful organizations exaggerated the dangers of a disease in order to profit from scaring the population. In the early 1920s in Kansas City, Missouri, a citizen’s watchdog group called “The Advertiser’s Protective Bureau” successfully prosecuted the Missouri state chapter of the AMA, the Jackson Medical Society, for unduly spreading fear about a smallpox pandemic when none existed. The bureau reported:

“In the fall of 1921, the health of the city was unusually good, but slow for the doctors. So the Jackson Medical Society met and resolved to make an epidemic in the city. According to the minutes of this meeting, ‘a motion was made and seconded, that a recommendation be made by the committee, to the board of health, that an epidemic of smallpox be declared in the city…it was moved and seconded that a day be set aside, termed Vaccination Day, on which physicians would be stationed at all schools, clinics, public buildings and hospitals to vaccinate “free of charge”…it is further recommended that wide publicity be given, stating that vaccination is a preventive of smallpox, and urging the absolute necessity of vaccination for every man, woman, and child in the city.’”

Dr. A. True Ott, a naturopathic medical doctor and talk-show host who specializes in health and medicine issues, researched this case and noted the Jackson Medical Society’s propaganda blitz was highly successful. “Over a million previously healthy and happy American citizens were hypnotized and terrorized into placing the vaccine toxins into their bloodstreams. All public school children in the region were vaccinated while at school! Parents who dared question the vaccination of their children were ostracized and publicly vilified. The court record on this case is very clear. In the weeks and months following the ‘mass vaccinations’ the area’s hospital beds were filled to over-flowing with vaccine-induced smallpox cases. Tens of thousands of people became ill, and many hundreds of innocents died, and many more were permanently crippled. Of course, the newspapers then trumpeted how wise the medical establishment was to promote the vaccines, stating how much worse the death toll would have been without the vaccination campaign.”

Evidence presented in court showed there was no epidemic at any time, either in Kansas City or the state. However, the Jackson Medical Society produced large quantities of posters, flyers, newspaper stories, and ads featuring lurid pictures of children covered with massive smallpox sores and open wounds. The Advertiser’s Protective Bureau later proved that these photographs came from British newspapers.

According to Dr. Ott, “While the Protective Bureau won the criminal court case the American People lost. The case should have made front-page headlines around the nation, showing the Modus Operandi of certain corrupt ‘medical practitioners’—how, by means of fraud, treachery, and trickery, [the Jackson Medical Society] made millions of dollars in windfall profits while thousands of innocent, trusting, and naive Americans suffered and died. The entire sordid affair, with all its damning details, was kept out of the American Press. John D. Rockefeller’s AMA [American Medical Association], with its millions of dollars of influence made sure of that!”

The polio vaccine of the 1950s is yet another instance in which a vaccine has hurt Americans more than it has helped. Prior to the polio vaccine, parents were deathly afraid their children would contract polio, an infectious viral disease often resulting in paralysis or permanent disability, such as suffered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The population was greatly relieved with the discovery and distribution of the Jonas Salk polio vaccine beginning in the mid-1950s. But after millions of Americans and others around the world were given the new vaccine, scientists discovered the vaccine contained a cancer-causing monkey virus called Simian vacuolating virus 40 (SV-40), a virus closely related to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and one that was born through the manufacture of the polio vaccine from infected monkey glands. SV-40 has been connected to brain tumors, bone cancers, lung cancers, and leukemia. It can be transmitted from mother to child in the womb as well as through sexual intercourse.

There has been a good deal of documentation over how pervasive this disease has become in the American population. Yet very little of this story has been brought to the attention of the public by the corporate mass media. Conspiracy-minded researchers are suspicious that no samples of pre-1962 polio vaccine can be found. Although more than ten million people were inoculated with potentially contaminated batches of vaccine, there is now no way to determine if they were exposed to the SV-40 virus, which can lie dormant in the human body for years before causing tumors and cancer.

And one should not forget the swine flu scare of 1976, when President Gerald R. Ford and some forty million Americans dutifully took swine flu shots.

And what was the death toll from that flu? Exactly one—the poor soldier who started the scare in the first place. The soldier died after his body reacted to an experimental vaccine while he was completing a “forced march” during training at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Others in the country had received the same experimental vaccine, and several deaths were reported. Just as disturbing, hundreds of others who were vaccinated suffered from Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), a debilitating response to the immune system that causes lupus or paralysis in the extremities and the facial muscles. Guillain-Barré is one of the world’s leading causes of non-trauma-induced paralysis.

Court cases against the government and the vaccine manufacturers stacked up in the years following the 1976 scare. In July 2009, the media reported that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had taken steps to prevent a recurrence of lawsuits similar to those from 1976 by signing an order granting legal immunity to vaccine makers. This order was issued under provisions written into a 2006 law for public health emergencies.

Paul Pennock, a New York plaintiff’s attorney on medical liability cases, was critical of the grant of immunity. He stated, “If you’re going to ask people to do this for the common good, then let’s make sure for the common good that these people will be taken care of if something goes wrong.”

Though some may argue that liability is not an issue to consider in vaccination cases, the case of Lance Corporal Josef Lopez of Missouri is an appropriate rebuttal. After being deployed to Iraq for just nine days, Lopez ended up paralyzed in a coma and unable to breathe on his own. Had he been shot? Had his truck come too close to a roadside bomb? No. Lopez suffered a violent reaction to a smallpox vaccine administered by the military. Three years later, Lopez still had to wear a urine bag, walked with a limp, suffered short-term memory loss, and was taking fifteen pills a day to control leg spasms.

Yet when Lopez applied for GI benefits, the Veterans Administration rejected him, claiming that benefits are “for traumatic injury, not disease, not illness, not preventative medicine.” Stephen Wurtz, the VA’s deputy assistant director for insurance, said administrators were simply trying to follow the intent of Congress. “It has nothing to do with not believing these people deserve some compensation for their losses.” VA officials were unable to say how many claims have been rejected because of vaccine-related injuries. The Military Vaccine Agency, which is in charge of troop vaccinations, did not respond to repeated requests for comment from a reporter.

Despite Lance Corporal Josef Lopez’s debilitating reaction to the flu vaccine, the Defense Department announced on September 1, 2009, that swine flu vaccinations were mandatory for all military personnel, including health-care workers, deploying troops, those serving on ships and submarines, and new enlistees at the top of the list.

“Any place where we take a lot of people, squash them all together…and put them under stressful conditions will get the vaccine first,” stated army lieutenant colonel Wayne Hachey, director of preventive medicine for Department of Defense health affairs. The vaccination program was to begin in early October 2009, and millions of doses had been readied.

Despite the fact that only twenty swine flu deaths were reported in Mexico by September 1, 2009, the U.S. corporate mass media continued a blitz of coverage on what was described as a pending pandemic. “That’s not an epidemic. This has all the markings of a propaganda campaign benefiting the huge pharmaceutical firms producing vaccines. It’s more than monetary motives that are driving this push. There seems to be a long-term agenda of making people totally dependent upon government money and actions to manage health,” wrote Joel Skousen of
World Affairs Brief,
a long-running Internet news roundup service.