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Are
Vaccines Causing More Disease Than They Are Curing?
Copyright
1999 by Alan Cantwell, Jr., M.D.
http://whale.to/v/cantwell.html
Vaccines help keep us safe from infectious diseases. Smallpox
and polio epidemics have been wiped out by mass vaccine
programs. People rush to get flu shots every fall, and kids are
bombarded with a barrage of 22 required vaccinations before the
age of six. Even pets need their shots. The manufacture of
vaccines is a giant industry and what you pay for inoculations
and doctor visits is big business for pediatricians, family
practitioners and veterinarians. So why are more and more
people worried about vaccines, especially the ones for kids?
Vaccine-induced Illness
Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine
Information Center, a consumer's group based in Vienna,
Virginia, claims vaccines are responsible for the increasing
numbers of children and adults who suffer from immune system
and neurologic disorders, hyperactivity, learning disabilities,
asthma, chronic fatigue syndrome, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis,
multiple sclerosis, and seizure disorders. She calls for studies
to monitor the long-term effects of mass vaccination and Fisher
wants physicians to be absolutely sure these vaccines are safe
and not harming people.
No one can deny the dangers of vaccines. The measles, mumps,
rubella (German measles) and polio vaccines, all contain live
but weakened viruses. Although health officials tell you that
polio has been wiped out in the U.S. since 1979, they often fail
to mention that all recorded cases of polio since that time
are actually caused by the polio vaccine.
Vaccine investigator Neil Z. Miller questions whether we
still need need the polio vaccine when it causes every new case
of polio in this country. Before mass vaccinations programs
began fifty years ago, Miller insists we didn't have cancer in
epidemic numbers, that autoimmune ailments were barely known,
and childhood autism did not exist.
Vaccine Contamination
There is also the problem of contamination that has always
plagued vaccine makers. During World War II a yellow fever
vaccine manufactured with human blood serum was unknowingly
contaminated with hepatitis virus and given to the military. As
a result, more than 50,000 cases of serum hepatitis broke out
among American troops injected with the vaccine.
In the 1960s it was discovered that polio vaccines
manufactured in monkey kidney tissue between 1955 and 1963 were
contaminated with a monkey virus (Simian Virus, number 40).
Although this virus causes cancer in experimental animals,
health authorities insist it does not cause problems in humans.
But evidence of SV40 genetic material has been popping up in
human cancers and normal tissue. Researchers are now connecting
SV40-contaminated polio vaccines to an increasing number of
rare cancers of the lung (mesothelioma) and bone marrow
(multiple myeloma). In a 1999 report, SV40 DNA was detected in
tissue samples from four children born after 1982. Three were
kidney transplant patients, and a fourth had a kidney tumor.
Could SV40 be passed on from parents to their children? No one
knows for sure.
Covert Vaccine Experiments
Using kids as guinea pigs in potentially harmful vaccine
experiments is every parents' worst nightmare. This actually
happened in 1989-1991 when Kaiser Permanente of Southern
California and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) jointly
conducted a measles vaccine experiment. Without proper parental
disclosure, the Yugoslavian-made "high titre" Edmonston-Zagreb
measles vaccine was tested on 1,500 poor, primarily black and
Latino, inner city children in Los Angeles. Highly recommended
by the World Health Organization (WHO), the high-potency
experimental vaccine was previously injected into infants in
Mexico, Haiti, and Africa. It was discontinued in these
countries when it was discovered that the children were dying in
large numbers.
Unbelievably, the measles vaccine caused long-term
suppression of the children's immune system for six months up to
three years. As a result, the immunodepressed children died from
other diseases in greater numbers than children who had never
received the vaccine. Tragically, African girl babies in the
experiment were given twice the dose of boys, and therefore
suffered a higher death rate. The WHO pulled the vaccine off
the market in 1992.
Ironically, the E-Z measles vaccine tested by Kaiser on
minority babies was supposed to increase immunity in younger
infants. Instead, the vaccine produced the opposite effect. A
Los Angeles Times editorial (June 20, 1996) assured readers
that "none of the 1,500 was injured by the unlicensed vaccine"
and called upon the CDC to ensure that experiments like the E-Z
measles vaccine could never occur again.
One wonders how many secret vaccine experiments are
conducted by health authorities that never come to the attention
of the public. During the two-year measles experiment I was
employed by Kaiser and I never knew anything about it until I
read the report in The Times five years later, in 1996.
In the poor inner cities across the country the number of
asthma cases is exploding and health officials don't know why.
According to the CDC, 5000 asthma deaths occur annually; and it
is estimated that 17.3 million people (4.8 are children) suffer
from the disease, up from 6.7 million in 1980. Asthma usually
begins before age 6, and blacks are two to three times more
likely to die from asthma than whites. In the Bronx and Harlem
sections of New York City, the hospitalization rate for asthma
is 21 times higher than in the more affluent areas of the city.
Could the sharp rise in asthma in poor children be
connected with immunosuppression caused by by a barrage of
vaccines, as well as a lack of quality medical care and
insurance, poor diet, and environmental factors?
The possible connection of immunosuppressive vaccines to
diseases like asthma has never been raised by health officials .
With vaccine experiments frequently performed in Africa and
now on black Americans, no wonder one out of every four
African-Americans believes AIDS was developed as a genocide
program by the U.S. government to exterminate the black
population.
But vaccine experiments in the 1990s have not been limited
to blacks. Millions of female Mexicans, Nicaraguans and
Filipinos have been duped into taking tetanus vaccines, some of
which contained a female hormone that could cause miscarriage
and sterilization. In 1995, a Catholic human rights
organization called Human Life International accused the WHO of
promoting a Canadian-made tetanus vaccine laced with a pregancy
hormone called human choriogonadotropic hormone (HCG).
Suspicions were aroused when the tetanus vaccine was prescribed
in the unusual dose of five multiple injections over a three
month period, and recommended only to women of reproductive age.
When an unusual number of women experienced vaginal bleeding
and miscarriages after the shots, a hormone additive was
uncovered as the cause.
Apparently the WHO has been developing and testing
anti-fertility vaccines for over two decades. Women receiving
the laced tetanus shot not only developed antibodies to tetanus,
but they also developed dangerous antibodies to the pregnancy
hormone as well. Without this HCG hormone the growth of the
fetus is impaired. Consequently, the laced vaccine served as a
covert contraceptive device. Commissioned to analyze the
vaccine, the Philippines Medical Association found that 20
percent of the WHO tetanus vaccines were contaminated with the
hormone. Not surprisingly, the WHO has denied all accusations as
"completely false and without basis," and the major media have
never reported on the controversy. For futher details on this
issue, consult the Human Life International website (www.hli.org).
Newly approved vaccines may also pose serious risks. In
October 1999 a vaccine against "rotavirus" infection (which
causes most cases of childhood diarrhea) was pulled off the
market. One year after the RotaShield vaccine was inoculated
into over a million infants, it was found to increase the risk
of bowel obstruction. Almost 100 cases of bowel obstruction
were reported to the government, and twenty infants developed
bowel obstructions within one or two weeks after receiving the
vaccine.
Vaccine Manufacture and
Associated Dangers
Althogh the public has heard about side effects of
vaccines, most people are clueless about the manufacture of
vaccines. Few people know that viruses used in vaccine
production need to be grown on animal parts like monkey
kidneys, or in chicken embryos, or in human and fetal "cell
lines." Harvesting viruses in human cell-lines can be perilous
because some human cell lines are derived from cancer cells.
In AIDS & The Doctors of Death I wrote about the
development of the first human "HeLa" cell line - an "immortal"
cell line used extensively in cancer and vaccine research for
decades. Henrietta Lacks was a young black woman from Baltimore
who died from a highly malignant cervical cancer in 1951. Small
pieces of her tumor were donated to a laboratory specializing in
tissue cell culture. In those days most attempts to grow human
cells outside the body failed. But for some unknown reason
Henrietta's cancer cells grew vigorously and became known as
the first successful human tissue cell line in history - the
now famous HeLa cell line commemorating the legendary HEnrietta
LAcks.
Henrietta's cells were kept alive by feeding them a witches'
brew of beef embryo extract (the ground-up remains of a
three-week-old, unborn cattle embryo); fresh chicken plasma
obtained from the blood of a live chicken heart; and blood from
human placentas (the placenta is the sac that nurtures the
developing fetus and contains powerful hormones).
It is now suspected that a sexually-transmitted papilloma
virus is the cause of cervical cancer. And it is anybody's guess
how many other chicken, cattle, and human viruses are
incorporated into the HeLa cell line, but none of this possible
viral contamination seems to bother scientists who have
extensively used the cells in cancer research. What laboratory
scientists did eventually discover was that HeLa cells proved
so hardy that they frequently contaminated other tissue cell
lines used in cancer and cancer virus research.
In the late 1960s when widespread HeLa cell contamination
problems were uncovered, scientists were shocked and embarrassed
to learn that millions of dollars worth of published cancer
experiments were ruined. "Liver cells" and "monkey cells" that
were used in cancer experiments turned out to be Henrietta's
cancer cells in disguise. Benign cells which supposedly
"spontaneously transformed" into malignant cells were found to
be cells contaminated with cancerous HeLa cells.
The serious problem of HeLa cell contamination in cancer and
vaccine research is revealed in Michael Gold's A Conspiracy of
Cells: One Woman's Immortal Legacy and the Medical Scandal It
Caused. Even Jonas Salk, who developed the legendary Salk
polio vaccine, was fooled when HeLa cells contaminated his
animal cell lines. He admitted this years later in 1978 before a
stunned audience of cell biologists and vaccine makers. In
experiments performed in the late 1950s on dying cancer
patients, Salk tried injecting them with a cell line of monkey
heart tissue - the same cell line he used to harvest polio virus
for his famous vaccine. He hoped the monkey cell injections
would stimulate the immune system to fight cancer. However, when
abcesses developed at the site of injections Salk began to
suspect that he might be injecting HeLa cells rather than monkey
cells, and
he stopped the experiment.
Mark Nelson-Rees, a HeLa cell expert and one of the 1978
conference attendees, offered to test Salk's line if it was
still available. Salk graciously agreed and the monkey cells
indeed proved to be HeLa cells which had invaded and taken over
the monkey cell line. According to author Gold, Salk thought
there were adequate ways to separate viruses from the tissue
cell lines they were harvested in, so that it really didn't
matter what kind of cells were used. Even if vaccines weren't
filtered, and even if whole cancer cells were injected directly
into a human, Salk believed they would be rejected by the body
and cause no harm. In those days doctors didn't much believe in
cancer-causing viruses. Nowadays, no researcher would dare try
injecting cancer cells into a human being. But in the 1950s Salk
had done it accidently. He had injected HeLa cells into a few
dozen patients and it hadn't bothered him a bit.
Is There a Vaccine Contamination
Connection to AIDS?
Most people assume vaccines are "sterile" and germ free. But
sterilizing a vaccine can destroy the necessary immunizing
protein that makes it work. Thus, contaminating viruses or viral
"particles" can sometime survive the vaccine process.
Animal viruses are also contained in fetal calf serum, a
blood product commonly used as a laboratory nutrient to feed
various tissue cell cultures. Vaccine contamination by fetal
calf serum and its possible reationship to HIV was the subject
of a letter by J. Grote, published in the Journal of the Royal
(London) Society of Medicine in October 1988. Bovine visna
virus (which looks similar to HIV) is a known contaminant of
fetal calf serum used in vaccine production and virus-like
particles have been detected in vaccines certified for clinical
use. Grote warns that "It seems absolutely vital that all
vaccines are screened for HIV prior to use, and that bovine
visna virus is further investigated as to its relationship to
HIV and its possible role in progression towards AIDS ."
Could virus-contaminated vaccines lie at the root of AIDS?
A few researchers, including myself, who believe HIV was
"introduced" into gays during the experimental hepatitis B
vaccine trails when thousands of homosexuals were injected in
Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, during the years
1978-1981.
The AIDS epidemic first erupted in gays living in those
cities in 1981. In 1980, one year before, already 20% of the
gays inoculated in Manhattan with the experimental vaccine were
already HIV-positive. This was several years before definite
AIDS cases were diagnosed in Africa. In the early 1970s the
hepatitis B vaccine was developed in chimpanzees, now wildly
accepted as the animal from which HIV supposedly evolved.
Hepatitis B vaccine was developed to protect people from the
sexual spread of the hepatitis B virus. Now the government
recommends that all newborn babies be given the vaccine. Such
recommendations do not make sense to many parents. And people
are still fearful of the hepatitis B vaccine because of its
original connection to gay men and AIDS. The original
experimental vaccine was made from the pooled blood serum of
hepatitis-infected homosexuals and, as mentioned, serum-based
vaccines cannot be sterilized.
Another theory of AIDS is that HIV originated from polio
vaccines contaminated with chimp and monkey viruses, and
administered to Africans in the late 1950s. In The River: A
Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS , published in 1999,
Edward Hooper details how polio vaccine was made using monkey
(and possibly chimp) kidneys and how the ancestor virus of
HIV could have jumped species (via the vaccine) to produce the
outbreak of AIDS in Africa. Hooper's well-researched book
greatly expands the polio vaccine theory of AIDS first
reportedby Tom Curtis in Rolling Stone magazine in 1992, and
The River is a must-read for anyone interested in the possible
man-made origin of AIDS.
Other researchers think it more likely that the various
WHO-sponsored vaccine programs (particularly the smallpox
program) in Africa in the 1970s are responsible for unleashing
AIDS in Africa in the 1980s. Hooper, who has worked as a United
Nations official, has discounted the research pointing to AIDS
as a man-made disease, as proposed by Dr. Leonard Horowitz in
Emerging Viruses, and in my two books AIDS & The Doctors of
Death: An Inquiry into the Origin of the AIDS Epidemic: and
Queer Blood: The Secret AIDS Genocide Plot.
Horowitz and I both suspect contaminated smallpox vaccines
as the source of HIV In Africa. Certainly the smallpox
(vaccinia-cowpox) virus is an excellent virus to use for the
genetic engineering of new, multipurpose vaccines. By splicing
into the DNA genes of the vaccinia virus, scientists can add on
parts of disease-producing viruses like influenza, hepatitis,
and other viruses. The safety of this technique has not been
fully evaluated, prompting one vaccine maker at a Vaccinia Virus
Workshop in 1984 to ask if this could lead to another form of
AIDS.
The Vaccine Connection to Gulf
War Illness and
Huntsville Mystery Illness
The cause of Gulf War Illness (GWI) is unknown. For years
this debilitating illness (which now affects one-half of the
Gulf War vets) has been ignored by Pentagon officials who
claim the disease does not exist and that vets are simply
reacting to stress. GWI is also thought to be contagious. Vets
insist their disease has been passed on to spouses, other family
members, and even pets.
Some people suspect multiple vaccines, particularly the
experimental anthrax vaccine, are implicated in the disease.
Currently, soldiers who refuse to take the mandatory anthrax
vaccine are being courtmartialed and dismissed from the
service.
Researchers Dr. Garth Nicolson and his wife Nancy have
found a tiny bacterial microbe (a "mycoplasma") in the blood of
nearly half the ill vets with GWI. Amazingly, this infectious
agent has a piece of HIV (the AIDS virus) attached to it. This
microbe could never have occured naturally. On the contrary, the
composition of the microbe suggests a man-made and
genetically-engineered biological warfare agent.
Garth Nicolson's scientific credentials are impeccable. For
16 years he was a professor of medicine at the University of
Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, as well as
professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University
of Texas Medical School, also in Houston. Nancy Nicolson, a
molecular biophysicist, was on the faculty at Baylor College of
Medicine.
Six months after returning home from the Gulf war, the
Nicolson's daughter contracted GWI. Her mother Nancy had
contracted a similar illness in 1987 when she was working with
Mycoplasma incognitus in infectious disease research. Finally
suspecting that this research had biowarfare implications, Nancy
Nicolson became a whistle-blower and angered officials. As a
result, she believes she was deliberately infected with the
mycoplasma. After partial paralysis and a long illness, she
finally regained her health with the antibiotic Doxycycline.
The Nicolson's discovery of a similar mycoplasma (but
without the attachment of HIV) in a mysterious illness that
erupted in the Huntsville, Texas area among prison guards and
their families has all the drama of a The Movie of the Week.
Although the Huntsville disease broke out in the late 1980s
(shortly before the Gulf War), it has many of the same signs and
symptoms of GWI. Many locals are convinced the sometimes deadly
disease originally spread from prisoners incarcerated in several
large prisons around Huntsville.
In experiments conducted during the 1970s and 80s, the
prisoners were inoculated with flu vaccines containing
genetically engineered viruses and mycoplasma . It is suspected
that vaccines were being covertly developed and deployed as
biological warfare weapons. Nobel prize winner James Watson,
world famous for his discovery of the molecular structure of DNA
and a leading researcher of the still ongoing Human Genome
Project, was involved in these prison experiments. The guards
are convinced the Huntsville mystery illness is intimately
connected to these experiments, jointly conducted by the
Medical School and the military. Like GWI, health officials deny
the disease exists.
The Nicolsons continue to developed antibiotic treatments,
which have helped some vets. But they have paid a heavy price
for their controversial research and unprecedented discoveries.
Garth Nicolson was forced to resign from M.D. Anderson in 1996.
His career and reputation destroyed, the Nicolsons have since
moved to California and head The Institute for Molecular
Medicine in Huntington Beach.
Dangerous Animal and Human Cell
Lines in Vaccine Manufacture
In an effort to quell concerns about the safety of vaccines,
scientists are finally taking another look at the
"non-infectious" particles of bird-cancer viruses (avian
leukosis virus) in the mumps/measles/rubella vaccines routinely
given to kids. Could this be the reason the FDA held a
meeting in September, 1999, to reconsider using human tumor
cell lines (like HeLa) rather than monkey kidneys and chicken
embryos which are no longer guaranteed 100% safe?
Writing in Science, Gretchen Vogel admits public trust in
vaccines is a bit shaky. In Wales anti-vaccine parents are
holding "measles parties" to infect their children with the
disease rather than vaccinate them. She cites the danger of
using immortal cell lines for live vaccine production because
cancer genes or other hazardous factors might be transferred to
people receiving vaccines. But manufacturers also realize
vaccine critics are becoming more wary of vaccines made in
animal and bird tissue. And vaccine makers want to use immortal
cell lines to grow their viruses because obviously viruses can't
grow on their own.
The big question everyone seems to avoid is: Can vaccines
cause cancer? There is certainly evidence connecting
contaminated vaccines to AIDS. And HIV is a cancer-causing
virus. Robert Gallo, the co-discoverer of HIV in 1984, has
clearly stated AIDS is an epidemic of cancer.
Animal and avian viruses can contaminate vaccines and have
all been studied as cancer-causing agents. And cancer and
vaccine research would be much more difficult without the use of
cell lines, some of which are derived from cancer.
Vaccines and Public Paranoia
Is the fear of vaccines justified? It is clear that
vaccines can be dangerous. The contamination of vaccines is a
reality, and vaccine experiments can be hazardous to one's
health. AIDS, unknown two decades ago, is now an increasing
worldwide epidemic with millions of death predicted for the next
decade. Could vaccines contaminated with cancer-causing and
immunosuppressive viruses unleash new plagues in the New
Millennium? If so, the new plagues may be far worse than the
diseases we eradicated by vaccine programs in the twentieth
century.
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References
"Anti-diarrheal vaccine for babies recalled," Los Angeles Times,
October 16, 1999.
Butel JS, Arrington AS, Wong C, et al.: Molecular evidence of
simian virus 40 infections in children. J Infect Dis
180:884-887, 1999.
Cantwell A: AIDS & the Doctors of Death. Aries Rising Press, Los
Angeles, 1988.
Cantwell A: Queer Blood. Aries Rising Press, Los Angeles, 1993.
Gold M: A Conspiracy of Cells. State University of New York
Press, Albany, 1986.
Hooper E: The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS.
Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1999.
Horowitz L: Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola. Tetrahedron, Inc,
Rockport, MA, 1996.
Jaroff Leon: "Vaccine Jitters," TIME, September 13, 1999.
Likoudis P: "Gulf war illness probe to advance with new study,"
The Wanderer, January 21, 1999.
"Measles, government and trust " (Editorial), Los Angeles Times,
June 20, 1996.
Miller NZ: Immunization: Theory vs Reality. New Atlantean
Press, Santa Fe, 1996.
Miller NZ: Immunizations: The People Speak! New Atlantean
Press, Santa Fe,
1996.
Quinnan GV: Vaccinia Viruses as Vectors for Vaccine Antigens.
Elsevier, New York, 1985.
Stolberg SG: "Poor fight baffling surge in asthma," New York
Times, October 18, 1999.
[Alan Cantwell is a physician and AIDS researcher. His book on
the man-made epidemic of AIDS entitled AIDS & The Doctors of
Death: An Inquiry into the Origin of the AIDS Epidemic, is
available on the Internet through Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble,
or through Book Clearing House at 1-800-431-1579]. [word count
3800]
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