Debunking this Article about Vaxxed, in The Washington Post:
7 things about vaccines and autism that the movie ‘Vaxxed’ won’t tell you
If you subscribe to the Washington post, you can read the article here:
If you don't have a subscription to the Washington post, you can read the article here:
Please note that the article is pasted below and highlighted in yellow, but our notes are highlighted in pink.
From the article:
On its surface, the movie “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe” appears to be a slickly produced scientific documentary with lots of charts and data about one of the most important issues of our time. The central premise of the film is that the country’s mandatory measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine — when given to children under age 2 — may be leading to an epidemic of autism diagnoses.
It contains heartbreaking footage of happy, laughing toddlers who, their parents say, became profoundly disabled almost overnight after receiving the shot. It explains the findings of a study that confirms the link and unearths recordings from a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientist who purportedly claimed the government quashed findings of the connection.
But what the movie doesn’t get into is as compelling as what it does present. There are numerous facts, backstories and events that the filmmakers pretend didn’t happen that challenge many of the main points of the film. Here’s what you need to know to put “Vaxxed” into context:
1) The most important thing to know is that the link between vaccines and autism has been debunked — widely and repeatedly.
(Note how they don't cite their sources)
The original study that raised the issue was published in 1998 in the journal the Lancet and involved 12 patients who, after receiving the MMR vaccine, suffered ill effects that appeared to be autism. While many researchers were skeptical of the finding, panicked parents in both Great Britain and the United States pushed vaccination rates down sharply. Outbreaks of the measles, mumps and rubella on both sides of the Atlantic soon followed.
Note how they don't tell you that most of those Measles outbreaks were VACCINE RELATED! See video below.
THE TRUTH ABOUT MEASLES AND MMR VACCINE
In 2004, Sunday Times journalist Brian Deer reported serious ethical violations by the 1998 paper’s lead author, gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield. Deer accused Wakefield of having been paid by a law firm that had been planning to sue vaccine manufacturers and of subjecting some of the children to unnecessary, invasive procedures for the study. After the revelations, most of the researchers named as co-authors in the study disavowed the findings and withdrew their names from the paper.
Note: You can watch the Highwire's breakdown of Brian Deer's ethical misgivings in the video below:
DR. ANDY WAKEFIELD VS. BRIAN DEER: THE REAL FRAUD REVEALED — HIGHWIRE EPISODE 58
Selective Hearing - the real story of Brian Deer and the GMC
In 2010, the Lancet’s editors retracted the paper. Three months later, Britain’s General Medical Council revoked Wakefield’s medical license.
Note: There is overwhelming evidence that many medical journals have become corrupted in order to hang onto their funding. You can see over a dozen videos that explain the corruption in medical journals, by clicking on the 2 links below:
How Pharmaceutical Companies are able to manipulate studies in their favor
And have a look at this video with Andrew Wakefield, explaining how he got smeared:
Andrew Wakefield Confronts Twitter “Fact-check” Smears and the Infamous Lancet Paper
In 2011, the British medical journal the BMJ published a detailed investigation into the research, calling it an “elaborate fraud” by Wakefield and lamenting the harm it had caused and would continue to cause to the public health.
“It's one thing to have a bad study, a study full of error, and for the authors then to admit that they made errors,” BMJ editor-in-chief Fiona Godlee told CNN at the time. “But in this case, we have a very different picture of what seems to be a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data.”
Note how they don't show any proof of "falsified data" in this article. Please have a look at the full interview with Dr. Andew Wakefield, in which he breaks down how he was smeared.
2) The director of “Vaxxed” — and the main expert who appears on camera — is that same Andrew Wakefield.
Not sure how this is supposed to be surprising?
3) Actor Robert De Niro, who has an autistic son, originally lobbied to put the film on the schedule for the Tribeca Film Festival in March. But several days later, he said he had a change of heart.
“My intent in screening this film was to provide an opportunity for conversation around an issue that is deeply personal to me and my family,” he said in a statement. “But after reviewing it over the past few days with the Tribeca Film Festival team and others from the scientific community, we do not believe it contributes to or furthers the discussion I had hoped for.”
Note how that was NOT an admission or testament that vaccines do not or cannot cause Autism.
Robert DeNiro Joins Robert F. Kennedy Jr In Questioning Vaccine Side Effects
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Robert De Niro express concern about vaccines at National Press Club 2017
4) One of the main figures in the film, CDC scientist William Thompson, is heard only in voice recordings.
You can hear a long version of the recording by CLICKING HERE, and decide for yourself whether it sounds legitimate.
And watch the video below.
Compilation of CDC whistleblower Dr. William Thompson
Those recordings, the movie discloses, were of phone conversations Thompson had with another researcher who secretly recorded the calls. “Oh, my God. I cannot believe we did what we did. But we did,” Thompson says at one point, purportedly about omitting findings confirming a link between the MMR vaccine and autism from an official 2004 report.
You can watch the entire movie, Vaxxed, with more interviews with Dr. Hooker, on the Highwire site. https://thehighwire.com/ark-videos/vaxxed-from-cover-up-to-catastrophe/
Another related link: https://thehighwire.com/ark-videos/episode-64-vaxxed-pulling-back-the-curtain/
Thompson has remained silent on the matter, but the other researcher, biologist Brian Hooker, has released a statement saying that Thompson would be publishing a paper soon that shows no link between the MMR vaccine and autism in African American males after all.
Hooker said he is “suspect of any analysis coming from the CDC due to the historic nature of the agency’s scientific misconduct and conflicts of interest specifically around any link between vaccines and autism.”
If you're not already aware of how common it is for scientific studies to be manipulated, CLICK HERE and HERE.
And then, CLICK HERE to see the dark history of Cover-ups by the CDC.
He also detailed his conversations with Thompson:
Dr. William Thompson, senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) contacted me during 2013 and 2014 and shared many issues regarding fraud and malfeasance in the CDC, specifically regarding the link between neurodevelopmental disorders and childhood vaccines. Dr. Thompson and I spoke on the phone more than 40 times over a 10 month period and he shared thousands of pages of CDC documents with me.
Eventually, Dr. Thompson turned this information over to Congress via Rep. Bill Posey of Florida.
CLICK HERE to see Bill Posey's speech in congress, where he was aghast after finding out that the CDC has paid out over $3 Billion in damages through a vaccine injury compensation program for children who have been injured by vaccinations.
5) While the issue of vaccines and autism still comes up regularly — as it did when presidential contender Donald Trump mentioned his belief in the theory in a debate last year — most scientists consider the connection between vaccines and autism to be discredited. Dozens of top journals — including the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders — have published papers that looked into a possible link and found none.
Again... if you're not already aware of how common it is for scientific studies to be manipulated, CLICK HERE and HERE.
A study in JAMA in April 2015 was one of the largest; it involved an analysis of 96,000 children. The authors wrote that their findings “indicate no harmful association between MMR vaccine receipt and [autism spectrum disorder] even among children already at higher risk.”
Again, if you're not already aware of how common it is for scientific studies to be manipulated, CLICK HERE and HERE.
6) While experts still don't know what causes autism, it is thought to be a combination of genetic and environmental factors such as infections or exposure to certain chemicals that may lead to differences in the shape and structure of a child’s brain. According to an estimate by the CDC published last year, 1 in 45 (or 2.24 percent) of children age 3 to 17 may have autism — a steep rise over the past few decades. Researchers have theorized that part of the rise could be attributable to a greater awareness of the condition. The CDC said the most recent jump from 2011 to 2014 may have a very mundane reason behind it: a change in the questionnaire the agency uses to track cases.
7) Movie critics have come out with very different takes on the film. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Mick LaSalle appeared to be moved by the footage and personal stories of the children and their parents. “Of course, it’s possible that the children would have developed autism anyway, and that one event didn’t cause the other. But the parents presented here are convinced otherwise,” he wrote. While acknowledging that the film “doesn't contain the whole story,” LaSalle called it “a passionate advocate for its viewpoint ... that makes for compelling viewing.”
Other reviewers weren’t so generous. The Washington Post’s Michael O’Sullivan called it “closer to horror film than documentary.” Stat’s Rebecca Robbins commented on the film’s “paranoid tone.” The Age’s Sarah Gill warned: “Don't be fooled — Wakefield's story is not the tale of a man wronged by powerful corporations or the medical establishment, which, in fact, closed ranks to protect him. It’s the story of a physician who set out to cast doubt on vaccine safety before he’d even gathered the evidence, and he did so not for the public good, but for private gain.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20160913052725/https://www.focusforhealth.org/dr-brian-hooker-statement-william-thompson/
Dr. Brian Hooker’s official statement regarding William Thompson
April 26, 2016
Brian S. Hooker, Ph.D., P.E. | Science Adviser, Focus For Health
Dr. William Thompson, senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) contacted me during 2013 and 2014 and shared many issues regarding fraud and malfeasance in the CDC, specifically regarding the link between neurodevelopmental disorders and childhood vaccines. Dr. Thompson and I spoke on the phone more than 40 times over a 10 month period and he shared thousands of pages of CDC documents with me. Eventually, Dr. Thompson turned this information over to Congress via Rep. Bill Posey of Florida. Among the issues discussed in the phone conversations were lies told to the public by the CDC regarding the link between thimerosal-containing vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders (including autism) as well as the links between the MMR vaccine and autism in African American males and the MMR vaccine and “isolated” autism. Isolated autism is the term coined by CDC researchers referring to all children who received an autism diagnosis without additional diagnoses of mental retardation, cerebral palsy, visual impairment or hearing impairment.
Very recently, Mr. Richard Morgan, Esq., Dr. Thompson’s whistle blower attorney, stated that Dr. Thompson will be publishing a paper in May, 2016, where he will assert that the MMR vaccine is not linked to autism in African American males.
Note: I did an online search in Pubmed or Google Scholar (which pulls scientific studies from all available sources), and looked for all studies by William Thompson, and this publication (which has NO references or substantial data) is the closest thing I could find. I welcome you to do your own search. This is a cut-and-paste of the abstract:
Source: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1586/14760584.3.1.19
Abstract
An hypothesis published in 1998 suggested that measles–mumps–rubella vaccine may cause autism as a result of persistent measles virus infection of the gastrointestinal tract. Results of early studies were not supportive and in 2001 a review by the Institute of Medicine concluded that the evidence favors the rejection of a causal relationship at the population level between measles–mumps–rubella vaccine and autistic spectrum disorder. Studies published since the Institue of Medicine report have continued not to find an increased risk of autistic spectrum disorder associated with measles–mumps–rubella. The vaccine also has not been found to be associated with a unique syndrome of developmental regression and gastrointestinal disorders. The evidence now is convincing that the measles–mumps–rubella vaccine does not cause autism or any particular subtypes of autistic spectrum disorder.
If you do a search for all studies by William Thompson, you'll find that he only has 2 studies from 2016, and neither of them appear to be related to the MMR vaccine. You can see a full list of his publications, HERE.
Instead Dr. Thompson will state that socioeconomic factors alone in the African American community account for the original MMR-African American male “effect” (the effect that he is on record as stating the CDC purposefully hid). I have not been given access to Dr. Thompson’s reanalysis and therefore cannot comment regarding the forthcoming paper at this time. However, I am suspect of any analysis coming from the CDC due to the historic nature of the agency’s scientific misconduct and conflicts of interest specifically around any link between vaccines and autism.
Regardless of the content of Dr. Thompson’s reanalysis paper, these facts remain:
- 1. CDC scientists colluded to cover up a relationship between the timing of the MMR vaccine and autism in African Americans that was first discovered in November of 2001. Rather than reporting the results to the public, all data regarding this relationship were destroyed at a secret meeting held some time in August/September of 2002. This fact has been affirmed via an affidavit given by Dr. Thompson to Rep. Bill Posey in September, 2014.
- 2. Dr. Thompson attempted to warn the CDC Director at the time, Dr. Julie Gerberding, regarding this relationship, prior to the February 2004 Institute of Medicine meeting on vaccines and autism. Rather than allowing Dr. Thompson to present the information at this meeting, Dr. Gerberding replaced him as a speaker with Dr. Frank Destefano, current director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office, where he presented fraudulent results regarding the MMR vaccine and autism. Dr. Thompson was put on administrative leave and was threatened that he would be fired due to “insubordination.”
- 3. When Dr. Thompson attempted to leave the CDC later that same year, he was given a $24,000 retention bonus. Dr. Thompson’s impression of the timing of this bonus, in light of disciplinary actions taken against him earlier that year, is that CDC officials were “buying his silence” through controlling his actions as a CDC employee.
- 4. Dr. Thompson has published two papers linking thimerosal exposure in infant vaccines to tics in boys (Thompson et al. 2007 and Barile et al. 2012). CDC fraudulently maintains on their website that “There is no evidence of harm caused by the low doses of thimerosal in vaccines, except for minor reactions like redness and swelling at the injection site.” (http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/thimerosal/). The tic result was also affirmed in the earlier CDC publication by Verstraeten et al. (2003) and the Andrews et al. (2004) publication.
- 5. CDC pressured Dr. Thompson to downplay the tic result of his analysis in his 2007 paper. He was instructed to deemphasize the tic result by the CDC’s Chief Science Officer, Dr. Tanja Popovic, by emphasizing that the “major finding of the study” was “there is NO associations (sic) of thimerosal exposure with the great majority of the outcomes.” Dr. Popovic also instructed Dr. Thompson to interpret any negative outcomes as “chance findings.”
- 6. CDC also pressured Dr. Thompson to withhold publication of his 2012 paper which reported a relationship between thimerosal and tics. Dr. Ed Travathan, head of the CDC’s National Center for Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, stated in an April 27, 2009 memo to him that the analysis was sound except for the tic results and that they should be omitted from the publication. Since the tic result was the only result that had a consistent negative relationship with thimerosal exposure, it seemed that Dr. Thompson’s superiors were specifically concerned that thimerosal’s safety and use not be questioned. As an epidemiologist, Dr. Thompson was justifiably concerned and critical of the CDC’s action to approve the paper for publication only after the CDC took the extraordinary step of adding an expert in tics to water down the paper to state, “This finding should be interpreted with caution due to limitations in the measurement of tics and the limited biological plausibility regarding a causal relationship.”
Thompson himself instructed me regarding the link between thimerosal and “autism like features” and stated that “tics were like five times more common in children with autism.” Yet the CDC will not recommend thimerosal-free vaccines and thimerosal is still used in many flu shots given to infants and pregnant women in the U.S.
Beyond this, the CDC, through the fraud and scientific malfeasance revealed by Dr. Thompson and others, has been shown repeatedly to be a conflicted, dysfunctional agency having no business stewarding vaccine safety for the United States. I join the call from Dr. William Thompson and many others to remove vaccine safety surveillance activities from the CDC to an entity completely independent of the CDC and Department of Health and Human Services as a whole. Again, the revelations of Dr. Thompson go far beyond issues with the MMR vaccine and affirm my own inquiry of the CDC starting in 2001. Please join me in calling for an immediate Congressional investigation of this agency.
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