Vaccines save lives, there is no doubt about that. They have eradicated many diseases that plagued the world in past centuries. But vaccines can also be dangerous, especially to the most vulnerable among us, children. Robert F. Kennedy’s book Thimerosal: Let The Science Speak goes into great detail exposing the dangers of the preservative thimerosal in vaccines containing mercury. Thimerosal is known to be a highly toxic poison that can affect the human brain and nervous system.

Vaccines account for $25 billion each year for the trillion-dollar pharmaceutical industry. When the CDC adds another vaccine to the schedule, the manufacturer is guaranteed billions more in profits. In 1988 Congress granted big pharma immunity from lawsuits, which, overnight transformed vaccines into a money machine for the industry. In the mid-1900s the CDC had only five pediatric vaccines on their schedule, but today children cannot attend school without having a minimum of 56 doses of 14 different vaccines, which continue until they’re 18 years old.

Fraudulent Regulatory System at the CDC

When the CDC decides to require a new vaccine, public health is certainly not the only factor influencing this decision. There are four scathing studies done by the federal government, one by the HHS Inspector General, two by Congress, and one by the US Senate that describe the CDC as having astonishing conflicts of interest that discredit its research, policymaking, and regulatory functions. They say that this is an agency replete with dysfunction and mismanagement and is basically a cesspool of dishonesty and corruption.

Huge profits and the corrupt association between big pharma and those running our government agencies have created a fraudulent regulatory system. One of America’s leading pharmaceutical companies, Merck, is currently being investigated for lying to FDA regulators about its MMR vaccine regarding its effectiveness. Whistleblowers describe Merck using fraudulent studies to keep their monopoly on MMR.

Big pharma seems insatiable; there are 271 new vaccines currently making their way through the CDC with the potential to increase vaccine revenues to as much as $100 billion in the next decade. Dr. Paul Offit, a major industry spokesperson, claims that children can safely take up to 10,000 vaccines.

One example of a conflict of interest is that the rules of the CDC allow people like Dr. Offit to participate on the CDC’s own advisory boards. In 1999 he was part of the CDC’s own vaccine advisory committee and he was allowed to vote in the process that added the rotavirus vaccine to the CDC’s schedule. All the while he had developed his own rotavirus vaccine and stood to make a fortune. To Newsweek magazine he said, “It was like winning the lottery” when he and his partners sold the patent on their vaccine to Merck for $182 million in 2006.

A report done by the HHS Inspector General in 2009 found that up to 64% of the CDC’s committee members had possible conflicts of interest. These were either indicated on their financial disclosure forms and never resolved, or outright omitted. It was found that 97% of those sitting on committees at the CDC had at least one omission and most had more than one. These forms were certified nonetheless.

Aside from his lucrative arrangement with Merck, Offit was awarded a $1.5 million research chair, paid for by Merck, at the prestigious Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. Using this lofty position he spouts vaccine industry propaganda on the safety of vaccines, pushing for more vaccines, while slandering advocates for safe vaccines.

The widespread corruption at the CDC has also contaminated its immunization safety office. This is where testing and research is done on the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. In August 2014, Dr. William Thompson, who had worked at the CDC for seventeen years and who authored the main study the CDC cites to exonerate mercury-preserved vaccines from any association to autism, invoked his right to whistleblower protection, and turned over huge numbers of agency documents to Congress.

Thompson, who continues to work at the CDC, claims that over the past ten years his superiors put pressure on him and other scientists working there to outright lie by manipulating data regarding the safety of thimerosal, the mercury-based preservative in vaccines, in order to hide its causative association to a range of brain impairments, including autism. No matter how many fraudulent studies the pharmaceutical industry and the CDC conduct, the truth is that there are no peer-reviewed published studies that show thimerosal to be safe.

Thimerosal consists of 50% ethylmercury. This substance is far more toxic and unrelenting in the brain than the methylmercury found in fish, which is highly regulated. There are hundreds of highly reputable studies by leading university and governmental scientists that have been peer- reviewed showing that thimerosal is a catastrophic brain poison and is associated with the kind of neurological disorders that we are seeing in epidemic proportions in American children.

Prevalence of Neurological Disorders in American Children

Approximately 1 in 68 American children have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to the CDC’s Autism & Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network (ADDM). [Read summary] [Read article]. Reportedly, ASD occurs among all socioeconomic, racial and ethnic groups. [Read summary] [Read article]. It is unknown why, but ASD is nearly five times more prevalent in boys, affecting 1 in 42, than in girls, in which 1 in 189 are affected. [Read article]

Looking at all developmental disabilities occurring in children, 1 in 6 children in the US were identified as being disabled in 2006 to 2008. These ranged from mild disabilities, such as impairments in speech and language to more severe disabilities, like cerebral palsy, intellectual disabilities and autism. [Read summary] Studies conducted in North America, Europe and Asia show the prevalence of ASD to be about 1%. One study done in South Korea shows a prevalence of 2.6%. [Read article] [Data table] Why is the prevalence so much higher in the US?

Mercury in Flu Shots

The belief that the rates of autism went up in the US after thimerosal was removed from pediatric vaccines, which occurred in 2003, is totally false. That was the year the CDC added flu shots to the pediatric schedule, containing huge doses of thimerosal. Because of this, children these days can be exposed to mercury nearly as much as kids in the decade before 2003 from all pediatric vaccines combined. Even worse, pregnant women are given flu shots. The CDC’s current numbers for autism are false as well, because the numbers they are using are for those born in 2002, when children were still getting vaccines containing thimerosal.

Influence of Mass Media in Spreading Misinformation

Unfortunately, mass media is in on the conspiracy to cover up the link between thimerosal and autism. Big pharma spends more than $3.5 billion annually on advertising in newspapers, TV and other media, targeting news departments, to spread their propaganda. The media’s favorite spokesperson on the topic, Dr. Offit is featured with no mention of his industry ties. The media then goes out of their way to censor anyone questioning vaccine safety and downright excludes the voices of those truly informed on the topic who advocate for safe vaccines.

Journalists do not take the time to read the science themselves. They simply repeat the lies dispensed by pharmaceutical companies and governmental officials. Without any real knowledge or basis they demonize vaccine safety advocates, saying they are “anti-vaccine” or “anti-science,” leaving ruined reputations in their wake. Because the press is unwilling to take a hard look at the CDC, the pharmaceutical industry, and the CDC itself have become emboldened, making billions in profits for the industry. This allows bureaucrats to keep their jobs while lining their pockets.

Political Donations Corrupting the Process

The pharmaceutical industry is one of the country’s largest political donors, contributing $31 million just last year to national candidates, more than any other industry. From 1998 to 2014 it contributed $3.0 billion, twice the amount the oil and gas industry spent and four times that spent by defense lobbyists. As a result legislators in 36 different states were devising and pushing through more than 100 new laws that would end parents’ right to not have their kids vaccinated on religious and philosophical grounds. Many of these lawmakers are receiving money from the pharmaceutical industry.

You can actually see how much money was taken from big pharma by state legislators who were sponsoring these bills by looking at: http://www.maplight.org

The pharmaceutical industry’s goal is to totally strip parents of their right to control their children’s health, forcing them to get their kids vaccinated, no matter the risks, in order to send them to school. Even our own Supreme Court has deemed these vaccines “unavoidably unsafe.”

When you look at the best science out there you will see that it suggests that the complete removal of thimerosal from vaccines will likely result a significant decline in cases of autism. For example, a CDC study done in 2013 published in JAMA Pediatrics researching the results of Denmark’s 1992 removal of thimerosal from their vaccines reveals a 33% lowering of Denmark’s rate of autism. This particular paper is one of 37 peer-reviewed studies that show a link between thimerosal and the epidemic of autism.

Money from big pharma has bought them immunity from any lawsuits no matter how injurious their products are. Our Congress was bought off to throw out the Seventh Amendment, which gives everyone the right to a jury trial. Congress made it impossible for people injured or disabled by vaccines to sue pharmaceutical companies for dispensing unsafe vaccines. As shocking as this is, it’s the truth! There will be no Class Action lawsuits, no discovery and no depositions that would all occur were they to be sued. This gives big parma little or no incentive to clean up their act and make vaccines and flu shots safe.

Economic Costs of Autism Spectrum Disorder

Far more than the financial costs of raising a child with ASD, is the devastating destruction of the life of a perfectly healthy human being, the enormous toll it takes physically, socially, and emotionally on the entire family and society at large. These losses are difficult to quantify, so we will focus on the financial and economic costs of dealing with ASD.

The total annual cost for American children with ASD were estimated to be from $11.5 billion to $60 billion. This represents a significant economic burden for the US and involves various direct and indirect costs that include lost productivity among parents, special education services for children, and medical expenses. [Read article] [Read article]

Children and adolescents diagnosed with ASD incurred annual medical expenses that surpassed those without ASD by an average of $4,110 to $6,200. These were 4.1 to 6.2 times higher than for children and adolescents without ASD.

The average medical costs in 2005 for a child with ASD enrolled in Medicaid was $10,709 per year. This was approximately six times greater than the medical costs of a child without ASD, which was $1,812. [Read summary]

Parents: the Only Line of Defense

There are no checks and balances any longer, nothing to keep our children safe. With everyone in the pocket of big pharma, the scientists, the politicians, policymakers and regulatory agencies, and with no legal recourse in the courts, and the media totally subverted and too lazy to uncover the truth, no one is standing between a rapacious industry and our vulnerable children, except their concerned parents.

It is way too early to end religious and philosophical exemptions. We need a completely transparent process and a fully functioning regulatory system that will give us the facts. Parents will avoid vaccinating their children until our process is fixed and gains back the trust of the public. Everyone involved in the process must be forced to end their corrupt financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry, who seem only concerned about increasing profits, not the health and well-being of anyone.