Are you vexed?

Vaxxed - From Cover-up to Catastrophe (2016)
Vaxxed II - The People's Truth (2019)

It must be difficult being educated in the 21st century. With the plethora of information at our fingertips, we are left not more well versed but on the contrary, more confused and unsure about almost everything. The more knowledge we seem to acquire, the more we seem to be wanting. The influence of visual media and the persuasive power of raw human emotions make us buy any story and rethink that perhaps conventional wisdom perhaps needs reassessment.

For aeons, people succumbed to communicable diseases. Entire civilisations have disappeared in our not so distant past. The advanced Aztec and Mayan cultures were probably wiped out by the smallpox viruses brought in by looting Spanish sailors. Barring some viruses kept in laboratories for bio-weapons, we have managed to eradicate smallpox from our list of the leading causes of mortality. Vaccination used to be hailed as one of the fifty of mankind's most significant discoveries. Now, people stand proud thumping their chests boasting of their statuses of not being inoculated against communicable diseases. In fact, it appears as if they have lost all confidence in the medical profession.

No, it is not true that medical professionals are not trained in administering vaccinations. Contrary to what is wrongly alleged in this documentaries, medical students spend many hours studying immunology and rationale of immunisation. True, adverse reactions to vaccines are known, but it is a numbers' game. We are talking about extremely rare serious debilitating long-term neurological side effects, in the range of 1 in 100,000 for triple antigens. The disgraced British Gastroenterologist, Dr Andrew Wakefield, in his seminal 1998 BMJ paper suggested that the combination Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine probably carried many contaminants that could be linked to autism. He suggested MMR administration be reassessed and be given as separate preparations. 

Japan, after its 1960s experience with unexplained subacute myelo-optic neuropathy (SMON) which was linked to polio vaccine and threatened to put a stop to the 1960s Tokyo Olympics, is very wary of introducing vaccines to the country. For the record, many years later, a popular dysentery medication Clioquinol (CQL), was singled out as the probable culprit. The manufacturers of the anti-HPV vaccine against cervical cancer, Gardasil, have been trying very hard to penetrate into the Japanese market with no success.

The documentaries managed to pluck the melancholic strings of many of its sentimental viewers. The pictures and video clippings of before and after images of patients with vaccine-injury can move mountains. Imagine a bubbly and smiling infant learning to walk before the MMR vaccination turning into a fretful, floppy child with no eye contact. And yet in another instance, a dirt-bike racing teenager boy becomes quadriplegic with spinal meningitis after Gardasil. An active cheerleader with a bright future has her personality all altered after the anti-HPV jab. 

Statistics do not matter to the victims of vaccine-injury. The question is whether the subsequent morbidity experienced by the patient was indeed caused by the act of vaccination. Was it a mere coincidence or a manifestation of an unrelated disease that was deemed to surface anyway? Are the symptoms related to the contaminants in the preparation of vaccines? It is known that aluminium, nickel and mercury which carry the antigen are linked to ill effects. Does the multiplication of deactivated viruses or antigens in animal cultures bring with it zoonotic diseases related to attached retroviruses? Perhaps the human body has not been given time to adapt to the high load of animal inoculations.

The democratisation of information does not liberate its consumers. It merely pushes all the information to the end-users, to empower them to make choices. The product insert lists all the known and obscure adverse complications related to the vaccines, hence, absolving the manufacturers of possible litigations.

The presence of a special vaccine court in the US where vaccines cannot be sued but the possible victims of vaccine-injury may be compensated by a professional body raises suspicion whether Big Pharmas have some kind of a stronghold to reap benefit from an unsuspecting society. Is there more than meets the eye in the story of immunisation?

From a movement that demanded a reassessment of combination vaccines, it has now morphed into one that opposed all kind of vaccinations. In my opinion, it is a kind of overkill. Some of the later scenes in the second documentary borders on ludicrousness, though. Clips of proud parents from the Bible Belt region flaunting their seemingly healthy and smart children is no testimony of perfect health.

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How far would you go?

The Pathological Optimist (2017)

Sometimes people tell me that I have to wise up, that I have to be a man. When I don't budge, they add that I have a moral responsibility to re-act. I owe it to society to voice out. If a person of my standing did not, who would? Doing the right thing is not always about doing the likeable stuff. One needs to create chaos to maintain order. The serpentine opposing forces of yin and yang, of male and female, are not mutually exclusive but complementary! Chaos and order make up the eternal, harmony of the Eden of life.

I claim to love my country so much, but I do not think I would be willing to don jungle fatigues, drag around a rifle in the discomfort of the outdoors and deafening sounds of exploding gunshots. Probably not in this lifetime.

Would anyone go through great lengths to defend what he thinks is right; at the expense of peace of mind, creating a turmoil within his family, being treating a pariah by people by people beneath them who obviously do not know what they are talking about. All the things that he considered his reason for living, his raison d'être, ridiculed like he is a lunatic.  Just how far would he hold on to his conviction?

Andrew Wakefield, a Consultant Paediatric Gastroenterologist at Free Hospital in the UK, was having a comfortable life doing what he wanted to do all his life - to treat patients. The study he co-authored which implicated MMR vaccination to gastrointestinal dysfunction and neurological regression which appeared in a 1998 publication of Lancet changed all this. Even though ten out of the 13 contributors agreed to retract the said article, Wakefield stood steadfast. He reiterated that there was an association between the combined MMR vaccine and severe neurological symptoms. He suggests further testing and advocated single vaccines.

Brian Deere's investigative journalism work in the Sunday Times accused Wakefield of undeclared conflict of interest and manipulation of results. After a long process, Wakefield was struck off from the British Medical Register. He migrated to Austin, Texas. The topic of autism and its association with MMR as well as the increase in the activities of the anti-vaxxers' movement. Correspondingly, Wakefield's name gets mentioned every now and then in documentaries as well as in the mainstream media. It led on to multiple court cases against Deer and the BMJ to clear his name. Unfortunately, he kept losing all his legal battles and ended up paying the legal costs for the opponents. The many groups supporting those injured by vaccines keep on supporting him. 

Despite all the difficulties that Wakefield, his wife Carmel and their four kids have gone through, he is adamant about defending his research, denies monetary intentions or fraud and works with non-profit organisations related to autism. The periodic spike in incidences of measles is blamed on his movements.

This documentary, done in a very personal way, following Wakefield into his yoga class and his home, takes us to a time between 2011 and 2016 when he had to slug it out with the Texan court in a suit against the BMJ. The viewers can see a weary man fight with all he has for what he calls a 'moral issue'.

P.S. So much for love will keep them together fighting a good fight. 32 years of marriage of Andrew and Carmel Wakefield came to an end. Andrew Wakefield is now dating ex-swimsuit model of Sports Illustrated, Elle MacPherson, 54.

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Veiled altruism?

Plague of Corruption (2020)
Restoring faith in the promise of Science
Authors: Judy Mikovitz, Kent Heckenlively

The domain of caring for the sick is no longer solely in the hands of medical care professionals. Policies of treatment, prevention strategies and cure are not decided by the doctors and policymakers with a medical background. In the modern world, businessmen, philanthropist and Big Pharma are the ones who determine what best strategies to lay for mankind and where the budget for health should go to. These people are the new saviours of the world and pledge to have only altruistic reasons for the heroic journey. There is no business interest, they say. For this, they employed the might of media, print and cyberworld, to spin and repeat the mantra of doom and gloom that only these people can avert. The paternalistic approach of doctors and nurses is so passé.

The traditional advice of good food, fresh air and adequate physical activities is so archaic. Modern-day controlled studies show old preventive non-pharmacological measures so out of tune with modern living. Now, one needs to load oneself with chemicals, innoculate with a myriad of foreign antigens and compounds to spur immunity. Modern man is living in such a bubble that getting soiled with dirt and soil is unthinkable. If possible, he wants his gut to be sterile.

Judy Mikovits gained notoriety during the Covid-19 outbreak. A virologist by profession, she made many bold assertions about mismanagement of the viral epidemic by WHO, CDC and specifically Dr Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Her personal spat with authority goes way back to the early '80s with the discovery of the HIV virus. She was in the first American team of Robert Gallo and Frank Roscetti that isolated Montagnieu's HIV sample. Differences arose regarding wanting to publish the discovery. Along the way came patenting rights. In 2009, another controversy happened when Mikovitz suggested that XMRV
(Xenotropic Murine Leukemia Virus-related Virus), a retrovirus, which is linked to prostatic cancer to be the causative agent of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. Accusations of stealing intellectual properties from the laboratory she was working landed in her arrest, frequent brush with the law and subsequent fall from grace.
She (and her co-author) hit the headlines again when they linked autism to the early administration (9 months) of MMR. The previous proposal of gut-brain connection in autism by Andrew Wakefield in a 1998 BMJ article was shot down as fraudulent.

Mikovitz claims not to be an anti-vaxxer but raises the possibility of our vaccines being contaminated as it goes through animal cell lines during its production. Monkey kidneys and other animal tissues are potential sources of retroviruses, and they can potentially cause many untoward side-effects to predisposed individuals. Vaccines also carry nickel, chromium, formaldehyde and antibiotics. Do vaccines with the zoonotic additives make human more prone to other viral infections, like the pandemic we are having now?

She highlighted the existence of special vaccine courts to pay out compensations to victims of vaccine injury. If vaccines are so safe, why is there such a court? Apparently, the vaccine producers are immune from prosecution by victims, but the court will weigh on the damage.

Dr Judy Mikovitz is not the only crusader around on a mission to expose the concerted effort by the scientific and political elite who run the scam that is our global health system. They hold patents to products and run pharma conglomerates to push vaccines and specific treatment modalities with vested interests on their minds. They manipulate research findings to suit their agenda. Despite holding honourable posts trusted to take care of the people's wellbeing, they are turning their high office into money-spinning ventures.

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