Jane M. Orient, MD

By means of vaccine policy, which was previously discussed in these pages,(1) the federal government is effectively making critical medical decisions for an entire generation of American children. The mechanism is a public-private partnership. "Recommendations" issue from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a small group whose members have incestuous ties(2) with agencies that stand to gain power, or manufacturers that stand to gain enormous profits, from the policy that is made. Even if such members recuse themselves from specific votes, they are permitted to participate in discussions and thus influence the decision.

ACIP recommendations frequently become mandatory through actions of state legislatures, or through state health departments to which legislatures have delegated such authority. State policy is generally enforced by school districts, which set requirements for school attendance. Some children, as reported by ABC's 20/20, are being home schooled because they have not received all the required vaccines.

Smallpox is the most deadly disease in our species' history. Variola virus causes this disease and humans are the virus' only natural host. It is transmitted person-to-person, most commonly through the air. Infected people exhale the virus from blisters in their mouth, and anyone who comes within 10 feet of a smallpox victim can inhale the aerosolized virus and catch the disease. There are no currently available anti-viral measures that doctors can use to treat smallpox. Antibiotics don't work. Vaccination, however, protects a person from contracting this disease. More than 300 million people died from smallpox from 1900 to 1978, when the last case in the world occurred. The last case in the United States was in 1949. Doctors and public health officials eradicated the disease by mass vaccination. People in the U.S. stopped being vaccinated for smallpox in 1972, when more deaths from vaccination occurred than from the now nonexistent disease. (In 1968, the last year for which data is available, 9 deaths occurred in the 14.2 million people who were vaccinated.) But laboratory stocks of variola virus, preserved ostensibly for research, were not destroyed. Before it collapsed in 1991, the Soviet Union had its state-employed microbiologists grow, in the embryos of chicken eggs, vast quantities of smallpox virus for use as a biological weapon - 100 tons of it. There is a high probability that Iraq has acquired a stockpile of the virus and has recruited laid-off Soviet scientists to weaponize it.

September 29, 2004 

Although they afflict widely different age groups, autism and Alzheimer's disease share a common cause: mercury. Dr. Boyd Haley, professor and chair of the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky, and Dr. Bernard Rimland, founder of the Autism Research Institute, presented evidence at this year's Doctors for Disaster Preparedness meeting that connects mercury with these diseases.

This heavy metal is highly poisonous. A Dartmouth professor studying the chemical characteristics of an organic form of mercury - dimethyl mercury - spilled two drops of it on her gloved hand. The first sign of mercury poisoning occurred four months later when her speech began to be slurred. This was followed by difficulty walking and loss of vision. She then fell into a coma and died. Another person, attempting to smelt the silver in dental amalgams he obtained (they are 35 percent silver, 50 percent mercury, and 15 percent tin, zinc, and other metals), heated them in a frying pan. The mercury vapor thus generated killed him quickly. The two other family members in the house at the time also died.

Another influenza season is beginning in the northern temperate zone, and our government's Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will strongly urge Americans to get a flu shot. Health officials will say that every winter 5-20 percent of the population catches the flu, 200,000 people are hospitalized, and 36,000 people will die from it.

The CDC's 15-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) makes recommendations each year on who should be vaccinated. Ten years ago, for the 1999-2000 season, the committee recommended that people over age 65 and children with medical conditions have a flu shot. Seventy-four million people were vaccinated. Next season (2000-01) the committee lowered the age for universal vaccination from 65 to 50 years old, adding 41 million people to the list. For the 2002-03 season, the ACIP added healthy children 6 months to 23 months old, and for 2004-05, children up to 5 years old. For the 2008-09 season the committee has advised that healthy children 6 months to 18 years old have a flu shot each year. Its recommendations for influenza vaccination now covers 256 million Americans - 84 percent of the U.S. population. Only healthy people ages 19-49 not involved in some aspect of health care remain exempt. Pharmaceutical companies have made 146 million influenza vaccines for the U.S. market this flu season.

Almost all the ACIP members who make these recommendations have financial ties to the vaccine industry. The CDC therefore must grant each member a conflict-of-interest waiver.