Health Spectator

Editorial

former CDC head Dr. Julie Gerberding

We came across a post on the autism site Adventures in Autism by Ginger Taylor claiming that former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) chief Julie Gerberding, who stepped down from that agency in January of this year, has since accepted a position with public relations giant Edelman.

The Edelman website confirms this, and we quote:

Edelman has created the Global Task Force on H1N1 Influenza to help its clients and partners navigate the communications challenges associated with the potential outbreak of H1N1 flu. The task force comprises a network of public health and crisis communications specialists, including former U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Julie Gerberding, who are ready to help organizations engage their internal and external stakeholders early and protect their reputations.

Perhaps this is vindication for those Gerberding critics who claimed that while she was head of CDC, her interest was more in protecting careers and reputations than in saving lives. We don’t know.

We do know that the transition back and forth between agencies in the public sector and such major industries as the oil, chemicals, food and pharmaceuticals industries supposedly regulated by those corresponding agencies has been an easy one to make of late, a situation that we find mildly upsetting. We say “mildly” because, while we could easily work ourselves into a sleepless frenzy over this, it happens all the time. That would leave us sleepless for life were we to agonize over it too much.

Gerberding has every right to represent the same large pharmaceutical companies she was accused of representing all along, and at least now her paycheck does not come directly from our taxes. (It is siphoned off, instead, via the extra healthcare costs we pay for healthcare we may or may not receive, depending upon our ability to pay for it after having supported with our taxes massive government agencies that are supposed to be guarding us. For more on these issues see the interview with a CIGNA exec and Michael Moore’s Sicko.)

Corporate vs. public interests

We wouldn’t mind the job security conferred upon the ruling elite by these arrangements nearly so much if only those public servants were more diligent in their defense of the public (as opposed to corporate) interests while serving their brief tenure in public posts. But so few of them have actually been able to switch off the defending-corporate-interests part of their personalities while allegedly serving the public.

If you read Ginger Taylor’s references to Gerberding it becomes clear that she feels intense frustration at Gerberding’s frequent calls for more research that were then followed by total inaction in instigating such research.

Taylor, meanwhile, is a Maine housewife living the daily frustration and horror of parenting a child disabled by autism. It is one thing to sit and read countless papers (as we do) trying to decipher the contradictions among research reports to arrive at some sort of informed opinion on the subject and quite another to have witnessed, as Ginger Taylor and too many other parents have, the transformation of a formerly healthy child to a sick and damaged one after receiving a shot or a series of shots.

Cause and effect are total abstractions in the first case and heartless assassins in the second. If you watched your child or spouse regress from a healthy state to an autistic or demented one, wouldn’t you too be bitter or at least hostile towards the vaccine and mercury amalgam manufacturers who continue to claim there is no relation at all between these afflictions and their products?

As for Gerberding, she probably makes the sort of next-door neighbor you would visit with for hours given the opportunity. But we can understand Taylor’s feelings towards her. That frustration comes through in the interview below of Julie Gerberding by Dr. Sanjay Gupta, with text insertions provided by Ginger Taylor. Following that, we have also posted an interview with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, who has performed extensive research on the thimerosal issue.

Thimerosal and vaccines

Thimerosal, in case you’ve forgotten, is a preservative used in many vaccines. Kennedy’s article Deadly Immunity, published in Rolling Stone and Salon.com is a must read on that subject.

While we’re on the subject of mercury and autism, we would like to add that we don’t think the thimerosal in vaccines (or that in mercury fillings, for that matter) is the sole cause of autism and other apparently mercury-related injuries and illnesses. We do believe that many individuals have been injured by the mercury in vaccinations and in mercury fillings, don’t get us wrong.

But the body is a complex organism and there are often multiple paths to the same result. A lack of vitamin D, for example, might induce similar disorders and certainly does induce asthma, Alzheimer’s and diabetes, to name just three among many. Pregnant mothers and infants have grown increasingly deficient in this important vitamin in recent years (See our piece Vitamin D, the versatile vitamin for more on that.)

Holistic approach works best

But there are other culprits as well. Aluminum not only exacerbates the presence of mercury, but can fill in for it as a damaging agent. Fluoride is another toxin that can cause untold damage, particularly when combined with aluminum. Even monosodium glutamate, aspartame and other excitotoxins may play a role. All these toxins—mercury, aluminum, fluoride, glutamate and aspartame, as well as vitamin D deficiency—have been implicated in the onset of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. They can also cause, in various combinations or singly, childhood-onset disorders such as autism.

For many individuals, the sheer number of vaccinations given to children these days may be the cause. Not only are the additives such as thimerosal cumulative in their effects, the assault on a young immune system that each of these vaccinations represents has to be considered cumulative as well. Then too, the measles antigen suppresses the immune system for up to several months. During this period, another vaccination that might otherwise be tolerated by a given individual may cause disastrous results.

So a holistic approach to this problem works best. For the sake of argument, if you consider health to be the absence of disease and its contributing factors, you could define health, in this context as adequate vitamin D and other vitamins in the absence of mercury, aluminum, aspartame, MSG and fluoride from the diet and the environment.

Start adding any of these toxins back in, and you dramatically increase the risk of any given child displaying autism.

So, while a given parent may witness a child becoming autistic after, say, a flu vaccination (most flu vaccines still contain mercury) that doesn’t mean another parent may not witness either a different result from mercury or a different cause of autism.

The heartbreak of autism

In any case, it certainly does not mean that any of these parents should have to put up with ridicule or indifference on the part of the medical establishment and even less so on the part of our government. And it certainly does not mean that the CDC should continue to allow thimerosal and other forms of mercury to remain in vaccines. Nor should the FDA continue to allow it to be used in tooth fillings, for that matter.

Whereas in Europe the phrase “First, do no harm” is paramount, the United States has developed a different set of standards. Ours is more along the lines of “Do not interfere with business.” The health and welfare of our citizens, sadly, takes a back seat to the profits of corporations.

That situation has got to change.

As the Kennedy interview makes clear, autism is a disease with a well-defined history. It was first described in 1943 by Dr. Leo Kanner of Johns Hopkins University. Kanner had studied 11 children between 1938 and 1943, to which he ascribed this new disease.

Thimerosal was invented in the 1920s and first put into use in vaccines in the 1930s. So those who equate autism with the use of thimerosal have a solid base on which to stand. In fact, the House Government Reform Committee that studied the history of autism and thimerosal concluded in its final report, “This epidemic in all probability may have been prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at the switch regarding a lack of safety data regarding injected thimerosal, a known neurotoxin.” The FDA and other public-health agencies failed to act, the committee added, out of “institutional malfeasance for self protection” and “misplaced protectionism of the pharmaceutical industry.”

You can read all about it here.

We have added the following video (The Truth About Vaccines) from the Shoot ‘Em Up website. The clip can also be found on the Maryland Coalition for Vaccine Choice website. The people who shot the Shoot ‘Em Up documentary from which this video clip is derived produced a feature-length film on the subject. You can purchase that film on DVD from their website. Meanwhile, watch the clip here by clicking on the image below.

Dr. Julie Gerberding Autism interview with Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN – March, 2008, edited by Ginger Taylor.

Below, the Kennedy interview with Joe Scarborough is about Kennedy’s research on autism and thimerosal, a preservative used in many vaccines. This is a subject that both Scarborough and Kennedy know much about. (Scarborough has first-hand experience with autism.)

Keep in mind too that Scarborough is an ultra-conservative, while Kennedy is—well, a Kennedy.

Karen Hays died July 17 from complications to swine flu.

A 51-year-old nurse in Sacramento, CA became that state’s first health-care worker to die of swine flu. Karen Ann Hays died July 17 of a severe respiratory infection, pneumonia and H1N1, according to her death certificate. She also had methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a staph infection that is resistant to many antibiotics.

The Sacramento Bee reported the death on July 31. Hays was a triathlete, skydiver and marathon runner—not the typical sort of person to die of the flu, one might think.

“It’s not surprising for an otherwise healthy person to die of H1N1,” said Dr. Glennah Trochet, Sacramento County’s public health officer in a statement to the Bee.

“Nationwide all along there have been people who have died who did not have underlying medical conditions” such as obesity or pregnancy, she said. “When a disease is common enough and circulates enough, you will see all kinds of deaths.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have both said that health-care workers should be among the first to receive vaccinations against swine flu.

British health authorities reported July 14 that Dr. Michael Day of Bedfordshire, north of London, died from complications of the flu, becoming the first physician known to have died in the pandemic.

As of Thursday, August 6, 2009 the CDC has reported 436 deaths in the U.S. attributed to swine flu out of 6,506 cases reported. These figures were posted on the CDC website today.

One thing clearly different about this flu compared to the so-called “seasonal flu” that people have previously been exposed to is its relative virulence during the summer months. The chart below from the CDC shows the percentage of influenza-like illnesses (ILI) compared to the total number of illnesses reported by outpatients during the seasons 2006-2007 (blue line) 2007-2008 (green line) and this year (red line). While the winter spike from the 2007-2008 flu season (green) was a higher percentage of total cases reported than this year’s (red), this year’s level has remained higher during the summer months.

Chart of influenza-like illnesses as percentage of total illnesses. Source: CDC

Sometimes we come across pieces in our files that never made it into “print” because they still had a few unfinished paragraphs or sentences, or maybe we just didn’t find time that week to do a final edit, after which it was forgotten. We think of them as orphans. This is one of those that we’ve come back to, finished and updated. We hope you find it useful, if much belated.

We saw it today on our own home page, right at the top of the list of the Reuters news feeds: Many Americans still do not get fluoridated water. The ensuing article quotes Dr. William Bailey of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Oral Health as bemoaning the tragedy that more Americans aren’t getting fluoridated water. Then, further down the list, we found a headline to an article on a related subject that set our hackles on end: US Mayors Agree to Phase Out Bottled Water.

Now don’t get us wrong: we’re no huge fan of bottled water. Yes, we understand that the plastic bottles are not only a huge waste-disposal problem, but generally unhealthy in their own right because of the plastic or its components leaching into the water. And so many of the commercial bottled waters are just bottled tap water sold by the likes of Coke and Pepsi anyway. (The worst of these are highly fluoridated as well.)

So we think of the American obsession with buying bottles of water as—well, misguided. It’s just one of the many things we’ve been brainwashed into doing by the corporate media. Watch enough television, and you’ll start buying bottled water too. And don’t get us started about the current practice of putting flavorings and sugar in the water and calling it a “sports drink.” (Yeah, right!)

However, one of the reasons we hate to say goodbye to bottled water is that it is the only way many Americans can get water that isn’t fluoridated, although the proposal to require fluoridation of bottled water has been put on the table.

So we couldn’t help but wax cynical when we read the following statement in the first-mentioned Reuters article about fluoridated water:

Asked if there is any responsible evidence showing negative health effects due to fluoridated water, Bailey said, “No, not at the levels that we use in community water systems.”

This statement is misleading and irresponsible. (more…)

According to a posting by the Associated Press penned by Frank Jordans with the dateline Geneva, “U.S. health officials estimate the United States has passed the 1 million case mark.” The story is an interview with World Health Organization (WHO) second-in-command, Keiji Fukuda.

The wording of that story took many readers by surprise. It gave us pause, too. Finally we realized.

Health Spectator initially reported on June 25 that mathematical modeling by Lyn Finelli, an official with the CDC had projected that there might be one million swine flu infections in the U.S. at that time. So the AP and other sources are just trotting out this old figure. It does not represent a new set of figures released by any U.S. health officials, as the story seems to imply.

A recent paper in the journal Nature¹ published by University of Wisconsin (and University of Tokyo) virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka implies that a high death toll from swine flu is a greater danger than first thought. Still, not all authorities agree that the symptoms caused by the so-called “novel” A(H1N1) virus are worse than those from seasonal flu.

It is important to realize that Kawaoka’s experiments were conducted in mice, ferrets, macaque monkeys and non-human primates; however, his lab and others have used these animals before in an attempt to analyze and predict the behavior of flu viruses in humans.

Kawaoka’s lab used a version of the novel A(H1N1) virus referred to as CA04 because it originated from a patient diagnosed with H1N1 swine flu in California on April 9 of this year. Kawaoka states that “CA04 causes more severe lung lesions in non-human primates than does a contemporary human influenza virus” and further, that “in all three mammalian models tested, CA04 seemed to be more pathogenic than a contemporary human H1N1 virus, KUTK-4.”

Severe lung lesions

In other words, the novel H1N1 virus appears to do more damage to the lungs in non-swine mammalian hosts than a typical seasonal flu virus.

Kawaoka’s lab also tested the swine flu virus on miniature pigs and found they showed no symptoms of infection, despite the efficient spread of the virus among them. This finding may provide a clue as to why no swine flu outbreaks had been noticed in pigs before the virus was transmitted to humans.

The study also found that people exposed to the deadly 1918 influenza appear to have antibodies that neutralize swine flu. This may explain why relatively few elderly people have died in the recent H1N1 outbreak. However, such immunity appears to be limited to those born before 1920—a dwindling portion of the population.

The good news—Kawaoka also found that the H1N1 virus was susceptible to a range of anti-viral or anti-flu drugs known as neuraminidase inhibitors, an example of which is Tamiflu.

Meanwhile, one of Kawaoka’s erstwhile critics, Scott McPherson, seems to be in agreement with Kawaoka at least on the currently underestimated potential virulence of the A(H1N1) strain. Following reports by the BBC about H1N1′s case fatality rate (CFR) and the predicted number of dead in Great Britain from the H1N1 swine flu, McPherson had this to say:

Using the 30% [rate of population infection] figure, the British government expects 18,283,000 or so [Britons] to be infected, and around 9 million to be seriously ill. The 65,000 dead equates to a case fatality rate of .003, or .3 percent. This is in contrast to the current USA CFR of .0056 and the global CFR of .0045.

So the British are expecting two things to occur: First, they fully expect this virus to gain rapid and extremely efficient methods of human-to-human transmission. Second, they are hoping for a moderation of the lethality of the virus as it gains increased communicability. Both are reasonable assumptions.

Contrast this dire British warning with the decided lack of vocal response from the American government. Considering that seasonal flu kills nearly 40,000 Americans a year, and assuming a current CFR of half a percent, why isn’t anyone in Washington using the same dire (and realistic) warnings? This is yet another example of poor risk communication. The same people who are preaching transparency (and absolutely not practicing what they preach) are at great risk of blowing it in preparing Americans for a second, more powerful wave of pandemic flu.

McPherson is not a virologist. Indeed, his main qualification appears to be that he is a formerly elected Republican in Florida (elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 1980) which he followed up with a career as a technology and communications consultant, which landed him back in politics (he became Director of Information Technology for the Republican Party of Florida, 1995, then served under Florida governor Jeb Bush in various capacities, including Y2K preparedness).

Our point here is that McPherson might be expected to criticize the current administration’s handling of the H1N1 pandemic on the basis of politics alone. Still, he seems to be making valid points in his pandemic analysis, and predicts about 400,000 deaths in the U.S. from swine flu in a recent posting:

The published global CFR in late June was plugging along at .002, while the US CFR was at .0045. Now, the US CFR is .0056, and the global CFR is at .0045. So the world has caught up with America in terms of its death rate, and the figure of .0045 places this pandemic squarely within the HHS Category Two pandemic status. But the threshold to Category 3 status is .0051. For the past two weeks, the US CFR has exceeded the Category 3 benchmark. Like the hurricane that spawned this HHS analogy, those winds — and deaths — have to be sustained. The next few weeks will tell us if we are seeing a drop in the CFR, or if the numbers are holding steady. That may also signal the waning of the pandemic’s first wave.

In a more recent posting still, McPherson recalculates the CFR and finds that it has at least temporarily entered into CDC Category 3 status:

all I will say is that the CFR is increasing, now to an aggregate .006475. This means that of every thousand confirmed or suspected cases reported to the CDC, 6 people died. At the end of June, the CFR was .0045. Of course, I agree that we are still talking about early and relatively small numbers. But the CFR has increased nonetheless, or has remained very consistent, however you might define it…. this pandemic may have crossed the threshold into Category 3 status.
Category 3 is no small threshold to cross. It changes things. First, it means that we are looking at a much stronger pandemic than the media and the decision-makers would have you believe. Second, while the number of reported cases is declining (as the WHO declares swabbing should cease if only done for purposes of determining infection and not for collection of viral samples), the death toll is not also declining. The deaths attributable to swine [A(H1N1)] are accelerating.

It is worth noting that McPherson’s calculations of CFRs does not take into account the presumed high number of people who contract swine flu and never so much as see a doctor, thereby reducing the number of reported cases vs. the number of reported deaths from swine flu. However, since he appears to be using published numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) his method is consistent. We cannot propose a better method, but one must realize that the increase in case fatality rates may be apparent rather than real.

If the apparent increases are real, however, there is cause for alarm. Certainly Kawaoka’s findings of lung damage as opposed to mere invasion of the nasal passages and pharynx by seasonal flu could explain a higher mortality rate from the new swine flu.

Profit motives cited

For the most part, public statements by such health authors as Dr. Joseph Mercola have emphasized the apparent profit motive behind any hyping of swine flu dangers. (Health Spectator too has noted some of these early indications.) Vaccine manufacturers are about to make another killing, Mercola and others warn, and it’s best not to be taken in by them. Some say it is best to avoid the flu shots altogether once they finally become available. Vaccinations may be linked to autism, Guillain-Barré syndrome, Alzheimer’s Disease and other serious disorders.

Our modern obsession with vaccines and their use of adjuvants (see our swine flu posting from May 30) and other additives certainly may pose a health threat in its own right, particularly for infants, children and the elderly. Infants are currently required to have 24 vaccinations by age one and that number will nearly double by the time they go to school.²

A common viewpoint is that the actual antigens involved might not pose a problem (we’re constantly bombarded by pathogens in our environment anyway) but modern vaccines tend to rely heavily on adjuvants, which are additives that arouse the immune system to assure that antibodies will be manufactured by the body against the relatively small sample of antigen injected. This is where the pro- and anti-vaccine camps part paths.

This constant inflammation caused by arousal of the immune system, and particularly of the brain’s microglia (immune cells) may be a major contributor to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases.

Vaccination immunity not permanent

However, Russell Blaylock, MD points out that while previous infection confers a permanent immunity, vaccination does not.³ Furthermore, natural infection by most pathogens does not occur by injection of the pathogen into the muscle of the arm. There is even a growing body of evidence that some vaccines may do more harm than good.

The Internet is currently swarming with links to a video of a 1979 60 Minutes report by Mike Wallace on the consequences of the mandatory 1976 flu vaccinations that left dozens dead and hundreds injured, many from the Guillain-Barré syndrome.

Still, the situation of public health officials who must deal with the current crisis is utterly unenviable. Various outcomes could make them appear foolish or negligent. And so long as there is any possibility of a pandemic with even an average death toll, vaccine manufacturers have the upper hand in negotiating not only price, but concessions such as responsibility for death and injury resulting from the vaccines themselves.

Certainly the worst fear of all concerned is that the H1N1 virus could mutate into something resembling one of the current strains of avian flu such as H5N1, which has killed 50-60% of the humans it infected. Currently, H5N1 shows none of the infectious ability of H1N1 in human populations, but were that to change—as through a genetic recombination that combines the worse of both pathogens—the nightmares of those who fear the worst could be realized.

In light of all this, some may choose to heed Kawaoka’s warning:

In fact, the ability of CA04 to replicate in the lungs of mice, ferrets and non-human primates, and to cause appreciable pathology in this organ, is reminiscent of infections with highly pathogenic H5N1 influenza viruses, as acknowledged in a recent report by the World Health Organization (http://www.who.int/wer/2009/wer8421/en/index.html). We therefore speculate that the high replicative ability of [H1N1 swine flus] might contribute to a viral pneumonia characterized by diffuse alveolar damage that contributes to hospitalizations and fatal cases where no other underlying health issues exist. In addition, sustained person-to-person transmission might result in the emergence of more pathogenic variants, as observed with the 1918 pandemic virus. Furthermore, [H1N1 swine flus] may acquire resistance to [Tamiflu] through mutations in their [neuraminidase] gene (as recently witnessed with human H1N1 viruses), or through reassortment with co-circulating, [Tamiflu]-resistant seasonal human H1N1 viruses. Collectively, our findings are a reminder that [swine flus] have not yet garnered a place in history, but may still do so, as the pandemic caused by these viruses has the potential to produce a significant impact on human health and the global economy.

[View the Mike Wallace 60 Minutes video regarding the 1976 swine flu vaccine.]

Surprisingly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s swine flu tally for all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands does not appear to have changed much since the last time we looked. This week, the CDC changed its normal schedule of updating the figures on Friday in honor of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meeting yesterday. Yesterday’s figures, which are the final figure for the week, were effective as of 7:00 PM Thursday, June 25 EDT.

The U.S. is reporting 27,717 confirmed or probable swine flu cases with 127 deaths confirmed to be the result of swine flu. Wisconsin continues to lead the states with 4,273 cases reported and 4 deaths. Texas and Utah have 10 deaths apiece, while New York has 35, California 16, and Illinois has 12.

A story by AP reporter Michael Stobbe says one U.S. official has estimated that more than one million Americans may have become infected with the novel H1N1 swine flu at this point.

Stobbe attributes the estimate to Lyn Finelli, an official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Finelli gave a presentation at a meeting of the vaccine advisory committee in Atlanta on Thursday. (more…)

As the “new” A(H1N1) swine flu spreads in the U.S., 13,217 cases are current in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. There were 27 U.S. deaths from the flu as of 11 am today, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta. At the time of our last report on U.S. fatalities a week ago, deaths totaled 15, with 48 states and Washington, DC claiming 8,975 infections.

That gives the U.S. an increase of 4,242 cases in one week, with 12 more dead over the same period—an 80% increase in deaths for a 47% increase in cases. (more…)

15 swine-flu deaths in U.S. as of May 29

According to Centers for Disease Control (CDC) data released at 11 am, Friday, May 29, the number of H1N1 (“swine flu”) cases in the U.S. is rapidly approaching the 10,000 mark. (see table) In fact, it likely will have reached that level by the time you read this, given the rate at which cases have increased over approximately the past week.

Meanwhile, health officials seem intent upon emphasizing the relatively mild symptoms of this so-called “new” or “novel” H1N1 influenza, as the CDC calls it. At the same time, the U.S. government has entered into a deal to acquire swine flu vaccine for persons it deems most worthy. (more…)