8 BACK TO SCHOOL <strong>2018</strong> PASADENA WEEKLY
continued from page 7 voluntary system, mostly unknown to the public and not encouraged by doctors. About 1,700 of the 11,000 “vaccine adverse events” reported annually are serious, and result in problems that include hospitalizations, death or disability. However, The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reports that only an estimated 1 percent of vaccine injuries are ever reported to VAERS. In spite of that, $4 billion in federal compensation has been paid to thousands of vaccine victims over the past three decades. Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center, calls the Act “a historic acknowledgement by the US government” that government licensed and mandated childhood vaccines can and do cause injury and death. Can We Trust the CDC? The CDC is in charge of the vaccine schedule, but like the FDA, their independence is also in question. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose website The Mercury Project provides information on thimerosal, an ethyl mercury preservative in vaccines, points out numerous studies by Congress, the Senate and HHS that “paint CDC as a cesspool of corruption, mismanagement and dysfunction with alarming conflicts of interest suborning its research, regulatory and policymaking functions.” In August of 2014, Kennedy writes, “17-year CDC veteran, Dr. William Thompson, author of the principal study cited by CDC to exculpate mercury-preserved vaccines from the autism link, invoked whistleblower protection and turned extensive agency files over to Congress [revealing] that for the past decade his superiors have pressured him and his fellow scientists to lie and manipulate data about the safety of the mercury-based preservative thimerosal to conceal its causative link to a suite of brain injuries, including autism.” The Elephant in the Room The estimated 1,000 percent increase in neurological disorders and learning disabilities for American children, and an astronomical rise of Alzheimer’s disease in adults that appears to correspond with the increase in childhood vaccinations, remains unstudied and unexplained by the medical/ pharmaceutical industry and their partners, the CDC and FDA. Their main focus continues to be providing proof that vaccines are not responsible. In 1999 thimerosal was ordered removed from childhood vaccines by the CDC because of the proven dangers but has been reintroduced in the HepB vaccine, injected into newborns in their first hours of life and now recommended for pregnant women and annually for all children and adults. ■ BACK TO SCHOOL <strong>2018</strong> PASADENA WEEKLY 9