Dear CBS,
I am responding to the Wednesday night 60 minutes piece by Dan Rather:
“Saying ‘No’ To Immunization”. If Mr. Rather was trying to present an
intelligent discussion on the issue of vaccinations, he failed miserably. If
he was trying to convince people to vaccinate their children, he was forced
to stoop to inaccurate reporting to do so. He mislead the American people...
again.
Specifically: Whooping cough is back not because of lower vaccination rates,
but because the vaccine doesn’t work. In a December 7, 2003 article, Dr.
James Howenstine (Board certified specialist in internal medicine) made the
following statement, “In 1986 there were 1300 cases of pertussis in Kansas,
and 90% of these cases occurred in children who had been adequately
vaccinated.” A September 1997 issue of “American Family Physician”, a report
from the Madigan Army Medical Center in Ft. Lewis, Washington, says,
“Outbreaks of the disease are now occurring every three to four years in
highly immunized populations throughout the United States and are a
significant health threat despite widespread vaccination and effective
therapy. Unfortunately, pertussis vaccine provides only transient
protection." There have been outbreaks this year in Iowa, Michigan, Indiana,
Illinois, Wisconsin, Colorado, North Dakota, Missouri, Vermont, Texas, and
California. Highly vaccinated children are getting Whooping Cough - they are
NOT being immunized against the disease by the shot. The notion that only
unvaccinated children are spreading disease is a scare tactic, with no basis
in science. Your transcript says the outbreak in New York was “traced to a
local school with unvaccinated children”, leaving people with the idea that
those children spread the disease.
Dr. Paul Offit has a clear conflict of interest which Mr. Rather should have
known about. At an April 2000 hearing on autism, Dr. Offit disclosed that he
holds a patent on the rotavirus vaccine, and receives grant money from Merck
to develop this vaccine. He also gets paid by pharmaceutical companies to
travel around promoting vaccines to other doctors. As a member of the CDC
advisory board, Offit voted on three issues involving rotavirus vaccine,
including recommending it be added to the Vaccines for Children program. How
did Mr. Rather miss that?
Mr. Rather inaccurately reports that Dr. Andrew Wakefield “urged” parents
not to vaccinate their children. This is not true. Many of the doctors and
researchers publishing scientific data that is critical of vaccines are not
“anti” vaccine, they are simply reporting the truths that they are finding -
namely that vaccines are not as safe as we have been led to believe, and are
being linked to many chronic diseases and death. Other researchers are
finding the same thing Dr. Wakefield found - vaccine strain measles virus in
the guts of autistic children.
There are countless doctors, professors and scientists that Mr. Rather could
have interviewed to get a balanced scientific view of vaccines. Of note: Dr.
Jeffrey Bradstreet, co-founder of the International Child Development
Resource Center, Dr. Boyd Haley, head of the Chemistry Department at the
University of Kentucky, Dr. Vijendra Singh, Utah State University, Dr.
Russell Blaylock, neurosurgeon, Dr. Sheri Tenpenny, Dr. F. Edward Yazbak -
the list of "experts" is enormous. I would also point out that the
Association of American Physicians and Surgeons has called for a moratorium
on all mandatory vaccines administered to children.
Barbara Loe Fisher is the clear and articulate voice of reason when she
calls mass vaccination the “biggest medical experiment that has ever been
done on the human race”, and she is correct in saying that the proper safety
studies have never been done.
If Dan Rather wants us to believe that this was a “news” story, then I
expect equal time to be given to the other side of the issue. Get the people
on the air that are doing the studies without a conflict of interest, and
instead of the mother of a child that survived whooping cough, how about
interviewing some of the thousands of people who have been awarded damages
by the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. These people’s children are
DEAD, or have been permanently damaged.
Mr. Rather’s ethics and credibility have been called into question recently,
and I know why - he seems to have a total disregard for the facts.
Erin Adams
Wyoming