CDC’s Purchase of $4 Billion of Vaccines a Conflict of Interest in Overseeing Vaccine Safety

The CDC currently spends over $4 billion purchasing vaccines from drug makers, and wants to increase that amount by over a half billion for 2015. Source.

Brian Shilhavy
Health Impact News Editor

Is the CDC Trustworthy in Overseeing Vaccine Safety?

Do you trust the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to oversee vaccine safety when they have an annual budget of over $4 billion to purchase vaccines from drug companies? In 2015, they want to increase that amount by another half a billion dollars (see chart above).

Dr. Brian Hooker says the CDC should not be trusted to oversee vaccine safety, and after 10 years of fighting legal battles with the CDC via Freedom of Information requests to secure raw data on vaccine safety studies, he now has solid evidence to back up his claim of fraud within the CDC.

In a shocking news story that rocked the online world but was almost totally ignored by the mainstream media recently, senior vaccine scientist Dr. William Thompson was revealed as a whistleblower within the CDC, admitting that the CDC had withheld information from a key study in 2004 that supposedly showed that the MMR childhood vaccine was safe. The excluded data clearly shows a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, particularly among African-American boys.

The CDC was forced to issue a response, and Dr. Hooker has now shown that the CDC response is clearly trying to cover up ethical lapses and explain away key data that was omitted from their original study. This data that was hidden from the public for more than 10 years was not favorable towards their own bias and what they wanted the public to believe about vaccines and autism. Dr. Hooker has clearly shown that the CDC has a conflict of interest, and cannot be trusted with research on vaccine safety when it is spending more than $4 billion of taxpayer funds to purchase vaccines from drug manufacturers.

Dr. Hooker’s response to the CDC public statement, issued in a press release recently by the Focus Autism Foundation, covered the following points highlighting why the CDC is not trustworthy to oversee vaccine safety:

Dr. William Thompson, CDC epidemiologist, came forward with allegations of manipulation of data in a 2004 vaccine safety study he co-authored – known as the DeStefano et al. study. Dr. Thompson released a statement on August 27, 2014: “I regret my co-authors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the journal Pediatrics. The omitted data suggested that African-American males who received the MMR [measles, mumps, rubella] vaccine before 36 months were at increased risk for autism. Decisions were made regarding which findings to report after the data was collected, and I believe that the final study protocol was not followed.”

Ten years ago (February 2, 2004), Dr. Thompson expressed concerns about the study’s findings in an urgent letter to CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding; he broke protocol to contact her directly, instead of going through his immediate supervisor. Of the upcoming Institute of Medicine (IOM) 2004 meeting on immunizations and autism, he wrote “I will have to present several problematic results relating to statistical associations between the receipt of the MMR vaccine and autism.” He received no reply from Dr. Gerberding and he was removed from the IOM speaker schedule days before the meeting. The 2004 IOM report, which did not include his findings, was cited by the Omnibus Autism decision that denied 5,000 families compensation for vaccine injury claims, and the report continues to be widely cited for exonerating vaccines’ role in causing autism.

Dr. Gerberding left the CDC and is now president of Merck’s vaccine division at a salary of $2 million per year.

Although the CDC has declared that thimerosal is safe for children and pregnant women, CDC’s studies have shown otherwise. CDC’s own publications show that thimerosal causes motor and phonic tics as well as speech and language delays. In fact, five separate CDC studies confirm that thimerosal exposure in early childhood causes tics, which are four times more prevalent in children with autism. Thus, the IOM conclusions, based in large part on these publications, are rendered invalid.

For a complete point by point analysis of the CDC public response to the whisteblower’s allegations written by Dr. Hooker, go here. Dr. Hooker also discusses his analysis of the previously hidden CDC data with Next News Network:

Scientific Fraud in Vaccine Autism Cover-up?

So far this story has been generally ignored in the mainstream media, other than a single story written by CNN.com that has resulted in a huge public outcry against them for mocking the families of vaccine-damaged children with autism. (See: CDC Autism Scandal: Tsunami of Anger is Brewing and About to Explode.) We know that there are members of the press that are affected by this issue and who are parents of vaccine-damaged children, but to come forward at this point and report the news would mean giving up their career.

Former CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson is one person who has already left the mainstream media and is now independent and free to investigate the vaccine issue. She recently decided to contact officials at the journal Pediatrics where the original CDC study was published to find out why they are not retracting the study.

Consulting first with internationally recognized medical ethicist Dr. Michael Carome, a research ethics expert who heads the Health Research Group at the watchdog group Public Citizen, she found out that CDC whistleblower Dr. William Thompson’s confession of alleged flaws in a previously published peer-reviewed paper by one of the authors of the study is probably unprecedented. According to Dr. Carome:

“Upon receiving such an allegation, the journal editors should ask the co-author making the allegations to submit them in writing along with the supporting evidence,” says Carome. “In this case, that should include the data that was allegedly withheld improperly.” (Source.)

So Attkisson contacted Pediatrics and found out that they had decided not to retract the disputed study, without even speaking to Dr. Thompson. They reportedly only contacted his co-authors who are being accused of ethical misconduct. According to Attkisson:

The Committee on Publication Ethics guidelines states that a journal should “issue an expression of concern” about an article if “authors produce conflicting accounts.” Pediatrics is published by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which receives significant funding from vaccine makers but will not disclose the amount. (Source.)

Consider the huge contrast here, where a journal will not consider removing a research study where one of the authors has confessed to violating study protocols and withholding data to falsify results, to the case of British doctor Dr. Andrew Wakefield. Dr. Wakefield is the world-renowned gastrointestinal surgeon and researcher who was accused of fraud and fabricating studies that show a link between the MMR vaccine and bowel disease, present in many children with autism, in a study published in the journal Lancet. In that case, a journalist by the name of Brian Deer published an article in the British Medical Journal criticizing Dr. Wakefield and accusing him of fraud. As a result, his study in the Lancet was retracted, and Dr. Wakefield’s career was destroyed with no trial or jury.

The media continues to portray Dr. Wakefield as a fraud, claiming that his research was never able to be reproduced (which is false), and here a senior CDC scientist admits that CDC researchers found similar results and the scientific journal takes no action. Of course, both the British Medical Journal and the Lancet have strong financial ties to the manufacturer of the MMR vaccine, but I am sure that had no bearing on their decision, right?

According to independent journalist Celia Farber at The Truth Barrier, CDC whistleblower Dr. William Thompson and Dr. Andrew Wakefield recently exchanged text messages where Dr. Thompson apologized “for the price you paid for my dishonesty…” and she claims to have a copy of the text message:

Text exchange allegedly between Dr. Andrew Wakefield and Dr. William Thompson, Aug 27, 2014. Source.

Vaccine Manufacturer Fraud: More Whistleblowers

Last month, a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled in another whistleblower case against the drug manufacturer of the MMR vaccine that has been in litigation since 2010. The case involves two virologists who worked for Merck in developing vaccines and are accusing Merck of lying about the effectiveness of the mumps vaccine. The vaccine manufacturer, Merck, has tried hard to get the case thrown out of court. But the judge ruled last week that the case has merit, and is to continue. Virtually no mainstream media outlet here in the U.S. covered this story, although Ed Silverman has just written a blog about it on the Wall Street Journal’s website:

Did Merck use false pretenses to monopolize the market for mumps vaccines? A pair of lawsuits – one of which is filed by former employees and the other by doctors – make this allegation and a federal judge is allowing both claims to proceed.

The plaintiffs argue that, “by deliberately concealing information… about the efficacy of the vaccine, other potential entrants into the mumps vaccine market were precluded because of their presumption that the U.S. government would not create additional contracts for new vaccine products while the [Merck] vaccine had a 95% efficacy rate,” U.S. District Court Judge C. Darnell Jones wrote in his decision.

“The ultimate victims here are the millions of children who, every year, are being injected with a mumps vaccine that is not providing them with an adequate level of protection,” the lawsuit filed by the virologists states. And while federal health officials have said the disease was supposed to have been eradicated by now, “the failure of Merck’s vaccine has allowed this disease to linger with significant outbreaks continuing to occur.” (Source.)

Will Congress Take Action Against the CDC Fraud?

So what’s next? Will this fraud within the CDC be allowed to continue? There are reports that there are other potential whistleblowers within the CDC who would like to come forward, but are too fearful at this point. Dr. William Thompson is now represented by one of the top whistleblower attorneys in the nation, and has reportedly turned over more than 1000 documents to Congressman Bill Posey.

Representative Bill Posey asked some of the toughest questions of the CDC in the last Congressional hearings on autism back in 2012, along with Representative Dan Burton, who has since retired. However, no action ever resulted. Dr. Coleen Boyle represented the CDC during those hearings, and is one of the co-authors on the disputed study from 2004 along with CDC whistleblower Dr. William Thompson. Dr. Boyle publicly stated at those hearings that the CDC studies showed no link between vaccines and autism. Isn’t that called “perjury”?

The pharmaceutical industry is the richest and most powerful political lobby in the world, however. Will there be enough members of Congress to come forward and oppose them? Does the American public even care enough about this issue to take action and threaten lawmakers who refuse to act and remove vaccine safety oversight from the CDC? Will they demand that taxpayer funds NOT be increased by over a half billion dollars next year to fund the purchase of more vaccines that are produced by pharmaceutical companies who are convicted criminals, and whose products have not been proven safe?

And where is the outrage among leaders of the African-American community regarding this fraud? The CDC withheld key data linking a higher rate of autism among African-American boys, and so far it appears that only one publication serving the African-American community has even bothered to mention this story.

The Vaccine Dam is Leaking and About to Burst

The mainstream media’s strategy of ignoring this story is not a viable long-term strategy, because this story is not going away. The information is spreading like an out-of-control wildfire, with or without mainstream media coverage. The carefully crafted pharmaceutical message regarding vaccines and vaccine safety is quickly losing credibility. There are so many vaccine-damaged people in our society today, that the issue touches just about all Americans, whether they realize it yet or not, and this information cannot be contained.

If Congress will not act, I expect there will be a huge backlash against them, and there is ample time left prior to the November mid-term elections to make this a major issue.

Families of vaccine-damaged children are already seeking legal advice, and there will certainly be more lawsuits forthcoming. Will these upcoming lawsuits prompt more whistleblowers to come forth to mitigate against the potential damages in criminal cases?

I also predict that if any of the current mainstream media outlets breaks rank with the official pharmaceutical industry position on vaccines, that they will almost instantaneously become the most popular media source among the well-funded mainstream media.

But if they continue to ignore this story and comply with the pharmaceutical industry fraud, the alternative media will just become stronger.

Previous Stories on the CDC Whistleblower: