THE US childhood vaccine schedule ballooned after 1986, when vaccine makers were no longer liable for deaths or injuries caused by vaccines and responsibility for compensating victims shifted to the US government.
In his book Vaccine-nation: Poisoning the Population One Shot at a time, Andreas Moritz relates that by the mid-1990s autism rates in the US had soared so high that parents of autistic children vaccinated during the period when the childhood vaccine schedule had twice expanded, 1988 and 1991, began to protest publicly. Alarm bells were ringing loudly and Congress responded by ordering the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to review the use of the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal in all biologics including vaccines.
Similarly, in 1999 the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) epidemiologist Thomas Verstraeten was asked to assemble a research team to analyse the medical records of 100,000 children from the vast repository of health and vaccination data stored in the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) and compare the health outcomes of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children.
Robert F Kennedy Jr writes in The Real Anthony Fauci (p327) that the raw data showed that infants who had thimerosal-containing hepatitis B vaccines in their first thirty days suffered a 1,135 per cent higher rate of autism than infants who did not.
A ‘secret’ conclave was convened in June 2000 at a retreat, Simpsonwood in Georgia, called the ‘Scientific Review of Vaccine Safety Datalink Information’, where Verstraeten presented his findings to selected senior government officials and scientists, vaccine specialists from the World Health Organization (WHO), specialists in the fields of autism, paediatrics, toxicology and epidemiology, and representatives of the major vaccine makers.
Several sources, including RFK Jr, maintain the CDC subsequently took a series of ‘damage-control’ measures to conceal the evidence, including issuing a public statement that the original data had been lost, commissioning another study by the Institute of Medicine, and instructing Verstraeten to ‘rework’ his findings. These were published in 2003 and, predictably, showed no link between the mercury-containing preservative and autism.
Andreas Moritz writes that the agency handed over its vast databases to a private company to remove the damning thimerosal-related data from the purview of the Freedom of Information Act. Other sources dispute this account and depict the meeting as routine and transparent.
What is unquestionable is that the epidemic of neuro-developmental, allergic and autoimmune diseases in children post 1986, coupled with more than 450 studies attesting to thimerosal’s devastating toxicity (cited in the highly referenced The Real Anthony Fauci), led Congress to ban the mercury-containing preservative from use in paediatric vaccines in 2001.
By this time, however, the ‘Vaccine Court’ was inundated with autism-related claims alleging the MMR vaccine as cause. The three hypotheses of cause were: that the cocktail of antigens caused ‘neuroinflammation’ by ‘hyperarousal’ or ‘overexcitation’ of the immune system; that the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal alone was responsible; that it was a combination of both.
Claimants had witnessed their toddlers who had met normal developmental milestones up to receiving the MMR at 12 months react to the vaccination with high fever, sometimes accompanied by gastrointestinal symptoms, and from that point on cease to develop normally. This is described as ‘regressive’ autism. Many had good video evidence of normal development prior to the vaccination.
The ‘Vaccine Court’, however, is not a court of law. It is an administrative proceeding in which the most basic rules of law do not apply, such as the rules of evidence, the rules of civil procedure, the rules of discovery. None of this framework of balanced rights applies. Instead, it is presided over by a politically appointed government attorney called a ‘Special Master’ who is given ultimate discretion and authority over the proceeding.
In 2006, with 5,400 cases awaiting adjudication, the Special Masters decided to select half a dozen test cases as stand-ins for the rest. Test cases 1 to 3 alleged a combination of the MMR vaccine and the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal had caused their child’s autism, whilst test cases 4 to 6 alleged that thimerosal alone was responsible. Known as the Omnibus Autism Proceedings, they began in 2007.
Rolf Hazlehurst, an attorney and father of the second test case claimant, explained how his lawyers were denied discovery of the pharmaceutical company’s documents, normal in civil litigation. More unconscionable still, his lawyers and their scientists were denied access to the Vaccine Safety Datalink, which the government itself relies on. Far from being non-adversarial, Hazlehurst describes the process as highly adversarial.
Becky Estepp, mother of a vaccine-injured child, observed the intimidation used against parents at a proceeding. She explained that on entering the court one sees two rows of government lawyers on one side, and four rows of smartly dressed professionals on the other – the lawyers for the drug companies – constantly passing notes to the government attorneys. Petitioners are supposedly presenting their claims to the US government, so why are the drug companies represented at the hearing at all?
With all official discovery routes by which parents can plausibly prove causal link barred, they are left with the one resource of expert witness testimony, only to find these respected and experienced doctors viciously maligned in court by the government attorneys. Becky Estepp observed that government lawyers did not need to counter any arguments put forth by the claimants, or do anything procedurally to end the cases, because she witnessed on the day of the hearing the media attack the reputation of the claimants’ expert witness on national TV. She added that the prospect of national vilification would deter any professional from giving expert testimony on behalf of victims. Judy Mikovits PhD, who served as an expert witness at the Vaccine Court, gave a detailed account in her 2020 book The Plague of Corruption of the treatment they received.
Rolf Hazlehurst illustrated the travesty of these proceedings by relating the Special Master’s decision that, while the claimant had succeeded in proving that mercury was a neurotoxin, and that it was hazardous if inhaled, ingested or came into contact with the skin, in the case of vaccines it was injected into the bloodstream, therefore the evidence was not applicable!
All six test cases failed.
Years later, in 2019, it came to light through a sworn affidavit by the government’s own autism specialist and primary expert witness, paediatric neurologist Dr Andrew Zimmerman, that during the Omnibus Autism Proceedings he had taken the government attorneys aside and explained to them that his written opinion in the first test case, which refuted vaccine causation, was not intended to be a blanket statement for all the cases. He had clarified that in some children, those with mitochondria dysfunction, vaccination could cause autism. According to his affidavit, his services were promptly dispensed with and his opinion misrepresented for the public record. (Mikovits: The Plague of Corruption)
The central question, however, is why would we think injecting antigen cocktails, metals, preservatives, turbo-chargers and contaminants into the bloodstream of infants was not courting disaster? This case of a healthy two-month-old baby, who died hours after receiving a vaccine cocktail of eight antigens and corresponding adjuvants, exemplifies the human cost of this practice.
