Should You Trust ‘The Daily Beast’ About Vaccines?

A Daily Beast ‘Mystery Writer’ Foams At Uninformed Mouth About Vaccines -

The Daily Beast, an American website claiming to provide “breaking news and sharp commentary,” recently published an article titled, “Thanks, Anti-Vaxxers. You Just Brought Back Measles in NYC,” providing not a shred of evidence to substantiate its vociferous claims.

In fact, The Daily Beast does not even reveal who wrote the article, publishing the diatribe under a pseudonym (‘Russell Saunders‘), presumably a New England pediatrician, effectively cloaking their author from accountability for his dauntless indictments.

The article opens, “Measles was considered eliminated at the turn of the millennium. Now it’s back, thanks to the loons to refuse to vaccinate their children.”

Really? Those who choose not to vaccinate are “loons”?

First things first.  The only way that the act of refraining from vaccinating could be justifiably characterized as ‘insane behavior’ is if vaccines were proven effective 100% of the time, and additionally, if the benefits could be proven to outweigh the known risks of side effects, which include deadly reactions. On both counts, this is not the case for the vaccine in question. Most obviously, there is a reason why there are 2 measles vaccines on the CDC immunization schedule. One shot alone does not work. That fact alone should provide a clue to its fallibility.

But the biomedical literatures speaks clearly and firmly about the measles vaccine’s long history of documented failure, which we evaluated in our article from last year, “The 2013 Measles Outbreak: A Failing Vaccine, Not a Failure to Vaccinate,” and which includes 6 confirmed mass outbreak events since 1985 in highly immunization compliant populations (up to 99% vaccinated). These events have proven time and time again that the measles vaccine is not sufficient to prevent outbreaks.

Only last month, a study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, whose authorship includes scientists working for the Bureau of Immunization, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, GA, found that the 2011 New York measles outbreak affected individuals with prior evidence of measles vaccination and vaccine immunity.

Titled, “Outbreak of Measles Among Persons With Prior Evidence of Immunity, New York City, 2011,” the study acknowledged that, “Measles may occur in vaccinated individuals, but secondary transmission from such individuals has not been documented.”

In order to find out if measles vaccine compliant individuals are capable of being infected and transmitting the infection to others, they evaluated suspected cases and contacts exposed during a 2011 measles outbreak in NYC. They focused on one patient who had received two doses of measles-containing vaccine and found that,

Of 88 contacts, four secondary cases were confirmed that had either two doses of measles-containing vaccine or a past positive measles IgG antibody. All cases had laboratory confirmation of measles infection, clinical symptoms consistent with measles, and high avidity IgG antibody characteristic of a secondary immune response.

The remarkable conclusion: “This is the first report of measles transmission from a twice vaccinated individual. The clinical presentation and laboratory data of the index were typical of measles in a naïve individual. Secondary cases had robust anamnestic antibody responses. No tertiary cases occurred despite numerous contacts. This outbreak underscores the need for thorough epidemiologic and laboratory investigation of suspected measles cases regardless of vaccination status.”

Did you get that? A twice-vaccinated individual, from a NYC measles outbreak, was found to have transmitted measles to several of her contacts.  That’s a piece of evidence that The Daily Beast and their fictitious author are falsely implying does not exist. You can’t blame non-vaccinating parents in pogrom like disgust and hatred for the morbidity and mortality of infectious diseases when even the vaccinated infect others who are also vaccinated; doubly disproving their efficacy.

Moreover, these CDC and NYC Bureau of Immunization scientists identified a ‘need’ for there to be “thorough epidemiologic and laboratory investigation of suspected measles cases regardless of vaccination status.” What’s happening now is that the moment a measles outbreak occurs, a reflexive ‘blame the victim’ attitude is assumed, and the media and/or health agencies report on the outbreak as if it has been proven the afflicted are under or non-vaccinated – often without a shred of evidence to support these claims.  This is happening globally, now, thanks to the Gates Foundation and Counsel of Foreign Relations project to plot ‘vaccine preventable’ disease outbreaks presumably caused by non-vaccinators.

Clearly stakeholders in the vaccine/non-vaccine debate need to look at the situation through the lens of the evidence itself, and not some pseudonymous (cowardly) rambling of accusations against presumably crazy parents, published on a website that hopes you won’t notice.

Given the lack of evidenciary support offered, one has to wonder what the author is referring to when he states, “We vaccinate people for a reason.”  Perhaps he is hoping to activate the meme of “vaccines are safe and effective”, assuming there will be no more questions asked.

That’s right. Not a single elaboration or citable reference to support the statement. This isn’t journalism; it isn’t even ‘sharp commentary’. It’s fear-mongering and confusion-generating propaganda of the worst kind.

Article Contributed by Sayer Ji, Founder of www.GreenMedInfo.com

Sayer Ji is an author, researcher, lecturer, and advisory board member of the National Health Federation. He founded Greenmedinfo.com in 2008 in order to provide the world an open access, evidence-based resource supporting natural and integrative modalities. It is internationally recognized as the largest and most widely referenced health resource of its kind.