Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2007 12:18 am Post subject: Toxic MMR - vaccination forced on UK toddlers = autism?
Can vaccinations cause long-term health problems for children? Could they be the root cause of autism? Should your child be vaccinated? This is a must-see DVD for parents on the fence about whether to vaccinate their children. This highly informative 3-hour presentation by Dr. Sherri Tenpenny offers the most comprehensive overview of each vaccine available with a step-by-step guide through each shot, and offers irrefutable facts regarding the risks involved with the infections vaccines are meant to protect us from.
Dr. Tenpenny is respected as one of the country's most knowledgeable and outspoken physicians regarding the impact of vaccines on health. As a member of the prestigious National Speaker's Association, she is an outspoken advocate for free choice in healthcare, including the right to refuse vaccination.
An internationally known speaker, Dr. Tenpenny is highly sought after for her ability to present scientifically sound information regarding vaccination hazard and warnings that are rarely portrayed by conventional medicine. She has presented at the National Vaccine Information Center's annual meeting and at several international conferences on autism.
I have also converted this video to DVD for mass production. Please email me if you want a copy kennym911@hotmail.co.uk
Peace
More videos to come! And a new website! _________________ 'It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.'
www.glasgow911truth.net www.cuttingthroughthematrix.com
Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2007 2:53 pm Post subject: Jail Sentences For Parents Who Don't Vaccinate?
Maryland state are threatening parents who do not vaccinate their children against Hepatitis B and Chicken Pox. My youngest was vaccinated, and she has Autism and Tourette Syndrome. We must be aware what these Neo-con facist are doing to our childrens minds.See video:
If this is the case that AJ has been banging on about then, he claims, that there is no law to get them vaccinated.
Apparently, there is a waiver, but the schools have not told the parents about it. Further those that have not got "done" then get kicked out school.
It is then that the state (Nanny) prosecutes them for truancy, under the guise that it is for not getting the poisoned (vaccinated)
Quote:
See the facts in this documentary:
Glad someone bumped this up here, I've been meaning to for a while.:thumbsup:
EL
You are indeed right Elohim. But from what I understand. It is on religious grounds. I have come to realise, that schools are becoming more and more complicit in the NWO agenda. It is not a law rulling. They are telling parents there kids will not be allowed to attend school, save they have vaccination. _________________ "It's called the American Dream, because you have to be alseep to believe it"
You are indeed right Elohim. But from what I understand. It is on religious grounds.
That is one of the "waivers" but "conscience" is another i.e. no religion needs to be involved, just a personal aversion to the vaccinations. Alex Jones yesterday was pretty good on this topic. See http://www.nw0.info/?p=Radio/Alex%20Jones%20Radio%20Archive/2007/Novem ber/ and right click the 18th November link and save as to listen to the whole show.
Joined: 13 Sep 2006 Posts: 312 Location: County Durham, North-East
Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2007 5:51 pm Post subject:
Also - here's a Maryland Form from 2005 which has slightly different section at towards the bottom that states medical or religious only.
There is no LAW though. It's truly frightening to think that there are people trying to force kids to have substances injected into them......this is the type of thing that needs to be stopped and fast.
This is odd for the 9/11 Truth News section....but
Here's a copy of a Waiver form....
It proves, as blackcat said, you can have any personal reason to opt out.
That is why it should be changed from 9/11 news to news in general. News as important as this needs front page coverage. _________________ "It's called the American Dream, because you have to be alseep to believe it"
Also - here's a Maryland Form from 2005 which has slightly different section at towards the bottom that states medical or religious only.
There is no LAW though. It's truly frightening to think that there are people trying to force kids to have substances injected into them......this is the type of thing that needs to be stopped and fast.
The nonsense they add to these vacination destroys braincells. Thus, dumbing down. These sons of bitches have most likely given my daughter Autism thanks to their MMR. _________________ "It's called the American Dream, because you have to be alseep to believe it"
Joined: 13 Sep 2006 Posts: 312 Location: County Durham, North-East
Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2007 6:20 pm Post subject:
I agree that this is important stuff.
When I think back to the injections I've had it makes me feel physically sick.
I saw children walking out of school near where I live a while back - all showing their parents the sellotaped cotton wool on their arms where they had gotten a jab.
Religious and personal objection forms not included in information pack, police followed advocacy reporters to bathroom, kids herded in line to take shots with no regard to medical or vaccine history
Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet, Monday, November 19, 2007
Parents of children in Prince George's County Maryland were kept in the dark about their right to opt out of vaccines as over a thousand kids were herded into a courthouse to be injected while authorities kept a close watch on advocacy groups and reporters who tried to inform parents that there was no law to mandate the shots.
Parents were threatened with fines and jail time last week if they failed to have their children immunized, after schools kicked out kids for not taking the Hepatitis B vaccine.
According to observers who were able to gain access to the courthouse, children with a history of medical issues were not properly screened as parents were simply told to get in line and have their kids take the shots.
"Many of those in line said their children were properly immunized, but the school system had misplaced the records. They said efforts to get the paperwork straightened out beforehand had been futile," reported the Associated Press.
In the following video,(go to link below to view video) Kelli Ann Davis, a member of SafeMinds, a national autism advocacy organization, whose son Miles was diagnosed with autism in 2002 as a result of mercury poisoning from vaccines, relates how she was also followed by police with dogs to the bathroom after being told she "was not one of them".
She also explains how the information packs handed out to parents before they lined up to have their kids take the shots failed to include waiver forms giving parents the right to opt
State Attorney Glenn Ivey, who admitted during a radio interview last week that no law mandated the shots and also that he had chosen not to give his kids the vaccines, confirmed that exemption forms were available from the back of the room. However, when asked if they were aware of the right to opt out, parents were miffed. News reports failed to cite any cases where parents had opted out as a result of signing waiver forms.
According to an Associated Press report, over a thousand children were vaccinated on Saturday, leaving around 1100 who did not show up to the courthouse. The fact that mandatory shots were being doled out in court after parents had been threatened with arrest, reminiscent of some nightmarish science fiction horror movie, and potentially dangerous in itself, was also overlooked by mainstream news coverage.
On Friday, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons condemned the case as a "vaccine roundup."
"This power play obliterates informed consent and parental rights," said Kathryn Serkes, director of policy for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), one of the few national physician groups that refuse corporate funding from pharmaceutical companies. In a scenario reminiscent of cattle round-ups, the state's attorney has issued summons to more than 1600 parents of children who have not provided certificates of immunization for their children. But instead of toting a cattle prod, this state's attorney chooses to wield a syringe to keep the "herd" in line.
Children should be carefully screened, medical records taken and decisions made carefully - not in an ad hoc assembly-line clinic in a county courtroom and under the brutal watch of law enforcement. This is a man-made disaster ready and waiting to detonate. Children could receive a dangerous cocktail of several vaccines without proper examinations. "The procedure is reckless and subjects children to the risk of severe reactions. Physicians would not be allowed to treat children in this way, without individual histories and physical exams - or informed consent," said Jane M. Orient, M.D., AAPS Executive Director.
AAPS also pointed out a blatant conflict of interest, highlighting the fact that the school district is set to lose a windfall in state funding unless students comply with the vaccine order.
With the state still hell-bent of getting over a thousand other children to take the shots, this case is far from over, and charges that parents have been subject to an intimidation campaign while not being properly informed of the exemption process will continue.
Government “Gets Tough” with Parents Befuddled by Color of Law Vaccinations
Kurt Nimmo, TruthNews, Monday November 19, 2007
The Associated Press reports: “Scores of grumbling parents facing a threat of jail lined up at a courthouse Saturday to either prove that their school-age kids already had their required vaccinations or see that the youngsters submitted to the needle” in Maryland.
No word on the fact there is not a law mandating submission to vaccination. Only that parents submit to the “required immunization” and hurriedly line up like sheep and put their children under the needle or face going to jail. The AP did not bother to mention the fact there is vaccination exemption waiver and the “requirement” children of citizens be exposed to autism is nothing but a trick under color of law.
“The only wrongdoing is on the part of school officials who, first, neglected to inform the parents of the vaccination exemption waiver, and second, expelled these children from school without any legal grounds whatsoever,” writes blogger Mack White. “The reason for these expulsions was to create a situation where, in the absence of a law requiring vaccinations, parents could instead be charged under truancy and neglect laws. In other words, children who are not vaccinated will not be allowed to return to school, thus making them truant and their parents legally complicit.”
“Several organizations opposed to mass vaccinations demonstrated outside the courthouse. While the medical consensus is that vaccines are safe and effective, some people blame immunizations for a rise in autism and other medical problems,” notes the AP.
The “medical consensus” (read: big pharma) is “that vaccines are safe and effective,” in other words effective in promoting autism, learning disabilities, Alzheimer’s Disease, and other neurological conditions, even though we are told thiomersal is no longer used—except in the Third World, of course.
An FDA review conducted in 1998 determined that children who received the full “complement” of childhood vaccines administered by the loving government were potentially exposed to levels of mercury that were 30 to 50 times the acceptable levels established by the EPA. Now we are told vaccines are mercury free, except childhood influenza vaccines, even though Bush threatened to veto a bill that would ban mercury in flu vaccines for children. Obviously, the government believes mercury is good for children.
“News networks and state authorities are once again engaging in mass public deception by claiming that vaccines for children are mandated by law and that parents will go to jail if kids do not take their shots. In reality, there is no law that says you have to vaccinate your children and waiver forms for personal or religious exemptions are freely available,” write Paul Joseph and Steve Watson. “A situation in Prince George’s County, MD. has attracted media attention and once again provided the platform for a propaganda push that falsely implies it is the law for children to be vaccinated with mass produced big pharma shots that are often not stringently tested and have been linked with dangerous side-effects.”
According to Dr. Janet Starr Hull, vaccines are chock full of toxins and other odd ingredients, including: sorbitol chick embryo, monosodium glutamate, aspartame, animal fetal byproducts, gelatin, sucrose, formaldehyde, and “compounds obtained by distillation of coal tar, and human aborted fetal tissue.”
For more on these “dangerous side-effects,” watch the video at the right (Vaccination: The Hidden Truth, 1998; 1 hour, 30 minutes).
Apparently, the authorities in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, believe previous rounds of deadly vaccination are not enough. “Many of them complained that their children already were properly immunized but the school system had misplaced the records. They said efforts to get the paperwork straightened out had been futile,” the AP continues. “Aloma Martin of Fort Washington brought her children, Delontay and Taron, in 10th and 6th grade, for their hepatitis shots. She said she had been trying to get the vaccinations for more than a month, since the school system sent a warning letter. She had an appointment for Monday, but came to the courthouse to be safe.”
According to school bureaucrats, the color of law letter and court action, described as “very intimidating” by parents, was deemed a “success.” School system spokesman John White “said the number of children lacking vaccinations dropped from 2,300 at the time the judge sent the letter to about 1,100 Friday…. After Saturday’s session, 172 more students were brought into compliance, including 101 students who received vaccinations at the courthouse and 71 whose records were updated.”
Of course, “compliance,” or submission to “required immunization,” is not legally mandated in Maryland. But then it is easy to scare ill-informed parents, especially with the prospect of jail hanging heavy as the Sword of Damocles over their heads.
It helps, as well, when the corporate media runs “news reports,” as the one above, and the Associated Press publishes stories failing to mention parents actually have an option to waiver out of the mass vaccination-poisoning program.
This is odd for the 9/11 Truth News section....but
yup,
If this was UK I'd leave it here but it isn't
moving to general
Tony will most likely remove this. But as to this statement. I pointed to him, that 9/11 did not happen in the UK to. But that affects us. As will this forced vaccination. _________________ "It's called the American Dream, because you have to be alseep to believe it"
Following the State of Maryland's threats against parents who refuse to have their children vaccinated, children were herded into a Price George County courthouse being guarded by armed personnel with attack dogs. Inside, the children were forcibly vaccinated, many against their will, under orders from the State Attorney General, various State Judges and the local School Board Director, all of whom illegally conspired to threaten parents with imprisonment if they did not submit their children to vaccinations.
The State of Maryland has now turned to Gestapo tactics to force its medical will upon the People, stripping parents of any right to decide how they wish to protect their own children from infectious disease. Health authorities there have already announced their intent to essentially kidnap parents and throw them in jail, removing them from their children for up to thirty days if they continue to refuse to have their children vaccinated. This will all be conducted at gunpoint, with armed personnel and attack dogs at the ready, making sure nobody steps out of line, and suppressing any attempt at public dissent against the Orwellian vaccination policies.
The entire campaign against these parents is blatantly illegal. There is no law in Maryland requiring the vaccination of children, thus parents who refuse to do so may not be legally charged with violating any law. Instead, Maryland health and school authorities are using Gestapo-like tactics, threatening to charge the parents with child truancy violations, criminalizing them for daring to protect their children from the dangerous chemicals found in vaccines (including thimerosal, a chemical additive containing a neurotoxic form of mercury).
Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 11:59 am Post subject: Toxic MMR vaccination forced on Britain's toddlers
Vaccine Nation
'In this groundbreaking film, you will see the truth about the dangers of vaccines and their direct relationship to autoimmune diseases, infections, allergies and a massive increase of developmental learning and behavioral disorders in children, such as Autism. Discover the truth about the history of vaccines and how they have NEVER been proven to be safe and effective for anyone.'
Joined: 02 Oct 2006 Posts: 577 Location: Yorkshire
Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2008 1:17 pm Post subject:
Here's an audio file about autism - it's worth listening too.
http://ftp4.dns-systems.net/~truth009/9593822661317-001s.mp3 _________________ "Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish." - Euripides
"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." - Albert Einstein
"To find yourself, think for yourself" - Socrates
...
Sir Sandy has submitted a motion to the BMA's annual representatives meeting in Liverpool next month saying that immunisation should be a requirement for entry to primary school except in cases where children cannot be vaccinated for clinical reasons.
He told the BBC: "Our attempts to persuade people have failed. The suggestion is that we ought to consider making a link which in effect would make it compulsory for children to be immunised if they are to receive the benefit of a free education from the state."
...
I am absolutely sure this is the work of the Talmud-pushers
They are givingit their attention.
From the comments
Quote:
Catherine Bennett, What a pile of smug, self-righteous distortion. In 1946 the Nuremberg Code was formulated which stated that no medication should be administered without informed consent. Just like compulsory ID cards, compulsory medication of any kind is a thoroughly dangerous move. For your information, my children have had the MMR.
Quote:
Maybe Catherine would like the unvaxed to wear some form of badge - a yellow star perhaps.....
and of course taking 'opposing sides' as usual
Quote:
I saw on TV recently, a guide at some ex-concentration camp in Germany, say that there are many schoolchildren from East Germany, who refuse to believe that the camp they are visiting was used to burn people.
One can do nothing about such people, but excluding their children from schools would at least let them know, that the benefit for the greater good is being adhered to.
The Government has been accused of using a school exam paper to indoctrinate children about the controversial MMR vaccine.
Teenagers sitting a GCSE science exam were awarded marks only if they agreed that the study that first raised fears over the safety of MMR was bad science and biased because money changed hands.
The study in 1998 by Dr Andrew Wakefield led to a crisis of public confidence in immunisation.
The exam paper was set by UK exam board the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA).
It stated that Dr Wakefield claimed to have found a possible link between the MMR vaccine and autism and went on to say that his research into children with autism and bowel problems was being funded by lawyers who ‘wanted evidence to use against vaccine manufacturers’.
Marks were awarded for those who said the research was not based on ‘reliable scientific evidence’ and then went on to attack the study sample size either for being too small or for relying on ‘hearsay from parents’ who claimed that their children had suffered damage from MMR.
Answering ‘yes’ to the question ‘Might Dr Wakefield’s research have been biased?’ earned another mark if it was backed up with a comment about him being paid by ‘parents/lawyers’.
Dr Wakefield and a campaign group of parents who believe vaccines have damaged their children last night accused the Government of adopting sinister tactics over MMR.
Speaking from Texas, where he works at a centre for autistic children, Dr Wakefield said: ‘The thought police appear to be saying, “To pass this exam you have to adopt this particular point of view.”
‘We didn’t make any claims that MMR was the cause of anything. The exam question completely misrepresents what we said. The Lancet study received no funding whatsoever.’
Jackie Fletcher, of campaign group JABS, said: ‘This is an insidious way of shaping young people’s opinions.’
Last night AQA apologised for any ‘misunderstanding’ and removed the GCSE January 2008 Science paper from its website, where it had remained active for schools to use as a test paper.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2010 12:49 am Post subject:
Massive!
Proof that persistence pays off - The BB 'effing C decided this was only a local story and as far as I can tell it was repoted by the Ministry of Truth in Merseyside only.
By Martin Delgado - 28th August 2010 - Comments (162)
A mother whose son suffered severe brain damage after he was given the controversial MMR vaccine as a baby has been awarded £90,000 compensation.
The judgment is the first of its kind to be revealed since concerns were raised about the safety of the triple jab.
Robert Fletcher, 18, is unable to talk, stand unaided or feed himself.
Lovely boy: Robert Fletcher with his mother Jackie at the age of 14
He endures frequent epileptic fits and requires round-the-clock care from his parents Jackie and John, though he is not autistic.
He suffered the devastating effects after being given the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine when he was 13 months old.
The Department of Health had always denied that the jab was the cause of Robert’s disability.
But now, in a judgment which will give hope to hundreds of other parents whose children have been severely affected by routine vaccinations, a medical assessment panel consisting of two doctors and a barrister has concluded that MMR was to blame.
Robert’s mother Jackie said the money would help with his care, though she described the amount as ‘derisory’.
Her first application for compensation under the Government’s Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme was rejected in 1997 on the grounds that it was impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt what had caused Robert’s illness.
But Mrs Fletcher appealed and in a ruling delivered last week, a new panel of experts came to a different conclusion.
Healthy: Robert in the bath as baby before he had the MMR jab
In a six-page judgment, they said: ‘Robert was a more or less fit boy who, within the period usually considered relevant to immunisation, developed a severe convulsion... and he then went on to be epileptic and severely retarded.
‘The seizure occurred ten days after the vaccination. In our view, this cannot be put down to coincidence.
'It is this temporal association that provides the link. It is this that has shown on the balance of probabilities that the vaccination triggered the epilepsy.
'On this basis, we find that Robert is severely disabled as a result of vaccination and this is why we allowed the appeal.’
The ruling will reignite the debate over the safety of common childhood vaccines, although it makes clear that Robert’s case does not involve autism.
There is one other reported case of a family being given compensation as a result of an MMR jab.
But Mrs Fletcher said she believed the compensation award to Robert was the first to a surviving MMR-damaged person since controversy erupted in 1998 when the now discredited Dr Andrew Wakefield raised concerns about a possible link between the combined MMR injection and autism.
He has since been struck off the medical register.
Affected: Robert with his parents as a five-year-old. He is unable to stand, feed himself and speaks very little
The Government refuses to say how many awards have been directly attributed to this jab rather than other inoculations against illnesses such as diphtheria or whooping cough.
Details of successful claims involving vaccine-damaged children are seldom publicised because the Department of Health is thought to be anxious not to encourage a rush of applications.
Figures released in 2005 under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that tribunals had paid out £3.5 million over the previous eight years.
The Department for Work and Pensions, which administers the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme, said: ‘We do not hold any information on how many awards have been MMR-related.
'It is not a requirement when a case is being assessed for the medical adviser to state which vaccine the damage has been attributed to.
'Nor is it a requirement to list the disabling condition that gave rise to the award.’
The controversy over a suggested link between MMR and autism erupted in 1998 when Dr Wakefield published a paper in The Lancet medical journal.
His work has since been discredited and earlier this year Dr Wakefield, who has moved to America, was struck off the medical register after the General Medical Council ruled that he had acted against the interests of patients and ‘failed in his duties as a responsible consultant’.
Campaign: Robert's mother Jackie set up JABS - a pressure group which provides advice and support to families affected by vaccinations
Robert Fletcher does not suffer from autism. But Mrs Fletcher, from Warrington, Cheshire, said the ruling would give hope to hundreds of other parents fighting to prove that their children’s disabilities were caused by the MMR injection.
Mrs Fletcher set up and runs pressure group JABS - Justice, Awareness and Basic
Support.
Around 2,000 families seeking compensation for their vaccine-damaged children are registered with the group, which provides advice and support.
‘My husband John and I have battled for 18 years for the cause of Robert’s disability to be officially recognised,’ she said.
‘We were told the vaccine was perfectly safe. Like most people, we trusted what the doctors and nurses were putting to us.
'Robert is nearly 19 but mentally he is like a 14-month-old toddler. He can’t stand unaided and he is doubly incontinent.
'He can’t speak except to say “Hi, Mum” or “Hi, Daddy”.
‘We chop up his food and have to anticipate all his needs. He is prone to various illnesses and last week suffered around 40 severe epileptic seizures.
Discredited: Dr Andrew Wakefield was struck off by the GMC after it found his research into the possible effects of MMR was flawed
'In April this year, we thought we’d lost him. He contracted a chest infection and had to go to hospital for several days.
‘He is such a lovely boy. When he’s not ill, he’s so cheerful and seems to take everything on the chin. In between seizures he says “Hi, Mum” and tries to kiss me.
‘The money is a derisory amount though it will help with making adaptations to the house for Robert’s benefit.
'What matters is the recognition that MMR was the reason this happened.’
The first doctor who assessed Robert under the compensation scheme in 1996 concluded that he had suffered a ‘simple febrile convulsion with no long-lasting consequences’.
Although he agreed that Robert had a degree of disability, he refused to accept that the MMR vaccine was to blame.
At this month’s appeal, evidence was given by a leading expert on vaccine-damaged children, paediatric neurologist Dr Marcel Kinsbourne. He explained the biological changes which had occurred in Robert’s brain following the vaccination.
The one-day hearing was chaired by a barrister sitting with two doctors, Professor Sundara Lingam, a former consultant at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, and Dr Adrian Allaway.
In a dissenting judgment, Professor Lingam said he believed Robert was ‘genetically predisposed to epilepsy and that the vaccination triggered it rather than caused it.
'Robert would have developed epilepsy in any event, even if he had not had the vaccination’.
But Professor Lingam was overruled by his two colleagues.
In their final judgment, they accepted that MMR had caused Robert’s illness but added: ‘We would stress that this decision is fact-specific and it should not be seen as a precedent for any other case.
'In particular, it has no relevance to the issue... as to whether there is a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.’
Last night, Tory MP Nadine Dorries, a member of the powerful Commons Health Committee, said: ‘If an independent panel has reached the conclusion that there has been a link between the MMR vaccine and the brain damage suffered by this boy in this case, then it is fair to assume that there could be as many as thousands of children and parents in the same position.
‘There should be full and easy access to all documentation relating to the judgment for any parent or professional to read and assess.’
Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, a London GP whose own son is autistic, said: ‘It is a very important principle that parents should be compensated in cases of this kind.
'But although a causal link has been established in law in this instance, exhaustive scientific research has failed to establish any link between MMR and brain damage.
'This case should not make parents feel any different about the safety of the vaccine.’
The Department of Health said: ‘This decision reflects the opinion of a tribunal on the specific facts of the case and they were clear that it should not be seen as a precedent for any other case.
'The safety of MMR has been endorsed through numerous studies in many countries.’
New hope for parents who claim MMR jab blighted their children
By SALLY BECK
For MMR campaigners, the Robert Fletcher ruling is a small but significant milestone in their efforts to prove that the vaccine is not safe for a few children, even though the Government insists it is and that serious reactions are rare.
The triple jab was introduced in 1988, and has been given to millions of children as part of their vaccination schedule, which includes inoculations for 12 diseases.
The vast majority of children suffer no more than redness and swelling around the injection site or a fever that can be easily treated.
But a small number suffer serious reactions. The official figure is one in a million, but campaigners believe that is an underestimate.
Up to 2,000 parents remain convinced their children have suffered significant harm from MMR but have been unable to prove it.
This new decision will give them hope, even though compensation panels do not officially recognise autism claims.
Campaigner Polly Tommey, who edits the magazine The Autism File and believes her son Billy is autistic because of MMR, says: ‘This is fantastic news. Now doctors can’t tell me that the MMR is safe.
'This payout is evidence that it is not safe. It’s interesting that they will look at epilepsy
and not autism, and you have to ask why.
'Is it because the compensation would be billions?’
Parents have tried to get the medical profession and the Government to investigate their claims that MMR damaged their children but have failed so far.
A group of parents brought a case in 1993 which was blocked after their legal aid was withdrawn in 2003.
They claimed for various injuries including autism, Guillain-Barre syndrome, epilepsy, sensorineural deafness, diabetes and arthritis.
Robert’s mother Jackie Fletcher, who set up the vaccine campaign group JABS, is one of a group of parents who continued to fight.
His compensation comes 12 years after the London-based paediatrician Andrew Wakefield claimed a link between MMR and autism.
He was struck off this year after the General Medical Council judged his research to be flawed.
Claiming compensation for any vaccine-related disability is notoriously difficult.
Mrs Fletcher said: ‘Only one in 200 parents who applies to the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme is successful in receiving compensation.
'Claims for autism are not considered. There are 120 MMR cases waiting to be heard, but none is for autism.’
In America, 4,000 parents are claiming compensation for MMR damage, but again the courts will not officially look at cases where autism is mentioned.
However, cases involving autism do slip through the net.
Bailey Banks, who suffered seizures 16 days after receiving the MMR jab and was diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder, an autistic condition, was paid compensation.
So was Ben Zeller, who suffered seizures, while Hannah Poling, who is autistic, was paid in secret.
Another 1,820 cases of brain damage caused by vaccines in the U.S., including MMR, have been settled in private.
Mrs Fletcher hopes that the 2,000 families registered with JABS will be awarded legal aid to continue their cases.
She says: ‘We plan to talk to our MP Andy Burnham about the anomalies in the Vaccine Damage Payments Act, the main one being that you can apply for compensation only if a child has died after the age of two.
'We have a number of children on our books who died younger after receiving MMR, but they are not eligible to claim.
'Most vaccines are given at two, three and four months old, so this rule makes no sense.
Wakefield on the Autism/Vaccine Controversy and His Ongoing Professional Persecution
Sunday, May 30, 2010 – with Scott Smith
Dr. Andrew Wakefield
The Daily Bell is pleased to present an exclusive interview with Dr. Andrew Wakefield (left).
Introduction: Dr Andrew Wakefield, MB, BS, FRCS, FRCPath, is an academic gastroenterologist. He received his medical degree from St. Mary's Hospital Medical School (part of the University of London) in 1981, one of the third generation of his family to have studied medicine at that teaching hospital. He pursued a career in gastrointestinal surgery with a particular interest in inflammatory bowel disease. He qualified as Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1985 and in 1996 was awarded a Wellcome Trust Traveling Fellowship to study small-intestinal transplantation in Toronto, Canada. He was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists in 2001. He has published over 130 original scientific articles, book chapters, and invited scientific commentaries. In the pursuit of possible links between childhood vaccines, intestinal inflammation, and neurologic injury in children, Dr. Wakefield lost his job in the Department of Medicine at London's Royal Free Hospital, his country, his career, and his medical license.
Daily Bell: Can you fill our readers in on the controversy that has cost you so dearly?
Dr. Andrew Wakefield: Certainly. Let me give you a bit of background as to who I am. I am a gastroenterologist and an entirely conventional physician. I trained at St. Mary's Hospital in London, qualifying in 1981 and then went on to study surgery and became a fellow at the Royal College of Surgeons. I had a particular interest in Crohn's Disease, Bowel disease, Osteo-Colitis and pursued an academic career. I published about 130 papers in bowel disease prior to becoming involved in Autism in 1995.
Daily Bell: How did that happen?
Dr. Andrew Wakefield: A mother called me and said a child is developing perfectly normally and then had their MR vaccine. The child became extremely unwell, high fever for days and upon recovery was never the same. The child deteriorated into Autism – lost speech, communication, language, inter-action. I said, I'm terribly sorry, I'm a gastroenterologist, you must have rung the wrong number. I knew nothing about Autism; when I was in medical school, it was so rare – we were not even taught about it. And she said, No, you don't understand my child has terrible bowel problems; he's having diarrhea 12 times a day he's lost continence; I know he's in pain but he can't tell me he's in pain. He's hitting himself, banging his head, biting himself and attacking people and I know this is because he is in pain.
Daily Bell: Did you believe her?
Dr. Andrew Wakefield: The first and most fundamental rule of clinical medicine, the kind of medicine I was trained to practice and my parents and grandparents were trained to practice, is to listen to the patient or the patient's parents and they will tell you the problem. Now here is a mother who is not anti-vaccine, who took her child to be vaccinated, did all the right things and lo-and-behold this is what happened to her child. We eventually had a series of children whose mothers told exactly the same story. We decided, a team of us, at the Royal Free Hospital – including some of the most eminent pediatric gastroenterologists in the world such as Professor John Walker-Smith – to take a closer look at these children because they were clearly suffering. The children underwent a series of tests, colonoscopy and biopsy and we discovered they had bowel disease.
We treated the bowel disease, the inflammation, just as you might treat Crohn's disease or Colitis with anti-inflammatory and diet and the children got better, not only from the bowel disease perspective; their diarrhea improved and also their behavior improved. That was very, very interesting. So we decided to pursue this.
Daily Bell: How did you pursue it exactly?
Dr. Andrew Wakefield: By the time I left the Royal Free in 2001, nearly 200 hundred children with this condition had been seen and diagnosed. The problem came of course, when the parent said, my child regressed after the vaccine. If the child had regressed after, let's say natural chicken pox, we would not be having this conversation right now. There would have been no controversy, it would have been, "that's extremely interesting, let's have a look at it." There would have been no problem, but because it happened after a vaccine, all hell broke loose.
Daily Bell: And you are still living with the results.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield: My job is not to pander to the whims of the pharmaceutical industry or to government policy. My job is to answer the question that the parent presents to me when they call me or confront me at a meeting. That is my job and my duty as a doctor. So one came to a crossroads ... well, if the parents are right about the bowel disease, are they right about the vaccine? We decided to look into that in more detail. And that's where the controversy began. I am not in any way anti-vaccine, by the way, and my own children were vaccinated. But I had to understand the background. I put together a 250-page report on these safety studies and they were appalling, they were totally unsatisfactory.
Daily Bell: You're saying those who make and regulate vaccines – both – were not properly vetting the effects of vaccines? That's a strong statement to make.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield: They did not look at the outcomes of the vaccine beyond the short-term. To put this in context, we are dealing with viruses that can cause disease many years later. Thus, you do not confine your safety studies to 3 – 6 weeks. As a result of this understanding, it became my clear conviction that parents deserved access to the option to access single vaccines – the way it was done before, which was perfectly effective.
Daily Bell: Sounds reasonable.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield: In fact, Measles, Mumps and Rubella had separate vaccines. The combined risk of three viruses in a vaccine, MMR, is a way in which nature has never seen them before. Never. And to subject those to inadequate safety studies is in my opinion, not acceptable. That was the essence of the controversy and what has happened ever since has been in essence what medicine and science have done perhaps for all time – crush dissent by discrediting the messenger ... me.
It is simply an effort to silence me because of the egregious errors that have been made in vaccination safety studies. But this has happened since time immemorial. One of the classic cases has to do with the drug Thalidomide. The doctor who first described abnormalities following mothers taking Thalidomide during pregnancy was strongly attacked.
Daily Bell: Let's back up to be clear. Exactly what did you suggest parents do as a result of your famous study published in the Lancet Journal in 1988?
Dr. Andrew Wakefield: The Autism study was a simple case series of 12 children and all it did was to tell the parents story of what they told us. It was to document the pinnacle findings in the children. Further research was needed into causes of autism.
Daily Bell: As we understand it, the paper suggested further research specifically regarding linkage between the MMR vaccine and autism, and thus you have been held responsible for the plunge in children getting vaccinated with MMR. However, it also seems to us that in thousands of articles written about all this recently that you've been constantly accused of making a direct link between vaccines and autism in that now-retracted paper.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield: Never before in the history of human endeavor has so much been said about a paper that has been read or understood by so few. It is quite extraordinary. The fact that we published 19 papers on the subject after that one is irrelevant. It's never mentioned. Critics dwell only upon that one paper. I listened to the parents' story and acted according to my professional and moral obligations to determine what was happening with these children.
Daily Bell: Did you pursue the logical ramifications of your work at The Thoughtful House in Texas – a clinic from where you have just recently resigned?
Dr. Andrew Wakefield: Did I continue the work that I started in England? Yes. Certainly. We continued to investigate the bowel disease; we looked for evidence of the measles virus from the vaccine being involved. Most importantly, what we did was a seven-year study looking at monkeys, infant primates, exposed to the vaccine schedule. It was something that had never been done before, but it should have been done and that is to ask what happens in the real world. Not test vaccines in isolation but test the schedule that children actually get.
This is a study that we did in primates because vaccines are tested on primates in pre-clinical studies. What we found, even with just the Hepatitis B vaccine containing mercury preservatives, even on the first day of life, even just after that vaccine, there was evidence of neurological damage. What was alarming to me, again, is that there had never been any safety studies that I could find of giving the Hepatitis B vaccine on day-one of life. That again is not acceptable.
Safety first. This must be the priority, particularly when you are dealing with the health of children who are well, who don't have a disease, perfectly healthy and you are extending this policy to every child in the world. All these issues are now covered in my new book, Callous Disregard, just published.
Daily Bell: Did you see cures? Improvement? Give us details of the treatment.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield: Did we do trials for medical improvement? Yes, we endeavored to do several trials. What we see at an anecdotal level in individual patients, is a substantial improvement in symptoms following treatment of the bowel disease. And the treatment of the bowel disease is through the use of anti-inflammatory medications and diet. We found benefits from using exclusion diets for children who were sensitive to various foods such as wheat and gluten. We went on to do a clinical trial of hydro-therapy, which some people had suggested could benefit children with Autism. We did not find any benefit in our trial, publishing those results accordingly. So part of my role at Thoughtful House was to put the anecdotal observations into a scientific context to determine whether there were benefits or not.
Daily Bell: Guess that's why it was called Thoughtful House. Obviously, this has attracted antipathy in some quarters.
HELP US SPREAD
FREE-MARKET THINKING!
When truth is discovered it is difficult not to want to tell others and help to spread awareness.
ARBP has assembled an international team of leading free-market thinkers to provide you with a reliable and efficient conduit through which you can help make a positive change today and for future generations.
Thank you in advance for your support. We look forward to working together with you to make "real" change a reality.
DONATE NOW
The Foundation for the Advancement of Free-Market Thinking
Dr. Andrew Wakefield: Well, I think when you are in a field where there is so much vested interest in current beliefs, and where you are challenging public health policy and pharmaceutical industry profits, then you are inevitably going to invite huge controversy.
That is a matter of fact and it happened with Vioxx; it happened with Thalidomide and will happen every time a popular and profitable drug or treatment is challenged. It happened with smoking. You will remember we went through a period for at least 15-20 years where papers were published in medical literature saying how good smoking was for you. Well we now know that not to be true. But it was a challenge then to industrial interests and just as it is now to pharmaceutical interests. That is undoubtedly going to bring on controversy.
Daily Bell: Are you angry over your treatment?
Dr. Andrew Wakefield: When I went into it, I knew to some extent what it was going to involve. I am a student of medical history and I realized that there was going to be fallout from this. So, anger on my part, what has happened to me ... not really, no. Frustration and sadness because I went into medicine believing it to be one thing – a discipline that puts the patients well-being, the patient's welfare, above all other considerations. No compromise. So to find that many colleagues have departed from that ideology is sad to me, but nonetheless we have to deal with the real world.
What I think frustrates me and perhaps even angers me more is the way in which the children have been discarded. The children with this condition represent an uncomfortable truth and there has been an effort to erase them from the realm. Commit, if you like, editorial genocide to get rid of these children because they put at risk government policy, World Health organization policy and also drug company profits, but to me that is not acceptable. I find this very difficult to deal with.
Daily Bell: You have many supporters.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield: Without them I don't think it would be possible to continue. They are absolutely extraordinary. I mean, there's never been a complaint against me from a parent or an infected child. There's only been support. I have only ever acted in their best interests and the parents instinctively know that. Mothers know their children, they know when they are well, they know when they are ill and they know when people are acting in their best interest. So, parental support has been absolutely marvelous. There are now more and more scientists and doctors who have realized what is going on and realized that the emperor has no clothes and that they must act in a way that their duty demands.
There are a very large number of people who are joining in with this now. I have just come back from China where they estimate there are some 4-5 million children with autism. One home has 3,000 children in it and has no idea how to treat them. I met with doctors and scientists in Hong Kong who were of a similar opinion that there is a major problem with the vaccination program in the context of childhood mental disorder. So that kind of support makes it possible to continue and do this kind of work.
Daily Bell: Would you pursue your autism/vaccine study if you had it to do over?
Dr. Andrew Wakefield: Yes, I think I would. I have no regrets about anything that has happened other than what has happened to the children or what hasn't happened for them as a consequence of the controversy. I would like to think that I would follow exactly the same course even knowing what the consequences were, if presented with the same challenges again. It's very difficult to look back and predict what one might have done then but I would like to think that I would have had the courage knowing what I know now.
Daily Bell: We've already touched on it, but explain please in detail why the initial paper was disavowed by the Lancet?
Dr. Andrew Wakefield: In the first instance, the Editor of the Lancet asked us to retract an interpretation of the paper. And that interpretation was that MMR vaccine was the cause of autism.
Daily Bell: But you didn't make this claim did you?
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 11:03 pm Post subject: ConDems introduce 'six vaccine' jabs for one-year-olds
One-off 'six inoculation' jabs to be introduced to one-year-olds
By Daily Mail Reporter - 21st November 2010
A 'super vaccination' intensive day for babies just after they turn one will involve three injections including the controversial MMR jab.
The chief medical officer has instructed GPs to inoculate children on a same day surgery visit with the practice set to begin by the end of the year as part of a national programme to boost immunity levels.
The jabs will be given in three different limbs and will immunise children from measles, mumps and rubella, two forms of meningitis and an infection that can cause pneumonia.
Primary care trusts in England and Wales last week received the advice with government advisers hoping multiple inoculations will improve the uptake of the MMR vaccine which was previously claimed - though now discredited - to a link to autism.
The decision to immunise all the diseases at once, including MMR will create concern with some parents about the risk of side effects with the added possibility that families will not allow their babies to be inoculated in this way.
The joint committee on vaccination and immunisation who advised the government to combine the jabs said research found no safety issues with families 'expected to increase take-up' of inoculations.........
Joined: 11 Nov 2008 Posts: 558 Location: Lancashire
Posted: Sat May 14, 2011 1:17 pm Post subject: Forced Vaccinations Under NHS Private?
Within the Obama Healthcare Programme it is to be a legal requirement for the recipient of any kind of emergency or general medical attention to have a full vaccination record. This translates into the reality... if you are in need of emergency attention then before even considering looking at your emergency they will dig up the records of your vaccinations and will only treat you if they can mass vaccinate your body immediately, should your record show you are not up to date.
Also of interest which has come out of the American debates is the only exemption from this programme would be to become a Christian Scientist, aka Scientology, which incorporates the Mormon's and Witnesses. Evangelical Christianity forcing its will under the greatest fear.
The NHS is of course in the process of full privatisation, it stands to reason the same statutory backdrop will be their aim :
As the government looks to open up the NHS further to private companies, it has been as coy in its description of the companies looking to profit from this as the companies themselves. Health Secretary Andrew Lansley hardly mentions that these companies will be making a profit from his reforms, preferring to talk about modernisation and bringing 'the power of competition to healthcare'.[1] H5, the pressure group set up by five of the biggest private healthcare companies in the UK, and an increasingly prominent voice in the media, says its members are 'dedicated to better healthcare for Britons through private hospitals playing their part complementing the NHS'[2], while the NHS Partners Network, which represents private companies and some not-for-profit groups, is only a little more direct in its assertion that a 'mixed economy NHS' will lead to, 'more choice and better value for money for patients, taxpayers and shareholders'.[3] That the satisfaction of each of these three groups is not mutually compatible has been well argued (see, for example, here) but the fortunes of Southern Cross over the last month suggest this is an especially severe imbalance when the shareholders concerned are private equity firms.
Since its announcement in the middle of March that high rents and government spending cuts had left it financially unsustainable, Southern Cross has been scrambling around trying to renegotiate its rents while councils have been readying themselves for the possibility that 30,000 elderly people will be without a bed if the real threat of the company going under is realised. The crisis was precipitated by local authorities passing on less 'business' to the company: as the cuts bite one of the ways they are saving money is by paying for fewer people to stay in nursing homes. However, the company was especially vulnerable due to, in the words of Chief Executive Jamie Buchan, 'the type of lease arrangements which underpin our business model.'[4]
This business model was mainly the consequence of its brief period of ownership by the Blackstone group, one of the world’s biggest, and most successful, private equity investors. After it acquired the company in 2004, Blackstone gave an object lesson in how private equity works: it expanded the company as fast as it could, then sold it, making a lot of money but leaving a lot of problems. Two months after buying Southern Cross, it bought the property company NHP’s 355 care homes as well, followed by the 193 homes of the Ashbourne Group in November 2005, all to be managed by Southern Cross Healthcare. Blackstone then floated the company on the stock market and sold its shares in two chunks, in 2006 and 2007, walking away with reportedly quadruple its original investment, not bad for just three years of ownership.
The problem is that Southern Cross now owns very few of the freeholds to the care homes it is operating, and the landlords that now own them are charging rents the company cannot afford. This is not all due to Blackstone – Southern Cross had already sold the freeholds to most of the homes it owned before Blackstone took over – but the acquisition of NHP and the way it was sold saddled Southern Cross with even more unsustainable rent bills. Although it floated Southern Cross Healthcare on the stock market in 2006, Blackstone sold the freeholds of the old NHP care homes separately, to an investment fund for £1.3bn. Southern Cross continued to manage these homes, as it did when Blackstone made the initial acquisition of NHP, but it now had to pay rent to the new owners for the privilege. The residents of these homes weren’t helped by Blackstone’s choice of buyer: the Qatari Investment Authority, which, since buying the homes, has increased rents by 18.6%.[5] All in all, the GMB union, which represents Southern Cross staff, estimates that with Southern Cross paying £248.3m to the landlords of all of its 752 homes (including those owned by Qatari Investment) in 2010, its rents are £100m higher than they should be.[6]
So while some people have got very rich from the trading of elderly people’s need for a secure, safe and comfortable place to live, it hasn’t worked out too well for everyone else. Even before this present crisis, Southern Cross was being heavily criticised for the standard of its service. It was forced to make a public apology last November after an investigation by the BBC found a 'catalogue of distressing lapses in care'[7], while the company’s Griffin Care Centre in Luton had to be closed in January this year after an investigation by the Care Quality Commission found 'risks in relation to medication' and, 'gaps, omissions and failings in the way medicines were managed.'[8] And while Blackstone made huge profits from the deal, many of the staff working in the care homes are paid the national minimum wage and have had their pay frozen.[9]
Who is private healthcare working for?
The concern is that there will be more cases like Southern Cross in years to come. The government is entrusting more and more responsibility for healthcare to companies owned by private equity, or at risk of being so. Care UK, which already operates NHS walk-in centres, GP surgeries and treatment centres around the country was bought by Bridgepoint private equity group in 2010. Spire Healthcare, the second largest private hospital provider in the UK, is owned by Cinven private equity, and HCA International, the largest operator of private healthcare facilities in the US and which has six private hospitals in London, is majority owned by Kolhberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR), Bain Capital and Merrill Lynch Bank of America private equity groups (see below).
It is not just private hospitals and direct care providers. Blackstone bought Pulse, the staffing agency for doctors, nurses and social workers last November and merged it with ICS, a rival healthcare recruitment agency it had bought in June in a bid to create a market leader in healthcare recruitment through an expansive acquisitions policy (sound familiar?).[10] In addition, NHS Professionals, the currently state-owned staffing agency, is thought to be likely to attract private equity bids when it is privatised this year, as planned by the government.[11]
People across the health reform process have links with private equity companies. Former Labour Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt has been an advisor to Cinven; Andrew Lansley, the current occupant of that post, received funding from the wife of John Nash, a private equity tycoon and former chairman of Care UK; and Lord Carter, the head of the increasingly influential Competition and Cooperation Panel, is an adviser to Warburg Pincus International Ltd, a private equity firm with significant investments in the healthcare industry.[12]
This is especially worrying for the NHS because Southern Cross is not the first company to have been left exposed following ownership by private equity investors. Private equity firms have a history of acquiring companies using borrowed money, expanding them quickly, again with borrowed money, then selling them off and counting their profits while the company starts to creak. The activities of this highly secretive pool of capital have led to charges of vulture capitalism and asset stripping, with multiple instances of large scale job losses in the companies it takes over.
Private equity: the basics
Over the past decade, private equity firms have generated both astonishingly large profits and a large amount of controversy. At the industry’s height prior to the credit crunch it was called the new 'face of capitalism'[13], mobilising huge sums in company buy outs and generating enormous profits by utilising the glut of cheap credit provided by low interest rates after the dot.com crash. The total, global value of private equity deals in just one year - 2006-7 - came to $1.4 trillion, whilst the five biggest deals made in April 2007 involved more money than the annual public budgets of Russia and India.[14]
Equity investment is, put simply, owning shares in a company. Private equity is a specific type of equity investment which goes much further than buying and selling shares in companies. Private equity firms take up majority share ownership in companies with the aim of taking them private - i.e. de-listing them from public stock exchanges – if they are not already. They take management control of the companies they buy, with their fund managers joining company boards and often presiding over serious ‘restructuring’ of those companies. Ultimately, they seek to sell such companies on at a profit as quickly as possible. To minimise cost, such ‘restructuring’ invariably involves reducing staff, closing plants, and selling off non-core assets. This is all done behind closed doors, with the companies' 'private limited' status removing them even further from public scrutiny and regulatory demands.
Debt overload
Private equity firms buy companies with large-scale, debt-financed buyouts. Called ‘leveraged buyouts’ (known as LBOs in the trade), companies to be acquired would be used as collateral against which a private equity company would borrow the large sums needed to buy them out. The debt would then be placed onto the acquired company’s books, allowing the private equity company to avoid taking the debt on itself, and repaid from the bought-out company’s profits and assets. Typical private equity leveraged buyouts would comprise 80 per cent debt and 20 per cent equity provided by external investors in the private equity fund, such as pension funds and hedge funds. The period prior to the financial crisis, with low interest rates and correspondingly cheap credit, allowed private equity companies to borrow large sums: between 2004 and 2007 loans totalling $450bn were used in leveraged buyouts.[15]
Leveraged buyouts are, however, a gamble that the interest paid on the debt will be lower than the returns made on the investment, increasing the pressure to both asset strip and sell companies on as fast as possible once the appearance of enhanced profitability has been given. During the credit crunch the glut of cheap credit dried up and lenders started re-calling loans, dramatically reducing the levels of private equity buy outs. KKR, one of the world’s largest private equity firms, did not undertake a single buy out in the first half of 2008.[16] With some companies struggling with slowed economic ‘recovery’, and refinancing of much of this debt looking problematic, the private equity model of leveraged buyouts has been revealed as the emperor with no clothes: with the boom times over, investors appear over extended, holding companies laden with debt and struggling to cope. Whilst private equity companies can more easily sell the company off and move on to their next acquisition, the gamble looks less sweet for the other side, threatening redundancy for employees of debt-laden and ‘restructured’ companies.
Healthy opportunities
However, in the last year credit has started to flow again, and private equity has made a partial recovery, though not to pre-credit crunch levels. It seems that healthcare in particular will continue to be popular with investment funds. Everybody needs it after all and, with the cuts to public spending already limiting the services offered by the NHS, there is increasing demand for private care, which will be additionally aided if the coalition’s healthcare reforms go through and further open the NHS up to private involvement.
Private equity firms invested $2.1bn in private healthcare companies in the first quarter of 2011 alone[17] and, looking at the recent fortunes made through HCA International, it is easy to see why. The US healthcare company, which runs six private hospitals in London and is currently pushing for more business within the NHS, was bought out by a trio of private equity companies, KKR, Bain Capital and Merrill Lynch (now owned by Bank of America), for $33 billion in 2006. As is typical of private equity, this was financed, for the most part, by borrowed money: the three firms contributed $3.8 billion in equity and leveraged the other $29 billion as debt. At the time it was the largest leveraged buyout on record.[18] The private equity trio continued to saddle HCA with debt, much of which went towards the payment of fees and dividends to themselves and their investors, partially as a means to attract investment to future funds and partially as a result of the typically short-termist management techniques of private equity companies. In both February and May 2010, dividends were paid out after HCA took on more debt by borrowing from its revolving credit facilities and by September 2010 the company had $409m more debt than the year before: a total of $26.1 billion.[19] This did not deter it from announcing the sale of $1.53bn worth of bonds to finance a $2bn dividend to its private equity owners in November 2010. Having wrung payouts of $4.25bn out of the company in just one year, it was listed on the stock market in February 2011, making $3.8bn and creating $10bn in equity value for KKR, Bain Capital and Merrill Lynch (now part of Bank of America).[20]
The justification made for private equity firms is that, by buying up companies when they are ‘distressed’ - in financial difficulty and with a correspondingly low share price - they act as wardens of a healthy economy. The threat of private equity buy-out should help keep companies behaving in the best financial interests of their shareholders[21] and by providing management ‘expertise’ private equity companies supposedly return 'distressed' companies back to health, granting them an increased ability to create profit. Harry Cendrowski, author of Private equity: history, governance, and operations, puts it thus: “The institutionalisation of private equity is, perhaps, one of the most important advances in the field of modern finance: it is through private equity (PE) that the seeds of new ideas are permitted to germinate and the souls of the withering may be granted rebirth.”[22]
However, it is doubtful that, with more debt on its books, HCA will be better at managing hospitals, and especially NHS services, in which the profit margins will not be as high (and HCA’s record in the US, before it was bought by private equity wasn’t exactly inspiring).[23] Commenting on the payouts, Josh Lerner, professor of investment banking at Harvard Business School, euphemistically stated 'There’s a tension between what’s in the best interest of companies and what’s in the best interest of investors', neglecting to mention the more severe tension patients in HCA wards will feel if the debt proves too much for the company.
Fortunes? Yep.
The money made from HCA is not unusual. Saddling bought-out companies with increased debt to make regular, and massive, payouts in fees and dividends, is standard practice. Surveying the 47 largest private-equity-owned UK companies in 2009, the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA) found that of the aggregated £13bn increase in debt held by those companies following private equity buyout, £2bn was paid as dividends to private equity fund managers and investors.[24]
The personal wealth amassed as a result of this by private equity fund managers is both astounding and revealing. In 2011, 65 of the 1,210 billionaires included in Forbes’ rich list are private equity and hedge fund managers. Among the most notable members of this elite group are the co-founders of the private equity firm Kolhberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR) - Henry Kravis and George Roberts - who each hold personal wealth of $3.9bn. Both Kravis and Roberts received ‘carried interest’, a performance fee typically based on 20 per cent of profits generated, of $19.5m for 2010 alone.[25]
Taxing? Not very.
In their pursuit of driving down costs, private equity firms are notorious tax avoiders. As well as its share in ownership of HCA, KKR owns Alliance Boots, including Boots the Chemists, who are bidding to take on a wider range of NHS services. It was revealed in January 2011, for example, that they were in talks with the Department of Health about offering chemotherapy and phlebotomy - the taking of blood samples and other bodily fluids for analysis – services to NHS patients from its high street stores.[26]
However, their tax returns suggest they may not be as committed to public service as they like to suggest. KKR acquired Alliance Boots in June 2007 in a massive leveraged buyout, naturally, worth £11.1bn, of which £9.3bn was borrowed from banks and investors. Tax avoidance has been a feature of many private equity 'restructurings' and in 2009, KKR transferred Boot’s headquarters from England to Switzerland to take advantage of the tax haven of Zug. Prior to the buy-out, Boots was paying on average one third of its profits in tax to the government: about £150m a year. By March 2008 it was so saddled with debt and having to pay out £606m in net finance costs for 2007-08, that it made a pre-tax loss of £64m. In 2009, though it was back to profit, but of the £475m it made, only £14m was paid in tax. John Ralfe, the former head of corporate finance at Boots, told the Guardian that 'the UK has lost about £100m a year in tax'.
Cut costs, cut jobs
Whilst renowned for granting large personal fortunes to its managers, private equity is also renowned for causing job losses, overriding benefits packages, taking up anti-union positions, and ignoring collective bargaining in its short-term race to cut costs and amplify profits. The experience of Gate Gourmet, the airline catering company, is well known. The company was bought from SwissAir by private equity firm Texas Pacific Group in 2002, following SwissAir’s bankruptcy.
Texas Pacific quickly pursued a ‘restructuring’ programme for Gate Gourmet, which included mass job cuts. By 2005, Gate Gourmet had shed 3,000 jobs, whilst management experienced pay increases. After offering redundancy to 630 workers in Heathrow in June, none of whom agreed to it, the company hired 120 non-unionised contract workers at substantially lower rates of pay and with much worse employment conditions. Responding to this, workers assembled for a meeting and were promptly given a three minute warning to return to work. When many refused, an announcement was made, via megaphone in a Heathrow car park, that 800 Gate Gourmet workers were to be sacked, leading to one of the largest industrial disputes in recent UK history (see an interview from the time here).
Care UK, owned by Bridgepoint private equity, has shown healthcare jobs are not immune from such ‘restructuring’. Eight days after winning a £53m contract for prison healthcare in the north-east earlier this year, it promptly unveiled a restructuring plan affecting 116 out of about 400 employees and announced there would be job losses, causing a Royal College of Nursing representative to lament its 'worst fears' were coming true.[27] Indeed, counter to the industry’s own claims, private equity ownership very rarely leads to job creation. According to the BVCA report cited above, employment at private equity owned companies grew by only 0.1% in 2009, well behind the 5.2% figure for non-private equity owned companies.
NHS exposed
The risks carried by companies owned by private equity will become especially dangerous if the coalition’s health reforms are passed and these companies are allowed to take more NHS work. When they are operating on clients who can afford the fees in their private hospitals, the consequences of indebtedness and over-expansion are less urgent, as the patients can go to another hospital or wait for their treatment on the NHS. However, if the coalition’s reforms are passed, and the companies are allowed into the heart of the NHS, the consequences are potentially severe. A regular concern of practitioners has been that if a company is commissioned to do lucrative procedures such as, say, hip replacements ahead of the NHS hospital that used to do the work, that NHS unit won’t be able to carry on. But if the company that takes over then finds itself in financial trouble after its private equity holders have taken its money and run, the NHS won’t be able to pick up the slack anymore and there will be far less of a public safety net for people who still have dodgy hips.[28]
Of course, asset-stripping, job cuts and risky financial strategies are not limited to companies with private equity investment - South African healthcare giant Netcare, and global investment fund Blackrock, owners of major private players BMI Healthcare and Circle respectively, aren’t known for their public spiritedness[29] - but the fact that a good number of health companies set to benefit from the reforms are owned or have been owned by private equity firms gives the lie to the government’s rhetoric around its reforms. David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Andrew Lansley have all been at pains to stress that their reforms will make the NHS more accountable to its patients but, given the type of companies they are encouraging to get involved, this is disingenuous to say the least.
If we criticise the privatisation brought in by the reforms by only talking about healthcare companies, we neglect the companies behind them. Investment in private healthcare does not simply come from individual shareholders but investment companies designed principally to extract as much wealth as possible, as quickly as possible, and which, in the case of private equity, have taken management control of bought-out companies to ensure that happens. This gives the lie both to the companies’ presentation of themselves as friendly and wholesome providers who have worked out a way to deliver healthcare that is better for everyone, and to the coalition’s claims that their reforms will make the NHS more accountable. Private equity firms are not investing in healthcare companies to help them deliver healthcare to people regardless of their capacity to pay. Letting those companies further into the NHS makes sense only for their investors.
[6] Overcharging on rent amounts to £60 per week per care home bed. The public funds involved was intended to be used to pay for the care of the elderly in Southern Cross care homes. Instead these funds are being used to pay the interest on £1,100m bonds raised by the QIA when they bought the care home builidngs from a private equity company in 2006. Taxes on this income are avoided as the funds are funnelled via companies in the Isle of Man and the Caymen Islands. See www.gmb.org.uk/newsroom/latest_news/31000_elderly_homeless.aspx
[14] Kavaljit Singh, Taking it Private: the Global Consequences of Private Equity, The Corner House, September 2008, p7
[15] Investment banks also gained from the exchange, generating $12.8bn in fees from private equity firms in 2006, whilst utilising securitisation to shift the debt off their balance sheets, recouping the loan quickly and supposedly shifting the risk onto external investors. Kavaljit Singh, Taking it Private: the Global Consequences of Private Equity, The Corner House, September 2008
BMJ had secret financial ties to Merck during publication of articles attacking Wakefield
Wednesday, September 07, 2011 by: PF Louis
(NaturalNews) When a corrupt medical group wants to discourage dissidence from within, it targets a high profile figure to disgrace. This intimidates others from doing the right thing if it disrupts the lies and profits of Big Pharma.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield was a high profile scapegoat, smeared with lies from the media and medical journals to protect the UK from vaccine injury payouts while maintaining high profits for the vaccine industry.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield's Research
Dr. Wakefield arrived at Royal Free Hospital in London to coordinate and record research that had already started for seven children. This number increased to twelve and consequently was called the Wakefield 12 two years later. The gastroenterology treatments and study had started on the original seven and was headed by Dr. John Walker-Smith.
Parents of those twelve children took them to the Royal Free Hospital because of its reputation for Pediatric Gastroenterology. Their family doctors had failed to diagnose and/or treat their kids. The kids were suffering terribly from bowel disorders and exhibiting autistic behavior, pushing the parents to the limit. These were not mere tummy aches and diarrhea.
After Dr. Wakefield joined them, he published his findings in a paper for the 1998 British medical journal Lancet. A few years later, Wakefield's Lancet paper's conclusion was intentionally twisted by journalist Brian Deer in order to launch a government/vaccine industry attack on doctors Wakefield and Walker-Smith.
Claims that Dr. Wakefield and his team concluded that MMR vaccinations are totally responsible for autism are completely inaccurate. Wakefield's Lancet paper simply advised that measles, mumps, and rubella vaccinations should be done separately instead of all at once until further research is done on the safety of MMRs.
The parents had voluntarily mentioned that their children's unusual and intense bowel disorders as well as autistic behaviors occurred shortly or immediately after the kids received their MMR vaccination. Dr. Wakefield simply included the parents observations in his Lancet report.
Dr. Wakefield also included the medical fact that the same viral strain of measles was found in all of the children's intestinal tracts in his journal report. These discoveries were made after the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) shots were given to those twelve children and their symptoms were apparent.
Wakefield's Published Findings Confirmed by Others
The viral measles discovered by the Wakefield/Walker-Smith team of doctors were not wild virus measles. They were of the type prepared for MMR vaccines. Recently, even the London Mail reported similar results from other studies of children with autistic behaviors and strange, severe bowel disorders.
One study was in Dublin, Ireland in 2001. The other report was from Wake Forest Medical School in the USA in 2010. In the USA study, 70 out of 82 autistic children were found with the same unusual bowel disorder, autistic enterocolitis, and the same non-wild measles strain.
You'd think this would create a public vindication and restore Doctors Wakefield and Walker-Smith's right to practice medicine in the UK. But it hasn't. That's the tragedy. The vaccine industry/government conspiracy succeeded.
The Point Man for the Conspiracy Against Wakefield and Walker-Smith
Brian Deer is a self professed independent investigative journalist. He is not independent, according to Age of Autism He has over a decade's history of working for different vaccine industry front groups, both in America and Great Britain. And he doesn't really investigate. It appears he fabricates.
Yet, he is the author of articles condemning the Wakefield Lancet 1998 paper, publishing in both the London Sunday Times and the British Medical Journal (BMJ) starting in 2004 and continuing into 2010. Brian Deer also filed a formal complaint to the GMC (General Medical Council), the group responsible for medical licensing in the UK.
Not one of the parents filed any complaints anywhere. They all praised the Wakefield/Walker-Smith team for the understanding and relief that medical team had provided. But they complained bitterly about being denied their testimony on the Wakefield/Walker-Smith team's defense in the GMC hearings, which Brian Deer attended daily for several weeks.
The Lancet was compelled to publically retract Wakefield's paper. The GMC removed both Doctors Wakefield and Walker-Smith from medical practice in 2010. The BMJ and Brian Deer defend their lies to this day by accusing Wakefield of lying. Screaming sensationalism seems to get the mainstream media's attention over calmly delivered facts.
For more on Brian Deer's nasty aggressive manner against the Wakefield 12 children's parents, who speak their version of events, see the short version of the documentary "Selective Hearing" here: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=B04E6...
The full documentary is viewable from the sources section below. It is compelling.
So how does one sociopath vaccine industry shill hack journalist manage to pull this off? He was supported by friends in high places.
Big Pharma's Vaccine Hit List
The pharmaceutical industry has hit lists, and apparently Brian is one of their hit men to stir up trouble with the help of vaccine industry supporting medical journals and public media publications. A lawyer in an Australian class action suit against Merck's Vioxx spoke of threats from Merck to intimidate critics or cut off research funding.
The attorney read the following from a Merck internal memo: "We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live." There was also memo content that mentioned "neutralizing or discrediting" doctors who spoke out against them. Merck is a major provider of MMR vaccines in the UK and USA.
Following the Money
High Court Judge Sir Nigel Davis wouldn't permit parents who wanted to testify on Wakefield's behalf. Nigel's brother is a board member of the publishers of the Lancet who is also on the Board of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). GSK is a pharmaceutical giant also heavily involved in vaccine manufacturing.
GSK now has James Murdoch on its Board. He's the son of Rupert Murdoch and editor of the Sunday Times . This was Deer's first platform to launch attacks on Wakefield. The Murdoch family has strong financial interests with GSK.
Deer used Medico-Legal Investigations to gather information for his evil spin. This private company seems to be a front group for Big Pharma, since their only source of funding is the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.
Reuters is a news agency rivaling the Associated Press (AP). The head of Reuters is a Merck Board member. Miriam Stoppared's husband, Christopher Hogg, was Chairman of GSK in 2004. Miriam is feature writer for the Daily Mirror.
Dr. Kumar, the chairman of the GMC Fitness to Practice Panel that ruled against Wakefield would not answer questions about his known GSK holdings. He declared that there is no such thing as vaccine damage and parents who claimed such should be treated with scorn.
There have been allegations of financial connections between Merck and BMJ and its editor Dr. Fiona Godlee. It's certain Merck funds award to BMJ's selected MDs and researchers. Both the BMJ and Lancet journals serve as advertising forums for Merck and GlaxoSmithKline.
Meanwhile the UK medical system, which is completely supported by government financing, can breathe a sigh of relief for not having to be held liable for vaccine injury complaints by parents of MMR shots or other vaccinations.
After all, purchased and promoted vaccines are already paid for. They don't want them to go to waste. And no need to add the expense of awarding compensation for vaccine injury if it's been declared they don't exist.
Regarding the Wakefield case, Fiona Godlee recently announced: "Many other medical frauds have been exposed but usually more quickly after publication and on less important health issues."
Really? How important is childhood measles or mumps?
What is important is evidence from several international sources have determined a causal link to unusual bowed disorders and autistic behavior. The real fraud is denying this research. The real crime is profiting heavily while causing enormous suffering for millions of children and their parents.
Sources for this article and your perusal include:
Andrew Wakefield (born 1957) is a British former surgeon and medical researcher, known as an advocate for the discredited claim that there is a link between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, autism and bowel disease, and for his fraudulent 1998 research paper in support of that claim.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You can download files in this forum
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Chat
Usergroups
Calendar
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
