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Children are our future, and we must protect them and teach them ways to have a long and healthy life.

 
Posted by: | Posted on: December 27, 2023

The Microbiome Solution — Healing Your Body From the Inside Out


Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/12/24/microbiome-solution.aspx
The original Mercola article may not remain on the original site, but I will endeavor to keep it on this site as long as I deem it to be appropriate.

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola     December 24, 2023

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • One of the worst things you can do during pregnancy is to take an antibiotic. Young children also need to be shielded from antibiotics, as they devastate the microbiome
  • Other medications best avoided, due to their devastating impact on your microbiome include hormone treatments, including birth control pills, antibacterial products containing triclosan and proton pump inhibitors
  • Fiber-rich vegetables are massively important. Not only do they provide valuable nutrients your body needs, they also provide nutrition to the microbes in your gut, which feed on fiber

By now, you’re probably aware of how important a balanced gut microbiome is to your overall health, but how do you go about optimizing your gut flora? And what steps can you take to protect and nourish your baby’s microbiome, even before and during birth?

In this interview, Dr. Robynne Chutkan, a gastroenterologist (a doctor who specializes in the gut) and author of the book, “The Microbiome Solution: A Radical New Way to Heal Your Body From the Inside Out,” will guide you through the details.

Chutkan finished medical school in 1991. Like most conventionally trained doctors, she whole-heartedly endorsed pharmaceutical intervention “whenever possible, as frequently as possible.” Over the course of several years, however, she began to investigate alternative routes to health.

“My area of expertise is inflammatory bowel disease,” she says. “I trained in New York, at Columbia for medical school and residency, and then at Mount Sinai Hospital … Never once during my training did the idea that you could treat this set of diseases with food as opposed to pharmaceutical intervention, ever come up …

But when I arrived at Georgetown to join the faculty in 1997 … I started seeing a lot of patients, a lot of them women. Many wanted to know, ‘What can I do? What can I eat? How can I change what I’m doing to feel better?’ Of course, I had no answers at all for these questions.

I just had a lot of fancy drugs that I knew a lot about. Over the course of time, I started to experiment a little bit, mostly on myself, playing around with different ways of eating …”

Approaching Food as Medicine

She also conducted a study, in which she asked patients about their use of alternative and complementary practices to treat their Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis. She was surprised to discover that 70% of them were using some kind of complementary or alternative technique, sometimes in addition to conventional medicine.

“It was a sort of don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy,” she says. “I started to get interested and I wanted to know what people were doing and if it was helping …

This was the time when the specific-carbohydrate diet, which is very similar to the Paleo diet, had been popularized … I clearly remember the first patient I sat down with who … had had severe Crohn’s disease. She came back and was feeling great …

She was eating lean protein, lots of vegetables and some nuts and seeds … I remember doing her colonoscopy and seeing her very severe Crohn’s healed. I could not believe it. I said ‘I’ve got to find out more about this.’

I think it really was the patients who caused me to question what we were doing. I started looking at the drugs we were using and the side effects. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for judicious use of conventional drugs when you don’t have lots of other options.

But to be strongly recommending drugs that we know can cause cancer and severe infection and other problems, and not having any conversation about this concept of foodist medicine, which is so well-proven, particularly in the gastroenterology world, I think that’s medical negligence.”

How C-Section Can Set a Child on the Path Toward Autoimmune Disease

Another incentive driving Chutkan’s growing interest in alternative treatments was her daughter. She was delivered via C-section, and because Chutkan had contracted influenza right before the delivery, her newborn daughter was given antibiotics as a precaution.

This was the beginning of a long series of illnesses, where she’d get sick, receive another round of antibiotics, only to get sick again and receive more medication. By the age of 2, her daughter had received 16 rounds of antibiotics.

According to Chutkan, this pattern is very common among patients who are subsequently diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Many are C-section babies who were then bottle-fed and received multiple rounds of antibiotics.

“I saw her heading down that road and I said ‘I really have to do something. If we don’t stop this cycle, this is what’s going to happen.’ I’m proud to be a doctor, but it’s sometimes hard to hold your head up these days because in my office, most of what I spend my time doing is trying to undo medical mischief.

Well-meaning physicians who either are not well-informed or just have tunnel vision; dermatologists putting young people on years of potent antibiotics, when you consider the fact that five days of a broad-spectrum antibiotic … can remove a third of your gut bacteria … We are creating disease.”

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Avoid Antibiotics Unless Your Life Hangs in the Balance

Indeed, one of the worst things you can do during pregnancy is to take an antibiotic. Young children also need to be shielded from antibiotics, as they devastate the microbiome. Perhaps the single most important take-home point is to avoid antibiotics unless your life hangs in the balance.

Don’t take them frivolously, and certainly not as a precautionary measure. Other medications best avoided, due to their devastating impact on your microbiome include:

• Hormone treatments, including birth control pills

• Antibacterial products containing triclosan

• Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs). According to Chutkan, research shows 20% of the bacteria in the microbiome are changed from long-term use of acid suppressing drugs.

In fact, the authors concluded that PPI use was just as dangerous as antibiotic use in the long term. Despite that, gastroenterologists routinely put patients on long-term acid suppression without giving it a second thought

Should you have an infection, there are a number of alternatives to antibiotics you can try. For example, D-mannose is very effective against urinary tract infections. “We use a topical form of probiotics mixed with coconut oil for bacterial vaginosis for women. It works great,” Chutkan says.

Beware of Hidden Antibiotics

Chutkan also addresses the issue of hidden antibiotics. Eighty percent of all the antibiotics sold in the U.S. are actually used in the food industry. Animals raised in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are routinely given low-dose antibiotics to prevent disease associated with factory farming. So while you may be really judicious about medical antibiotics, you may still ingest antibiotics through factory-farmed food, especially animal products.

“I think this is an area where it’s really important to buy organic and to know not just what you’re eating, but what the food you’re eating has eaten, tracing it all the way back, because 80%, that’s an astounding number; we already have the highest per capita consumption of antibiotics in the world …

From infancy, the average American child will take somewhere around 18 to 20 courses of antibiotics by their 18th birthday. Then you add to that, how many courses of antibiotics they’re probably ingesting with food. It’s really astounding. It’s almost like the myth of Sisyphus.

We’re on this treadmill. From the minute we’re born — one could argue even before birth with the in-utero exposure — we are in this incredible downward spiral to destroy our microbiome. You have to be so vigilant about all of these things.”

Fecal Microbiota Transplant — A Potentially Life-Saving Procedure

Chutkan’s book, “The Microbiome Solution,” provides an excellent chapter on fecal microbiota transplants (FMTs). It even includes instructions on how to do it yourself, were you to choose that route. While most people are not candidates for a stool transplant, it can be a life-saving measure in extreme cases. That said, it’s important to understand that the stool transplant is only as good as a donor’s stool.

“I love my husband very much, but he grew up playing football and eating Burger King every day after practice. I don’t want his stool, because it’s probably not robust enough, growing up eating a standard American diet and taking the usual arsenal of medications.

I’ve always said, if I ever develop a severe autoimmune disease … and I am failing the typical options, I’m heading to Tanzania to get some stool from the Hadza tribe, or down to the Amazon. I want some high-octane stool,” Chutkan says. “When you contemplate donor stool, it’s not just a matter of excluding serious infectious diseases like HIV, syphilis or hepatitis. It’s really about evaluating how robust the microbiome of your donor is …”

Your Microbiome Is Constantly Changing and, With That, Your Health

While an FMT can be highly beneficial in extreme cases, the vast majority of people simply need to optimize their own microbiome through dietary and lifestyle changes. The good news is our microbiomes are constantly changing, based on diet and environmental exposures, so you have a great deal of personal control.

If you have a long history of antibiotic use, it may be more difficult for you to shift your gut flora and repair the cellular-microbial damage that has already occurred. But you can still improve a great deal.

“For most people who have eaten poorly [and] taken some drugs, there is incredible opportunity for recovery, but it really has to be meaningful change,” Chutkan says.

“The idea that you can continue to eat potato chips and soda and not eat vegetables and just take a fancy probiotic and get better, is really magical thinking. I really try to stress in my practice that it’s not the microbes that you put in your body; it’s what you feed those microbes.”

Fiber-rich vegetables are massively important. Not only do they provide valuable nutrients your body needs, they also provide nutrition to the microbes in your gut, which feed on fiber. Another part of the equation is eating foods grown in healthy soils. Factory-farmed vegetables grown in nutrient-poor soils are not going to give you the same bang for your buck.

As noted by Chutkan and many other health experts, nutrition and human health really starts in the soil. To learn more, check out Dr. Maya Shetreat-Klein’s book “The Dirt Cure: Growing Healthy Kids With Food Straight from Soil.”

How to Optimize Your Baby’s Health if a C-Section Is Unavoidable

Since you’re bypassing the birth canal, children born via C-section are not “inoculated” with their mother’s bacteria. Sometimes a C-section is necessary. It can be lifesaving for the baby or the mother. But evidence suggests C-sections are vastly overused in the U.S., and most are not medically necessary.

In her book, Chutkan includes a complete birthing plan to optimize your and your baby’s microbiome, and it begins with the recommendation to avoid C-section at all cost, unless medically necessary.

“You really have to push because, again, your physician is very well-meaning, but they have been trained and indoctrinated to think that a C-section is fine. You might find yourself in the unusual position of having to educate your physician about the risks of C-section. There’s plenty of good information out there to do that. The first thing is to try and avoid it,” she says.

“If you have to have a C-section, I love the information Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello [Ph.D.,] provides [on] vaginal seeding … [M]ake sure your doctor and their team know about this. Because if you start doing this and people don’t know what you’re doing, they’re going to call security and take the baby away.

The idea is to take a gauze pad and soak it in the perineal juices … Then when the baby is born via C-section, instead of essentially disinfecting them with antibacterial products like they do in the hospital, take this vaginal pad that’s soaked in all this wonderful flora from the mother and wipe the baby down, especially the head, the eyes, the mouth, all of that. Wipe them down so you’re sort of approximating a vaginal birth.”

According to Chutkan, studies show babies born vaginally are colonized with Bifidobacteria, lactobacillus and many other healthy bacteria from the mother’s microbiome. C-section babies are colonized mostly with hospital-acquired staph, and this microbial difference can follow the child for years to come.

Not surprisingly then, C-section babies tend to have higher rates of allergy, asthma, obesity and autoimmune diseases — all of which have been linked to poor microbial diversity and makeup. Being able to intervene with this vaginal seeding technique is quite brilliant, and could go a long way toward normalizing your baby’s microbiome if you have to have a C-section.

Other Dos and Don’ts for New Parents

Next comes breastfeeding. Not only is breast milk nutritionally superior to formula, it also has a direct impact on your baby’s microbiome. The third most common ingredient in breast milk is human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs), a type of sugar that is completely indigestible.

It provides no nutrition per se, rather it nourishes the beneficial bacteria in your baby’s digestive tract, which in turn helps repel staph and other potentially harmful microbes, including microbes that may linger on your nipples.

“It’s a great example of this synergy between what’s happening on the mother’s side and what’s going on in the baby’s side, and how it’s all supposed to work together. That’s another critical thing for people to know,” Chutkan says, adding:

“It’s amazing how much stuff gets done to you in the hospital that you don’t know about. Most women don’t know they get antibiotics for a C-section … I didn’t know that my daughter got not one but two potent antibiotics intravenously in the neonatal intensive care unit. You sign a general consent for treatment …

You know that doctors are well-meaning. You know they’re vested in a good outcome for the health of your child, but you make the crucial mistake of thinking they know and completely understand the ramifications of what they’re doing. It’s clear that they don’t, and so you have to be very aware of that …

Your doctors, for the most part … are lovely, well-meaning people, but they are not well-informed. They are getting their medical information from sources that compel them to keep practicing [a certain] way.”

Vitamin D and Inflammatory Bowel Disease

As previously noted, Chutkan’s specialty is inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), a serious autoimmune disease that can be lethal. IBD is not to be confused with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), which is a functional disease — it can be painful and disabling, but it’s not going to kill you. IBD patients are frequently prescribed very toxic drugs and may even require surgery to remove a part of their colon.

If you have IBD, optimizing your vitamin D to a level between 40 and 60 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml) is an important consideration. Crohn’s patients also need to pay attention to vitamin B12, because when your ileum — the end part of your small intestine — is inflamed or has been surgically removed, you cannot absorb B12 as efficiently. Malabsorption of fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K, magnesium, iron and more, can also occur.

“Vitamin D has definitely been shown in many studies to be important for inflammation in general, certainly in patients with IBD,” Chutkan says.

“It’s one of the first things we check and make sure that people are adequately supplemented … We have people we put on high-dose supplementation … if they’re down in the single digits … I recommend getting 20 minutes of sun exposure [on] upper body, arms and shoulders, without sunscreen, each day.”

On Treating IBD

When it comes to treating IBD, Chutkan focuses on using food as medicine, and in 77% of cases, her patients will no longer need immune modifying agents once they’ve properly adjusted their diet. She typically begins by assessing the level of inflammation. The most challenging situation is when you have “fibrostenotic disease,” where Crohn’s disease has caused severe scarring and narrowing of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. In some cases, it can be severe enough to be irreversible.

People with colitis who have a lot of ulceration in the colon, and people who have Crohn’s who don’t have a lot of scarring but have active ulceration, are generally able to successfully treat their condition through diet. Next, she screens for nutrient deficiencies, such as vitamin D, B12, ferritin and fat-soluble vitamins, and begins assessing the diet. Chutkan uses a combination diet that is part specific-carbohydrate diet, part paleo and part vegan.

Increasing Vegetable Intake Is Crucial

Three years ago, Chutkan and colleagues published a small pilot study consisting of 12 patients, nine with Crohn’s and three with ulcerative colitis.

“We looked retrospectively at the diet. We found some interesting things. We found that the average time for the diet to work was about 90 days. When I say to work, to really kick in to the point where people felt like they were in remission. But some people notice results in as quickly as two to three days. Other people take several months. Ninety days was kind of the sweet spot.

Two-thirds of patients were able to get off their medication or significantly reduce their medication. Again, the majority of people, when we looked endoscopically, had healing of the inflammation.

But this is the most important part of the study: everybody took out the processed carbohydrates. Everybody was off gluten, off refined sugar. Essentially grain-free for the most part. As people get better, we do add in some brown rice, some legumes and so on.

For the most part, it was looking like a modified paleo diet. But there were two distinct groups: the group who got better and the group who didn’t, despite excluding all the not-so-great stuff. What was the difference?

The difference was the amount of vegetables people were consuming. The people who took out the gluten and the processed sugars … without increasing their vegetable intake, did not tend to do a lot better. The people who really ramped up their consumption of green leafy vegetables, and particularly the stringy vegetables like celery, asparagus and artichokes, which are high in inulin that really feed gut bacteria, did significantly better.”

So, a key take-home point here is that it’s not enough to simply remove certain foods, such as sugar and refined grains. You must also replace them with a significant amount of vegetables.

In fact, there appears to be a critical threshold when it comes to vegetables, which you must meet in order to see meaningful changes in your health. Dr. Terry Wahls has noted that multiple sclerosis (MS) patients typically need six to nine servings of leafy greens each day in order to affect positive change.

Chutkan says the same applies to autoimmune patients with Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis. Each morning, she makes herself a green smoothie with spinach, kale, celery, parsley, green apple, a peeled lemon, some fresh ginger and water. Each day, she’ll drink two to four glasses.

On Breaking the Mold

Chutkan is a perfect example of a conventional physician who, by listening to her patients and keeping an open mind, broke through the brainwashing — the carefully orchestrated propaganda created by the drug and medical industries. And she shares a great deal of priceless information in her book, “The Microbiome Solution.”

“[W]hen I saw the results of a meta-analysis out of Mount Sinai hospital … looking at over 7,000 patients with inflammatory bowel disease and identifying frequent antibiotic use, particularly in childhood, as one of the main risk factors for developing IBD, I said, ‘People have to know this.’

… [A]s an author, it is an incredible privilege to be able to put your nickel down and say ‘This is what I think. This is what I believe in. I feel an obligation to share it with you.’ But it’s also scary. People come after you …

I had a lot of conversations with Penguin about what I could or couldn’t say, or should or shouldn’t say. It’s scary because you know there’s an incredible amount of money being made by some of these companies. When you say something that’s critical, their goal is to crush you. They’ve done it very effectively to a lot of people we know.

It’s scary but you get to the point where you feel like you cannot legitimately not share this information with people. As you know, books are not a way to get rich, right? Typically, books are probably, at best, a break-even proposition, or you lose money writing a book when you think about the amount of time it takes.

But it is an incredible way to take this information out of the office … and get it into the hands of millions of people. That’s a wonderful privilege … I do have to say that I am emboldened by practitioners like you who have been doing this for a very long time and play such an important role in this education of the public.

You’ve been criticized by conventional medicine and by pharmaceutical companies. It really emboldens those of us who have our eyes open to say ‘You know what? I’m going to speak the truth. I’m going to educate patients. I’m going to try to bring a few colleagues along. I’m going to be okay.'”

How Patients Can Help Their Doctors

As noted by Chutkan, many doctors still do not realize the wool has been pulled over their eyes. They don’t realize they are being used to market drugs for pharmaceutical companies — some of which are effective, others not so much, and virtually all of which have side effects.

However, all is not lost. Just like Chutkan came to see the light after being repeatedly prompted by her patients to provide answers other than drugs, you too can affect positive change by talking to and informing your doctor about strategies that are important to you.

“I think … it’s so important for patients to not just abandon their doctors,” she says. “If you have a doctor and you have a decent relationship with them, but they’re still hell bent on prescribing an antibiotic you don’t need, I think it’s so important to say to them ‘This is why I don’t want to take the antibiotic. Here is a book you should read.’

Because that’s what people did with me. People trusted me. They felt that I had their best interest at heart. They took the time to educate me and I’m so glad they did. I think we have to bring a colleague along. We have to bring our physicians along and not just abandon them entirely.”

One of the books you can bring your physician if he or she wants to prescribe antibiotics is “The Microbiome Solution.” It should really open their eyes. Chutkan is incredibly articulate, and her book is chockfull of valuable information that can have a tremendously beneficial impact on your health.

Posted in Antibiotics, Bacteria, Carbohydrates, Children, Food, Gluten, Gut, IBD, PPI, Pregnancy, Prescription Medication, Probiotics, Processed Food | No Comments »

Posted by: | Posted on: November 16, 2023

CDC Runs Two VAERS Systems — The Public Can Access Only One of Them

© November 14, 2023 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc.
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Reproduced from original article:
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/cdc-fda-vaers-vaccine-adverse-event-reporting/
An investigation by The BMJ into the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, found multiple deficiencies in the system, including the revelation that the government runs two systems — one for the public, and a private back-end system that contains all of the corrections and updates, including deaths that occurred after an initial injury.

By John-Michael Dumais

vaers broken vaccine safety feature

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When Dr. Robert Sullivan collapsed on his treadmill three weeks after his second COVID-19 vaccine in early 2021, he fell into a “nightmare” ordeal that he said exposed glaring deficiencies in the nation’s vaccine safety monitoring system.

Diagnosed with sudden onset pulmonary hypertension, the healthy and fit 49-year-old anesthesiologist from Maryland attempted to file a report through the government-run Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

But like others interviewed in a recent investigation by The BMJ, Sullivan hit barrier after barrier when trying to submit and update his report.

Almost three years later, still grappling with debilitating symptoms, Sullivan’s experience highlights the systemic problems with the U.S. adverse events monitoring system run jointly by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

From doctors unable to file reports to disappearing data, limits on transparency and lack of resources to follow up on concerning vaccine reactions, experts warn VAERS is failing to detect critical safety signals.

According to one of those experts — VAERS researcher Albert Benavides, whose experience includes HMO claims auditing, data analytics and revenue cycle management — VAERS’ failure isn’t accidental.

“It is not broken,” Benavides wrote in his Substack coverage of The BMJ investigation. “VAERS runs cover for the big pharma cabal.”

‘They even delete legitimate reports’

Like others interviewed by The BMJ, Sullivan experienced limited follow-up after submitting his VAERS report. He received only a temporary report number months after his initial submission.

A physician named “Helen” (pseudonym) told The BMJ that fewer than 20% of concerning reports get follow-up, including many deaths she reported.

In consultation with Benavides, an audit by React19 found that 1 in 3 COVID-19 vaccine adverse events reports in VAERS were either not posted publicly or were deleted. React19 is a nonprofit that collects stories of people injured by the mRNA vaccines.

According to The BMJ, of those queried by React19, “22% had never been given a permanent VAERS ID number and 12% had disappeared from the system entirely.”

Benavides, who publishes the VAERSAware dashboards documenting many of the problems with VAERS, said there is even deeper dysfunction in the VAERS system — from inventing symptoms to deleting reports.

“VAERS does not publish all legitimate reports received,” Benavides told The Defender. “They throttle publication of reports. They even delete legitimate reports.”

For a system dependent on voluntary engagement, these restrictive policies keep critical data hidden, according to Benavides.

In 2007, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) contracted with Harvard Pilgrim Health Care (HPHC) to review the VAERS system. In 2010, HPHC filed its r report, which determined that 1 in 39 people experienced vaccine injuries and that only around 1% of vaccine-related injuries or deaths are ever reported to VAERS.

The CDC, which operates under HHS, scuttled the study, refused to take calls from the researchers and declined to upgrade the VAERS system when a new, much more effective system was developed.

‘Blind spots are self-created’

VAERS “collects reports of symptoms, diagnoses, hospital admissions, and deaths after vaccination for the purpose of capturing post-market safety signals,” according to The BMJ.

But the limited transparency of VAERS data presents barriers to proper analysis, according to The BMJ’s investigation and researchers like Benavides.

The public — including doctors and other report submitters — can access only incomplete initial reports, not updates with vital details.

This means outcomes like death are often excluded if the initial report was for an injury and a subsequent death report was filed.

“I made the false assumption that my conversation [with VAERS] would result in an adjustment to the publicly reported case,” Patrick Whelan, M.D., Ph.D., told The BMJ.

Whelan, a rheumatologist and researcher at the University of California Los Angeles, in 2022 filed a report of a cardiac arrest in a 7-year-old male patient after COVID-19 vaccination.

“I assumed that, since it was a catastrophic event, the safety committee would want to hear about it right away,” Whelan said. But nobody called him or requested an update after his submission.

“There was no mechanism for [updating] it,” Whelan told The BMJ. “The only option I had was to make a new VAERS report.” Without updates, the VAERS data showed that the boy was still hospitalized.

Whelan is one the authors of a recent critique of the Cochrane Review that concluded the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines were not dangerous.

The problem with VAERS is not limited to a lack of adequate follow-up but to the incomplete and often inaccurate information found there.

“VAERS in effect allows typos, truncated lot #’s, UNK [unknown] ages, UNK vax dates, UNK death dates, etc. to pass through into publication,” Benavides said.

Benavides said specific data — including ethnicity, hospital names, attending physicians, submitter’s relationship to the patient, patient and submitter addresses, telephone numbers and emails — collected by VAERS are not published,

“Any blind spots are self-created, in my opinion,” he said.

Agencies maintain two separate VAERS databases — public gets to see only one

“There’s two parts to VAERS, the front end and back end,” stated Narayan Nair, division director for the FDA’s Division of Pharmacovigilance at a December 2022 meeting with advocates, according to The BMJ. “Anything from medical records by law can’t be posted on the public-facing system,” he said.

The BMJ investigation discovered that the FDA and CDC maintain two separate VAERS databases, one available to the public that contains only initial reports, and a private back-end system containing all of the updates and corrections.

“Anything derived from medical records by law” cannot be posted on the public-facing system, Nair told the advocates, according to The BMJ.

In an apparent contradiction to this claim, The BMJ noted the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS), which collects post-marketing information on drug reactions, posts its updates publicly.

Sullivan, who met Nair years before COVID-19 and considers him a friend, told The Defender that if this “very bright, kind and caring person” could not fix VAERS, “I don’t think it’s fixable.”

CDC says it reviewed 20,000 reports of deaths — none were related to COVID shots

Withholding outcome data like deaths obscures critical safety signals, experts contend.

James Gill, a medical examiner, reported the death of a 15-year-old patient after vaccination, but the case was dismissed by the CDC despite autopsy evidence, according to the BMJ investigation.

Physician “Helen” told The BMJ that after filing reports on her medical patients, including six who had died, she received only a single request for medical records on the death and two for hospital-admitted patients.

The standard operating procedure for COVID-19 vaccine reports in VAERS, according to The BMJ, is for reports to be processed quickly and for “serious reports” to receive special review by CDC staff.

However, while some other countries have acknowledged the probable connection between the mRNA vaccines and death, the CDC, while claiming to have reviewed nearly 20,000 death reports, has yet to acknowledge a single death linked to the COVID-19 vaccines, The BMJ said.

Benavides provided The Defender examples of VAERS “deleting legitimate reports,” not just duplicates or false claims.

“VAERS even deleted dead Pfizer Trial patients,” he said, claiming that this report, for example, was not a “duplicate” and did not appear to be fake.

Benavides said:

“There are currently about 50 deaths that are not counted as deaths because the correct box is not checked off.

“There are thousands of reports and about 100 deaths in ‘UNKNOWN VAX TYPE’ in VAERS. Read the narrative to see these are clearly C19 jab-related deaths.

“There are over a thousand cardiac arrests where they are not marked as dead, and I question if they actually survived because there is no mention of ROSC [return of spontaneous circulation].”

“Why couldn’t VAERS populate the ages of these dead kids before publication?” Benavides said, pointing to this report on his website.

Physicians report only FDA-recognized adverse events

Ralph Edwards, former director of the Uppsala Monitoring Centre and until recently editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine, told The BMJ the regulators may be relying too heavily on past epidemiological data, especially for new types of adverse events. “If something hasn’t been heard of before, it tends to be ignored,” he said.

Without guidance to report potential risks, doctors also face barriers. “Physicians are only willing to talk about FDA-recognized vaccine adverse events,” stated physician “Helen” in a 2021 meeting between the FDA and physicians and advocates, according to The BMJ.

Svetlana Blitshteyn, a neurologist and researcher at the University at Buffalo, New York, told The BMJ if physicians are not educated to look for a specific condition, they’re unlikely to test for it or know how to treat it.

Sullivan told The Defender he believes his experience of developing pulmonary hypertension after taking the mRNA vaccine is one such safety signal the CDC and FDA are overlooking — a condition he believes many athletes have unknowingly developed.

Sullivan co-authored a paper of his and one other similar case of post-vaccine pulmonary hypertension. According to the paper:

“Pulmonary hypertension is a serious disease characterized by damage to lung vasculature and restricted blood flow through narrowed arteries from the right to left heart. The onset of symptoms is typically insidious, progressive and incurable, leading to right heart failure and premature death.”

“Athletes are canaries in the coal mine,” Sullivan told The Defender, speaking of the unusual numbers of athlete deaths since the rollout of the vaccine. Sullivan thinks that those with superior physical conditioning, like him, stand a better chance of survival with early detection.

However, he said, “Athletes will get echocardiography, and it will be essentially normal. The only way to tell for sure is to do a right-heart catheterization” that can identify the anomaly.

Sullivan believes the lives of many athletes could still be saved if the reporting system recognized and investigated the signal — and said he would be happy to join a project dedicated to this goal.

He also told The Defender he believes many of the sudden deaths reported in the 25- to 44-year-old age group are a result of this hidden condition.

 

‘The buck stops with the CDC for reforms’

Critics point to choices by the CDC as compounding VAERS’ passive design and understaffing issues.

Despite over 1.7 million reports since the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, staffing was not boosted accordingly, according to statements the CDC made to The BMJ.

A Freedom of Information Act request by The BMJ revealed Pfizer has nearly 1,000 more full-time employees working on vaccine surveillance than the CDC. Records showed in 2021, Pfizer on-boarded 600 additional full-time employees to handle the volume of adverse reports and planned to hire 200 more.

Physician “Helen” in The BMJ article called for an end to the “negative feedback loop” whereby the FDA fails to list adverse reactions because passive surveillance systems like the FDA’s don’t display them, while at the same time, because of that lack of disclosure, “physicians are blinded to the adverse reactions in their patients, and thus aren’t reporting them.”

“The buck stops with the CDC for reforms needed to open up data,” Benavides told The Defender, adding several suggestions that could immediately improve VAERS:

“Revert back to pre-January 2011 when VAERS did append initial reports with follow-up data, including death. Take off the arbitrary 30-minute time limit to file a report before getting kicked off. Make the process easier to submit follow-up data.”

When asked why the incompetence of VAERS had been allowed to continue for so long, Sullivan told The Defender, “Because of the lack of product liability” for the vaccines “and the surge to defend economic interests.”

Sullivan said he’d like to see the following changes to the system:

  • Pharmaceutical advertising banned.
  • Pharmaceutical company revenues devoted to advertising instead be spent on R&D.
  • The tax money collected on pharma profits be directly sent to victim injury funds.

Yale cardiologist takes on study of COVID vaccine injuries

Benavides said he spoke with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) Monday and is also in discussion with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic to address the concerns with VAERS, including the under-publishing of reports.

“That’s a long overdue prospect and it would be incredible to actually get some analysis by that committee,” he said.

Another bright spot comes from news reported in The BMJ’s investigation that Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist and researcher at Yale University, has been recruiting members of React19 to study their vaccine injuries.

“We are working hard to understand the experience, clinical course, and potential mechanisms of the ailments reported by those who have had severe symptoms arise soon after the vaccination,” Krumholz told The BMJ.

Sullivan told The Defender that medical science is “just beginning to catalog the damage to the heart” from the vaccines but that “in order to treat something, you have to diagnose it” — and that, because of the shortcomings with VAERS, “we have yet to scratch the surface of that.”

Sullivan, now almost three years into his ordeal, is outliving his initial prognosis.

“I have a grim diagnosis hanging over me, but I’m optimistic because I’m still here,” he said. “I had something bad happen to me, but I’ve met so many amazing, wonderful people along the way who are just interested in truth.”

“I’m going to live the best and most productive life I can with the time I have left,” Sullivan said, helping others who “have this cloud hanging over their future.”

 

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John-Michael Dumais

John-Michael Dumais is a news editor for The Defender. \
He has been a writer and community organizer on a variety of issues, including the death penalty, war, health freedom and all things related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Posted in CDC, Censorship, Children, Coronavirus, Corruption, FDA, Mortality, Vaccinations, VAERS | No Comments »

Posted by: | Posted on: September 15, 2023

Baby Who Died 34 Hours After Vaccines Had Toxic Level of Aluminum in His Blood, Report Confirms


© September 14, 2023 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc.
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The parents of 62-day-old Sawyer learned their baby’s blood contained 95 micrograms per liter of aluminum, a level that would be toxic for adults. The toxicologist who read Sawyer’s report said the aluminum and antigen levels in the blood were due to the vaccines.

By John-Michael Dumais

maine sawyer vaccine death feature

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A Maine couple last week finally got the answers they’d been seeking for nearly a year, ever since their 62-day-old son, Sawyer, died Oct. 28, 2022 — 34 hours after receiving his scheduled childhood vaccines.

According to a toxicology report, Sawyer’s blood contained 95 micrograms per liter of aluminum, a level that would be toxic for adults.

A toxicologist told the couple the aluminum and antigen levels in the blood were due to the vaccines. She also said a viral infection Sawyer was being treated for could have been a contributing factor.

Sawyer’s parents, Melissa — a registered nurse — and her fiancé Nick shared their story last week with journalist Jennifer Margulis.

In an interview this week with The Defender, the couple detailed their search for truth, beginning with how Maine’s medical examiner refused repeated requests to perform lab tests that might have shown the culpability of the vaccines — and instead initially ruled Sawyer’s death “asphyxiation due to inappropriate sleep position and environment.”

The story of baby Sawyer

On Oct. 20, 2022, Melissa took Sawyer to a doctor for a persistent rash around his torso. The doctor diagnosed a viral infection, gave Melissa some medicinal cream and told her to monitor Sawyer’s temperature for possible fever.

Exactly one week later, Melissa went to the same pediatrician for a baby wellness checkup, where the doctor insisted Sawyer, despite Melissa’s reservations and the baby still having a rash, receive the scheduled childhood vaccines.

These included: RotaTeq (for rotavirus), Hib (for Haemophilus influenzae b), Prevnar 13 (for 13 types of pneumococcal bacteria) and Pediarix (for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B and polio).

Dr. Lawrence Palevsky, a pediatrician, told The Defender, “I don’t know of any official warnings against vaccinating sick children,” but “there are no upsides to vaccinating a sick child. There are only downsides.” He added, “And, there are no upsides to vaccinating any child.”

Melissa told The Defender that, despite her medical training, she became skeptical of vaccines just two days prior when she watched a video of a toxicologist talking about the dangers of vaccines for children. She discussed the upcoming vaccinations with her fiancé, and they decided to go ahead with them.

“We were afraid that the medical system was going to judge him and judge us and not let him into school,” Nick said. “We just hadn’t done any research on it.”

Nick has two daughters from a previous marriage, ages 11 and 19, who received all of their childhood vaccines “and nothing ever happened,” he said.

After the doctor’s visit, Sawyer arrived home screaming and Melissa gave him the baby Tylenol recommended by the doctor.

By the next day, the baby had calmed somewhat but was still acting “fussy and uncomfortable,” so Melissa gave him more Tylenol and some expressed breastmilk.

When Nick got home from work that day, they put Sawyer into his bassinet for a nap around 5:30. By 6:15 the baby was fussing, and with some help was able to get back to sleep. He slept off and on for another four hours, while his parents kept tabs on him via his baby monitor and visits to his room.

The last time Melissa checked on Sawyer, he wasn’t moving or breathing. She picked up his limp and lifeless body and started screaming. Nick rushed in to help but it was already too late.

Emergency medical technicians arrived after the couple called 911. They tried but were unable to revive Sawyer.

The county and state police also responded and, because it was an infant death, opened a formal investigation and ordered an autopsy.

Chief Medical Examiner Mark Flomenbaum performed the autopsy the next day. Although he found Sawyer to be “well developed” and without signs of injury or bruising, Flomenbaum filed a death certificate citing asphyxiation due to a “sub-optimal sleeping environment” — essentially blaming the parents.

“It was near Christmas when we got the autopsy results,” Melissa told The Defender. “We read them on Christmas Eve. … We did nothing for the entire weekend.”

Asked if they ever learned what the medical examiner saw to make his determination, they said no. “The only thing in his basket was the blanket he was laying on.”

The police looked for evidence of child abuse or alcoholism, but quickly concluded it was an accidental death.

Melissa, grief-stricken, told everyone she could to investigate the possible role of vaccines in Sawyer’s death.

She first called the medical examiner to see if he would do testing to determine if sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) was responsible, but was told there was no need “because it wouldn’t show the cause of his passing,” she recalled being told.

The hunt for answers

That’s when the couple’s hunt for answers began. “I was looking up people on the internet, on social media. I was calling any number I could find,” Melisssa said.

Finally, she discovered a suite of pathology tests that could determine whether vaccines played a role in Sawyer’s death.

The tests measure C-reactive protein (indicating brain inflammation), liver enzymes, aluminum and mercury in brain and blood tissue, formaldehyde and formalin (another name for formaldehyde). A cytokine panel would also identify various blood factors and vaccine titer levels.

Melissa mailed and emailed Flomenbaum’s office to formally request the full battery of tests. The doctor refused, dismissing her concerns and telling her that heavy metals do not cause SIDS.

“They gave me a reason why each test didn’t need to be done,” she said.

Further emails to the state medical examiner’s office, from both parents, have been bouncing back as “undeliverable” since.

A friend of Melissa’s told her about Health Choice Maine, a statewide nonprofit working to protect health freedom and parental rights. There she met Tiffany Kreck, Health Choice Maine’s executive director, who helped Melissa organize her own investigation.

“Families being bullied by a doctor or threatened with CPS [child protective services] or whatever, can reach out, and we will, to the best of our ability, help them navigate it,” Kreck told The Defender.

Melissa said Tiffany gave her a list of things they had to do, “like getting reports and billing information, people to contact, and that’s what I did.”

Their primary goal was to find a competent pathologist to perform the lab tests Melissa had requested. They searched the entire country — even enlisting the help of Laura Bono, vice president of Children’s Health Defense, Kreck told The Defender — but came up empty.

Kreck told Melissa they would not be mentioning anything about vaccines to the prospective pathologists, so they would be less likely to reject the request.

The biggest obstacle was finding a doctor who was willing to order the tests.

Her ob-gyn told her that it was “out of his scope of practice.”

She called her primary care physician and told him she thought the vaccines had played a role in her son’s death “and he denied it,” she said. Her pediatrician also said no.

The toxicology report and next steps

Finally, they found someone in-state who, responding to Melissa’s grief, agreed to perform the tests on June 21. Although some of Sawyer’s tissue samples had degraded, the pathologist was able to perform enough tests to issue a definitive report last month.

The report was technical and was not accompanied by any guidance or recommendations.

Melissa said, “They never called me and said, ‘Oh, listen, this is high. This could be due to his vaccines. We will do a VAERS [Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System] report, you know, and advocate for other infants that pass away.’ No, we didn’t get anything from them.”

So they had to hire a private toxicologist who could interpret the report. That second report arrived last week.

“And she was the one that called us the other day and told us that his aluminum levels were very high,” Melissa said, “and that we needed to seek some legal services.”

The report showed baby Sawyer had 95 micrograms of aluminum per liter of blood, a level that would be toxic for adults. The toxicologist told the couple the aluminum and antigen levels in the blood were due to the vaccines. She also said the baby’s illness could have been a contributing factor.

Kreck told Margulis, “This additional pathology report shows how much are medical examiners don’t know because they won’t look.”

The report also showed high levels of lead, which would not be due to vaccines, the toxicologist said, and asked about lead levels in their house or water. But given that the baby had only consumed breastmilk and was not yet old enough to crawl around on the floor, the question remains open.

After receiving the confirmation about the aluminum, the couple felt “exonerated” from the implication they were responsible for Sawyer dying from asphyxiation, “but we also still feel like we failed our baby,” Melissa told The Defender.

“Me being a nurse,” she said, “I felt like I failed him both as a nurse and a mother.”

Nick added, “From the father’s standpoint, you’re supposed to protect your family, and I failed at that. It weighs on me every second of the day.”

Melissa and Nick are planning to file a claim with the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). She said she still feels skeptical “because I know how the government and the medical system are.”

Kreck is helping the couple prepare for the VICP meeting. “We are doing every test that we can possibly do and trying to cross all of our t’s and dot all of our i’s before we go into the VICP,” Kreck said, “which is historically difficult and harsh on what they perceive to be SIDS cases.”

A couple told The Defender they got help reporting the case to VAERS last November, but have never received any follow-up. They did, however, confirm that Sawyer’s case was in the database.

Health Choice Maine is also exploring options for a lawsuit challenging the finding on the state medical examiner’s death certificate.

Dealing with the grief

Just three months after the ordeal, a therapist told Melissa, who was still grieving for her child and searching for answers, that she had an “adjustment disorder.”

“She was pretty much telling me that I was not adjusting to losing my son quick enough, and recommended trauma therapy,” Melissa said.

She left the office crying, wondering if something was wrong with her or not being able to let go of her grief. “I haven’t had good luck with therapists,” she told The Defender.

“I’ve been going through this all on my own, trying to go through reports and all the information about my baby’s life and his medical records. And I’m doing all this while trying to grieve the loss of him and it is horrifically painful,” she said. “It’s something no parent should ever have to go through.”

One therapist told Melissa to take mood stabilizers and anti-depressants. “The mental health care system has not been very helpful in this at all,” Nicked added.

Nick found that going back to work and keeping busy was the most therapeutic approach for him. “Just keeping my mind focused on other stuff, you know, while carrying all that around,” he said.

Nick has joined Melissa in several of her therapy sessions, which he found very helpful.

The couple found a grief support group called Empty Arms for parents who have lost a child, which has been “amazing,” Melissa said. The group does a butterfly release for the deceased on Memorial Day and an annual remembrance walk.

They have found support from family members as well, although Melissa said it has been hard to talk to her family about the vaccine connection.

The couple said the loss has brought them closer together. “I couldn’t keep going, fighting the fight we’re fighting right now, without her,” Nick said. “And you don’t realize how much you love someone and just how precious life is and what you have in front of you is.”

“Cherish it and love it, don’t let it go,” he said.

“We lost the biggest and best part of us both and if we didn’t stay together, I’d feel like I was losing another piece,” Melissa said.

The couple’s journey to warn others

“I just want to make other people aware and I want to put a stop to this,” Melissa said.

Melissa said she warns mothers of sick children to cancel their appointments for vaccines at least until the child has recovered. She added:

“Children do not need vaccines. And if they were to get them, they don’t need them until they’re at least two years old. The problem is, is they have a blood-brain barrier that has not closed up until they’re two years old or later.

“And if you get vaccinated before two years old, the aluminum can cross that blood-brain barrier. That’s why levels are so high and it stops respiration and causes cardiac arrest.”

Nick said, “I wouldn’t tell anybody ‘Don’t vaccinate your children.’ But I would definitely say ‘Do your research. Go to the end of the internet, make sure what you’re doing is right, that you know all the possible outcomes.’”

“Be more educated and be a strong advocate for your baby,” he added. “Because it’s your baby, not the doctor’s.”

Asked why more medical professionals don’t speak out, Melissa simply said “Career suicide.”

“I don’t even wanna be a nurse anymore,” she said. “Why would I want to be? But I have to pay my bills.”

“Doctors don’t have any better education on vaccines than most 10th graders,” she said. “Even as a nurse, we don’t get the education. We just got the schedule.”

She also said that medical examiners should have the right to test for vaccine injuries during the autopsy and identify them as a cause on the death certificate. “The vaccines are killing people and babies and they’re trying to cover it up,” she said.

While the couple said they found it helpful to share their story, they also admitted to wanting to keep a low profile. “It’s kind of a quiet subject for us because we’ve got to protect ourselves now,” Melissa said.

The couple is looking for a good support system. “We’re looking for people to stand behind us and support us as we go through this journey, for the next questionable amount of years, to get justice for our baby. It might drag on for a while,” Melissa said.

When asked about what gives them the strength to stand up and share their story, despite the backlash that such activism could invite, Melissa said:

“This is the only way that I feel like I can mother my baby anymore. And my baby deserves justice. And we deserve to know the truth.

“He is our reason for living right now. And he is our motivation.”

Questions about the state medical examiner

Kreck told The Defender that state medical examiner Flomenbaum came from Massachusetts where he had been fired as the state medical examiner. “It looks like he tried to sue them for wrongful termination and lost,” Kreck said.

Flomenbaum earned a national reputation as a top medical examiner through his work identifying bodies in New York City after the 9/11 attack in 2001, according to an article in the Portland Press Herald.

He was fired from his Massachusetts position for losing a body and having a backlog of bodies waiting to be examined.

In 2019, the Maine attorney general’s office investigated and later cleared Flomenbaum over criticism that he was running a side business as a consultant in out-of-state death cases.

The Press Herald article details more of Flomenbaum’s controversial history, which included a Connecticut prosecutor’s letter to then-Attorney General Jane Mills telling her that a judge had determined his testimony in a child manslaughter case was “not credible.”

Flomenbaum was reprimanded in 2021 by Maine Governor Mills for inappropriate and unprofessional behavior in the workplace, after which he announced he would not be seeking reassignment to the position.

“He was only supposed to have a month or so left of his term back then and he’s still in office now. That all sounds very odd and fishy,” Kreck said.

Melissa told The Defender that Flomenbaum had recently left the medical examiner’s office, putting the disposition of Sawyer’s remains in question.

The couple, with the aid of Health Choice Maine, is seeking to remove Sawyer’s blood and tissue samples from the medical examiner’s office.

Anyone with information about where a new location might be found to accommodate Sawyer’s remains is encouraged to email Tiffany Kreck at tiffany@healthchoicemaine.org.

John-Michael Dumais's avatar

John-Michael Dumais

John-Michael Dumais is a news editor for The Defender. He has been a writer and community organizer on a variety of issues, including the death penalty, war, health freedom and all things related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Posted in Censorship, Children, Corruption, Vaccinations | No Comments »

Posted by: | Posted on: September 14, 2023

‘Unconscionable’: FDA Approves New COVID Vaccines — Even for Infants as Young as 6 Months — Based on Minimal Data or Testing


© September 12, 2023 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc.
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said the new vaccines are “formulated to more closely target currently circulating variants and to provide better protection against serious consequences of COVID-19, including hospitalization and death.” However, the vaccines target the XBB.1.5 variant, which “is declining in the U.S.,” according to CNBC.

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.
fda approves new covid vaccine infants feature

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Monday approved updated mRNA COVID-19 vaccines produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, paving the way for their approval by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is meeting today to vote on whether to recommend the two vaccines, CNBC reported. Following ACIP’s vote, CDC Director Mandy Cohen is “likely” to approve its recommendation, Endpoints News reported, opening the door for the vaccines’ public availability.

The vaccines received FDA approval for people ages 12 and up, and Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for children from 6 months to 11 years. Ages 5 and over will be eligible to receive a single dose, previously vaccinated children between 6 months and 4 years of age will receive one or two doses, while unvaccinated children in the same age group will be eligible for two Moderna doses or three Pfizer-BioNTech doses.

According to the FDA, the new vaccines are “formulated to more closely target currently circulating variants and to provide better protection against serious consequences of COVID-19, including hospitalization and death.”

However, the vaccines target the XBB.1.5 variant, which “is declining in the U.S.,” according to CNBC, citing CDC data.

Linda Wastila, Ph.D., professor of geriatric pharmacotherapy at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and director of research for the Peter Lamy Center for Drug Therapy and Aging, accused the FDA of acting unethically.

Wastila told The Defender:

“It is unethical to continue to approve and authorize mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 when the pandemic has disappeared. It is unethical to promote these boosters as safe and effective when it is clear they are not, and the government is ignoring evidence that the vaccines can provide considerable harm.

“The fact that these vaccines were authorized for children when a public health emergency no longer exists is unconscionable.”

Dr. Pierre Kory, president and chief medical officer of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), said, ”It is unconscionable that the government can recommend this booster for 6-month-olds when the FDA has no data on how children might be affected.”

In a separate statement, the FLCCC said, “By leveraging the unnecessary Emergency Use Authorization … the FDA is pushing forward with an experimental vaccine booster based on limited safety and efficacy data.”

“There is no need to vaccinate healthy children for COVID-19,” Kory said. “To give them an untested booster goes against everything we are trained to do as physicians.”

Canadian physician Dr. William Makis said, “There is no ‘COVID-19 emergency’ for children, therefore there is no legitimate scientific basis for an ‘emergency authorization’ of a new COVID-19 booster in this age group,” adding, “any doctor still administering COVID-19 mRNA vaccines to children of any age is engaging in medical malpractice.”

According to The New York Times, “Federal officials have been retreating from labeling the new formulation as boosters to previous shots, preferring to recast them as an annual immunization effort akin to the flu vaccine,” due to “the fatigue that some Americans have expressed about yet another round of shots against the virus.”

Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said, “Vaccination remains critical to public health and continued protection against serious consequences of COVID-19, including hospitalization and death.”

While ACIP, whose meeting was still in progress at the time of this writing, still needs to formally recommend the vaccines, approval appears to be all but certain.

Harvey Risch, M.D., Ph.D., professor emeritus and senior research scientist in epidemiology (chronic diseases) at the Yale School of Public Health, told The Defender that “rubber-stamp approval” is the likely outcome of today’s meeting.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said, “We expect this season’s vaccine to be available in the coming days, pending recommendation from public health authorities.”

Dr. Meryl Nass, an internist and member of the Children’s Health Defense scientific advisory committee, live-blogged the ACIP meeting for CHD.TV. She said that, early in the meeting, “They are only presenting old data — presumably a bait-and-switch to the new vaccine.”

“They have removed the authorizations for the bivalent boosters so as of today, you can only receive a vaccine for which no data have been made public — the vaccines are being grandfathered in, in a manner used for flu shots yearly, as an amendment to the existing licenses issued for the initial monovalent vaccines,” she told The Defender.

‘Like dogs chasing their tails’

The Times reported that the XBB.1.5 variant “was dominant when vaccine makers began to formulate and test a new version” of their COVID-19 vaccines, and they are monovalent — “they do not include protection against the original virus.”

“Experts say the new COVID jab should fortify protections against severe infection,” the Times reported, while the FDA claimed that “Consistent with the totality of the evidence and input from the FDA’s expert advisors, these vaccines have been updated to include a monovalent (single) component that corresponds to the Omicron variant XBB.1.5.”

However, Wastila told The Defender “I do not understand why public health and political leaders are advocating for a booster that is already obsolete.”

“The approved and authorized boosters are like dogs chasing their tails — the mild variants they are supposed to help mitigate serious disease are already waning, already being overtaken by the next generation of mild, mutated viruses,” she said.

Yet, CNBC reports that “While the shots do not target the variants dominant now, the vaccine makers have said the shots will still offer protection against those strains,” citing data showing COVID-19 hospitalizations “have increased for seven straight weeks.”

Cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough told The Defender, “XBB.1.5 is 3.1% of strains as of Sept. 2, and expected to be extinct by the time any American is injected. The current dominant and growing strains are EG.5 at 21.5% and FL.1.5.1 at 14.5%.”

“There are no randomized clinical trials demonstrating either Pfizer or Moderna XBB.1.5 boosters would work” against the new strains, he added.

Writing on his Substack, Dr. Robert Malone, pioneer and expert in mRNA and DNA vaccines and therapies, noted that the XBB.1.5 variant “is on its way to becoming extinct,” while new variants “have evolved even further to escape the antibody pressure elicited by the globally deployed leaky ‘vaccines.’”

He noted that “the FDA administrative bureaucracy self-determined that they could continue to bypass their normal (already lax) procedures for evaluating purity” by authorizing the agency to approve new COVID-19 vaccines and boosters for 180 days after the public health emergency expired May 11.

The PREP Act (Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act) liability shield for the COVID-19 vaccines will remain in place through Dec. 31, 2024.

Little data, but ‘a lot of red flags’ surrounding the updated COVID vaccines

According to CNBC, “Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax have released early trial data indicating their new shots provide protection against Eris,” adding that Pfizer and Moderna have also said their updated shots produced a “strong immune response against BA.2.86,” another emerging COVID-19 subvariant.

In its announcement, the FDA said:

“The updated vaccines are expected to provide good protection against COVID-19 from the currently circulating variants. …

“Based on an evaluation of the totality of the evidence, the benefit-risk profile is favorable for individuals 6 months of age and older to receive an updated COVID-19 mRNA vaccine.

“Although serious outcomes from COVID-19 are less common in younger individuals, they do occur, and it has been demonstrated that recently receiving a COVID-19 vaccine reduces the risk of such serious outcomes.”

In the same announcement, Marks said, “The public can be assured that these updated vaccines have met the agency’s rigorous scientific standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality.”

However, according to the Times, only Moderna has shared trial data of its updated vaccine, which shows that testing was conducted on 100 people. It does not appear that any children or pregnant women were included in that sample.

Also according to the Times, Pfizer spokesperson Jerica Pitts said the updated Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine “involved tests in animals,” and that “Trials following people who received the shot are continuing.” Yet, Pfizer claims the new vaccine generates antibodies that “effectively neutralize” the EG.5 subvariant.

“The only testing has been on antibody levels,” said Risch. “No clinical testing has been done on the new boosters.”

“It is safe to say that even if safety was a consideration, a sample of 100 is insufficient to detect most safety issues in a general population, much less vulnerable individuals, such as older adults, pregnant women, and children,” Wastila said.

According to Risch, even if there were pregnant women and children included in Moderna’s 100-person sample, the sample size would nevertheless be inadequate.

“Our current estimate of serious adverse events/death after the COVID-19 shots is 1 in 140 people,” he said. “So, one would need upwards of 1,000 people just to see anything, and maybe 5,000-10,000 to have a reasonable numerical estimate.”

Kory said the FDA’s exclusive reliance on data provided by the manufacturers “is a great conflict of interest” and “not how [they] are going to rebuild trust with the public.”

On his Substack, Malone also noted that the risk of the new COVID-19 subvariants — and subsequent need, or lack thereof, for vaccines targeting them, has not been tested, but that the vaccines’ EUA status enabled them to quickly attain FDA approval.

“Nothing in the FDA justification addresses the risk to human health posed by these viral variants,” he wrote. “The FDA has completely avoided any justification for the use of the emergency use authorization pathway, rather than a more standard, traditional testing and evaluation process. Because they do not think that they need to.”

Similarly, at a Sept. 7 press conference, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said “There’s essentially no evidence” supporting the updated vaccines, and “no clinical trial showing that it is a safe product for people … but there are a lot of red flags.”

“It’s truly irresponsible for [the] FDA, CDC and others to be championing something … when we don’t know the implications of it,” he added.

According to Wastila, “Both Moderna and Pfizer have failed to deliver on promised post-marketing studies” from prior COVID-19 vaccines. “We have yet to see the results from the bivalent vaccine safety studies in pregnant women; the myocarditis studies in young people also have not been completed nor have most results been shared.”

‘The beginning of their public backslide’

Notably, public health officials and the news media appear to be walking back rhetoric that claimed those who were vaccinated would not catch COVID-19 or transmit it.

“As with earlier shots, the updated ones are not expected to eliminate the chances of contracting a mild case of COVID. Instead, they are expected to reduce the chances of severe illness, hospitalization or death,” the Times wrote.

This contrasts with statements made by Dr. Anthony Fauci during a May 2021 MSNBC interview, where he said the COVID-19 vaccines “protect you completely against infection,” and that those infected aren’t likely to transmit the virus or have symptoms.

Indeed, the FDA conceded, in its announcement, that “Individuals who receive an updated mRNA COVID-19 vaccine may experience similar side effects as those reported by individuals who previously received mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.”

Wastila, who as part of the Coalition Advocating for Adequately Labeled Medicines, submitted a citizen petition to the FDA on Jan. 31 with concerns about inadequate COVID-19 vaccine labeling, said the FDA’s “acknowledgment that the boosters may not be needed by all individuals is the beginning of their public backslide.”

“The way Fauci and his cohorts have changed their narrative on the vaccine is deeply troubling and sows more distrust among the public and clinicians,” Kory said. “It is hard to believe and be led by officials who constantly change their story in a way that appears to suit their need to never admit that they may have gotten something wrong.”

Notably, FDA adviser Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told the Daily Mail “We are best served by targeting these booster doses to those who are most at risk of severe disease,” and that “Boosting otherwise healthy young people is a low-risk, low-reward strategy.”

In separate remarks shared with KFF Health News, Offit, who is 72, said “I don’t plan to get it myself,” referring to the updated COVID-19 vaccine.

Dr. Ashish Jha, former White House COVID-19 adviser and now dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, told KFF that “a reasonable person” could disagree regarding the need for healthy young people to get the updated vaccine.

The Times wrote “Young males have experienced higher rates of myocarditis … after getting vaccinated, although many recovered after a few months,” quoting University of Pittsburgh drug safety expert Walid Gellad, M.D., MPH, who said, “The benefits are just getting lower and lower for young healthy people who’ve had COVID before.”

“Paradoxically, those who most need protection … are often likely to have weakened immune systems that fail to generate the hoped-for response to vaccination,” KFF said.

McCullough said “None of the changes in the mRNA genetic code [of the new vaccines] appear to make it safer, and we can expect more Americans to suffer injuries, disabilities, and death as a result of the unprecedented vaccine campaign.”

He added that the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) “hit a grim milestone this August, with 18,015 COVID-19 vaccine deaths, with approximately 1,100 dying on the same day they took the shot,” while Kory noted that VAERS data now shows that “400,000 people required medical care after receiving a COVID vaccine.”

VAERS has historically been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.

‘People aren’t stupid’

Risch called the updated COVID-19 vaccines “a useless idea,” noting that “Almost everybody has had COVID-19 at least once and/or has been vaccinated and has a substantial degree of immunity. That puts them at low risk of serious responses to the viruses circulating now and through the fall and winter.”

CNBC noted “It’s unclear how many Americans will … get another shot in the coming months,” reporting that according to CDC data, only 17% of the U.S. population received Pfizer’s and Moderna’s previous boosters, released in September 2022.

According to the Times, “Nursing homes … have fallen behind on booster rates,” with Medicare data indicating that only approximately 62% of residents are up-to-date.

A survey of 2,196 people published Sept. 4 in Vaccine found that the main reasons for not receiving the previous bivalent booster included immunity due to prior infections, concerns about side effects and a belief that boosters do not provide protection.

“When the pandemic ‘hit,’ there was a lot of fear and uncertainty. The government’s policy reactions to COVID-19 further fueled this fear,” Wastila said. “But two years have passed, and now you can’t hide the burgeoning disability in previously healthy adults and children, turbo cancers and inexplicable sudden deaths.”

“You also can’t hide all the COVID-19 cases that have occurred in vaccinated and boosted individuals, nor can you hide the relative mildness of COVID-19 variants,” she said. “People aren’t as afraid as they were in 2020. People aren’t stupid.”

Malone wrote that while there are “271 deaths per week … with COVID … we lose 200-300 mostly young people per day to Fentanyl and other opiates.”

He also referred to recent documents obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request revealing that most people being hospitalized with COVID-19 are vaccinated and that the FDA and CDC hid data on the spike in deaths among this population.

Wastila said this data is “of great concern” and that “there does appear to be a dose response to this risk — the more shots, the greater likelihood of hospitalization and/or death,” adding that “These current boosters will only further this ‘negative effectiveness’ response, will only further weaken and destroy recipients’ immune systems.”

Moderna planning ‘awareness campaign’ for ‘consumers to get vaccinated’

According to CNBC, the FDA did not announce a decision regarding Novavax’s updated COVID-19 vaccine, although according to Novavax, the vaccine is still under review and is ready to ship pending FDA approval. CNBC noted that the Novavax uses “protein-based technology” that is “decades old,” instead of mRNA technology.

Kory, however, said “Novavax still utilizes the spike protein as an antigen, and the spike protein causes significant damage to vessel walls and micro-clotting,” adding that “the adverse event rates in the Novavax trial are as elevated as the mRNA vaccines.”

Risch said the FDA’s delay may be due to “crony capitalism,” saying that “Compared to Pfizer and Moderna, Novavax doesn’t pay enough fees to support [the] FDA.”

The Biden administration will “urge” people to get COVID-19 and flu vaccines, and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) shots for those eligible, at the same time, the Times reported.

The Times claimed this practice “has been studied and considered by some experts to be safe,” but experts who spoke with The Defender disagreed. Wastila said, “There are no real-time clinical studies of concurrent use of COVID-19 and flu vaccine administration … the few studies that have looked at this issue have been retrospective.”

“Policymakers and clinicians fail to recognize that not all flu shots are the same nor are all COVID-19 shots the same. What is the reaction between a nasally administered flu vaccine and the current Pfizer booster or Moderna or Novavax vaccine?” Wastila asked.

According to a MedPage Today story published last month, there is no data available for administering the COVID-19, flu and RSV vaccines at the same time.

Similar messaging to that of the Biden administration is emanating from the vaccine manufacturers. According to CNBC, Bourla and Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel both urged the public to receive their COVID-19 and flu vaccines at the same time.

According to KFF, Moderna recently told investors “it was focused on increasing sales” of its vaccines via “awareness campaigns” which will “connect COVID-19 with seasonal flu vaccines with the goal to drive consumers to get vaccinated this fall.”

“Government and medical authorities are making a mockery of the scientific process for reviewing and understanding the risks and benefits of vaccines,” Kory said. “It is against our oath as physicians to advise patients to use a therapy or vaccine that we have so little knowledge of.”

“COVID-19 is likely here to stay, and we need to manage it in ways that support public health and not pose a greater risk than the virus itself,” he added.

Watch today’s ACIP meeting here:

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.'s avatar

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

Posted in Children, Coronavirus, Corruption, FDA, mRNA, Vaccinations, VAERS | No Comments »

Posted by: | Posted on: September 1, 2023

Megan’s Story: ‘They Told Us Our Daughter Would Never Be Normal’


© August 31, 2023 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc.
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Reproduced from original article:
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Katrina and Matt Hachinsky of Emporia, Kansas, had a healthy and happy 4-month-old girl, Megan, until a diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine caused a brain injury and changed her life forever. They shared their story with Polly Tommey during the Children’s Health Defense’s “Vax-Unvax” bus tour.

By John-Michael Dumais

megan hachinsky dtap vaccine injury feature

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Katrina and Matt Hachinsky of Emporia, Kansas, had a healthy and happy 4-month-old girl, Megan, until three weeks after her diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP) vaccine.

Megan’s parents shared their daughter’s story with Polly Tommey, CHD.TV programming manager, during Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) “Vax-Unvax” bus tour during its stop in Olathe, Kansas, on Aug. 26.

Megan, now 10, sat between her parents during the interview and said “Hi” to Polly.

Katrina told the story of how as a baby, Megan was advanced for her age, always “smiling [and]… making good eye contact and zerberts” (vocalizations) and “sitting up and playing with toys.”

At her routine four-month wellness checkup, Megan received the DTP vaccine.

“It was around Christmas time,” about three weeks later, Katrina recalled, when Megan experienced a health crisis.

“I was rushing off to work and took her to daycare,” Katrina said. That afternoon, Katrina got a call at work telling her to come to the hospital emergency room.

That’s when she learned that after the babysitter put Megan down for a nap, she noticed the baby moving around and went to check on her.

“She was seizing and she [the babysitter] waited for her to stop and then had to resuscitate her and call 911 because she had stopped breathing,” Katrina recalled.

Arriving at the hospital, Katrina and Matt found Megan with her eyes closed and screaming. “Her limbs were purple, obviously. She’s been without oxygen for a while,” Katrina said. “They were drilling into her shin bone to give her medication as quickly as possible.”

Megan’s condition was so serious she had to be “life-flighted” to a hospital almost two hours away. “No one could go, she was on her own,” Katrina said. “There wasn’t room and they had to hurry.”

When Katrina and Matt got to the new hospital, the staff “wouldn’t really say anything to us,” Katrina said, because they had to rule out abuse as a cause for her injuries. The hospital performed skeletal tests and CT scans.

At that point, Megan seemed OK except that she was still crying and her eyes were not open. “I tried to nurse her and then I realized that she couldn’t,” Katrina said.

The next night, Megan started seizing again. Unable to stop it, the doctors put her into an induced coma for five days.

“They ran an MRI at that time and saw she had a severe brain injury due to the lack of oxygen,” Katrina said. “They brought us into the room and told us that she was never going to be normal again.”

The couple did not associate Megan’s condition with the vaccines until after they started a Facebook page and began receiving recommendations to learn about toxins and inflammation.

“And that led me to vaccines,” Katrina said.

“At one point they were telling us she wouldn’t be anything more than a vegetable,” Matt said. “So that was difficult for Mom to hear, but I think it also kind of lit a fire under all of us … when you start to realize that they’re not necessarily telling you the truth.”

Katrina and Matt learned Megan had developed a cortical visual impairment. “We just have to kind of play the guessing game with her vision,” Matt said. “She can’t verbalize what she can see.”

Megan’s seizures abated by the time she was 1 but began again when she was 6. She had to be put into a medically induced coma again, after which she could no longer open her eyes, move her head or feed herself.

“We had to work our way back up to where we are now,” Katrina said.

Four years later, Megan can now “walk with assistance and she can stand and play ball,” Katrina said. “She can listen to books. She talks a little, but she can’t go play soccer with her friends or run around and talk and play on the playground.”

“She needs help with every aspect of her life,” Katrina said. “She can’t tell us what she wants, what she needs, when something hurts. … She just needs 24/7 care. I have to bathe her, feed her.”

The Hachinsky family shared some lighthearted back-and-forth before Megan, with help from her mom and dad, signed her name on the outside of the “Vax-Unvax” bus.

Katrina offered this advice to other parents:

“Do your own research. Don’t ever blindly trust anyone. And ask lots of questions. And if they can’t answer them, find someone who can.

“[Don’t] just blindly subject your child to something that you have no idea what’s in [it] and what the potential of harm is.”

Matt added:

“Just because they have that ‘doctor’ in front of their name doesn’t mean they know what they’re talking about. … Do your own research and use your own better judgment. You know your child better than any doctor, no matter what they tell you.”

Learn more about CHD’s “Vax-Unvax” bus tour and watch more interviews here.

Watch here:

 

John-Michael Dumais's avatar

John-Michael Dumais

John-Michael Dumais is a news editor for The Defender. He has been a writer and community organizer on a variety of issues, including the death penalty, war, health freedom and all things related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Posted in Children, Corruption, Vaccinations | No Comments »

Posted by: | Posted on: August 29, 2023

Drugs Used to Treat Indigestion in Babies Linked to Higher Rate of Serious Infections

© August 28, 2023 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc.
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Reproduced from original article:
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/nexium-indigestion-babies-serious-infections
Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) relieve heartburn in adults, but they’re also prescribed to children. A French study reported in JAMA Pediatrics found young children on PPIs had higher rates of bacterial, viral, respiratory and other infections.

By Angelo DePalma, Ph.D.

nexium indigestion babies feature

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A study appearing earlier this month in JAMA Pediatrics reported that children who took proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) for stomach upset experienced a marked increase in infections requiring hospitalization.

PPIs are among the most commonly prescribed drugs in infants and children, and their use is on the rise. They work by attaching to parietal cells in the stomach, where they prevent those cells from releasing hydrochloric acid, which works with enzymes and bile juices to digest food.

A growing body of literature on the acute and long-term side effects of PPIs is causing pediatricians to rethink how these drugs are used, particularly in the very young.

The study group, led by Marion Lassalle, Pharm.D., Ph.D., at the French National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products, followed more than 1.2 million children born in France between January 2010 and December 2018.

Children were enrolled in the study on receiving their first prescription for any medicine — not just PPIs — to treat digestive issues.

Children took either PPIs, histamine-2 receptor antagonists, antacids or alginates. Antacids work by combining with and neutralizing stomach acid; alginates coat the stomach to protect it from acid. PPIs and histamine antagonists prevent the release of acid into the stomach.

Children who took PPIs comprised the treatment group, those on other medications were the controls. The study groups were matched for age, sex, access to medical care, size of residence and social deprivation index — a score based on seven social and economic variables.

Children were followed until a hospital admission for serious infection, death or until Dec. 31, 2019, whichever came first.

PPI use was associated with a 34% overall increase in infections requiring hospitalization. Bacterial infections were 56% higher and viral infections increased by 30% in the PPI group.

Infection rates rose by 52% for digestive tract infections, 47% for infections of the ear, nose or throat, 31% for the nervous system, 22% for the lower respiratory tract and 20% for the urinary tract or kidneys.

A much smaller 2019 study also found a connection between PPIs and infections but concluded that adverse events were related to a child’s ability to metabolize PPI drugs. Children who were poor metabolizers of PPIs fared worse on those medications than those with normal or elevated levels of a liver enzyme, CYP2C19.

CYP2C19 helps to clear PPIs (and other drugs) from the body. Healthy humans may have high, normal or low levels of this enzyme.

PPIs were introduced in the late 1970s. The first PPI agent, cimetidine (brand name Tagamet), was approved in the U.S. in 1979.

By 1986 cimetidine had reached $1 billion in sales, becoming the top-selling prescription drug worldwide and the pharmaceutical industry’s first “blockbuster” drug.

Strengths and weaknesses

According to Lassalle and co-workers, theirs was the first large-scale pediatric investigation into PPIs and pediatric infections.

The strengths of the study were a very large sample size, a capture rate for adverse events approaching 100% and control for socioeconomic factors.

The main weakness was a lack of information on why children received a PPI prescription. Children with the most serious gastrointestinal distress are more likely to have other health issues (including infections), and vice versa, and to receive a PPI prescription.

Sick children also are more likely to experience any drug-related adverse event, including reactions to PPIs. This means that overall, children who take PPIs are more likely to show symptoms the researchers were looking for.

The other main limitation was the lack of information on breastfeeding. This factor would normally even out in a 1.2 million-subject study but breastfed babies are less likely to experience serious digestive problems and are better equipped to ward off infections.

They are therefore more likely to take an antacid or alginate than a prescription-only PPI.

Are PPIs over-prescribed?

In an accompanying editorial Jay Berry, M.D., MPH, and Jonathan Mansbach, M.D., MPH, both of Harvard Medical School, suggest that PPIs are perhaps over-prescribed to otherwise healthy infants.

Gastroesophageal reflux, the medical term for spitting up, is often accompanied by crying, which serves as a signal that the child may be experiencing indigestion.

But babies cry for many different reasons.

PPIs are prescribed to healthy children and to chronically ill children who are more likely to experience digestive issues than healthy babies. Sick children are at additional risk for PPI drug interactions, according to Berry.

“There is no strong evidence to support the use of PPIs in either population,” Berry wrote. “Worse: there may be harm.”

How do PPIs promote infections?

Lassalle and co-workers posited three possible ways PPIs might promote infections.

Reducing stomach acid alters the gut microbiome, which increases the risk of both viral and bacterial gastrointestinal infections.

The higher incidence of respiratory infections could occur through the gut-lung axis, or from the inhalation of tiny droplets of bacteria-containing fluid from the stomach.

The gut-lung axis is a pathway through which bacteria in the gut control immune responses in the airways.

Disease, dietary changes and drugs, including PPIs, affect populations of these bacteria. A reduction in stomach acid also increases the bacterial content of gastric juices, which increases the likelihood that inhaling them will cause lung infections.

PPI suppression of infection-fighting neutrophils, the most common immune system white blood cell, could account for several other infections, according to the authors.

PPI side effects

PPIs prevent acid release from cells, but this effect is not limited to the stomach. The drugs also block normal acid production from lysosomes, specialized cells that remove waste products from tissues.

Waste accumulation causes cells and proteins to deteriorate, leading to rapid aging of cells and tissues.

PPI side effects mostly occur after long-term use. A common one, calcium malabsorption, can result in low bone density and fractures. This prompted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2011 to issue a warning for over-the-counter PPIs.

The FDA advises individuals at risk for bone fractures to “take adequate vitamin D and calcium supplementation” while on PPIs, not to use the drugs for more than two consecutive weeks, and then no more than three times per year.

Taking PPIs regularly has also been linked to a 44% higher risk for dementia, according to one review — which also concluded that up to 70% of people who take PPIs do not have a condition that warrants taking these drugs.

PPIs also are associated with a 20% to 50% higher incidence of kidney disease and a slightly elevated risk of pneumonia.

Although the FDA has approved most PPIs for children, it notes in an information sheet for pediatric prescribers that the drugs are mostly ineffective in children under age 1. For example, infants treated with one PPI, lansoprazole, for symptoms of crying, fussing or irritability during or after feedings, “showed no difference in the percentage of response than patients treated with a placebo.”

PPIs also are associated with tissue- and organ-level changes in the digestive tract, including polyps, thinning of the stomach lining and gastric cancer.

Based on their reading of the Lassalle study, Berry and Mansbach concluded:

“It is time to limit PPI use in infants and children, especially when they are otherwise healthy and until further investigation distinguishes who has the most favorable risk-benefit ratio.

“To address this knowledge gap, we suggest collecting primary data about the effects of PPI use in infants and children, including changes in the composition and function of [the] infant gut microbiome.”

Angelo DePalma, Ph.D.'s avatar

Angelo DePalma, Ph.D.

Angelo DePalma, Ph.D., is a science reporter/editor for The Defender.

Posted in Children, Gut, Prescription Medication | No Comments »

Posted by: | Posted on: August 28, 2023

Reversing Chronic Diseases in Children


Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/08/27/reversing-chronic-diseases-in-children.aspx
The original Mercola article may not remain on the original site, but I will endeavor to keep it on this site as long as I deem it to be appropriate.

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola     Fact Checked     August 27, 2023

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • Epidemic Answers, founded by Beth Lambert in 2009, is a research organization focused on helping children with autism and other chronic diseases
  • In her 2010 book, “A Compromised Generation: The Epidemic of Chronic Illness in America’s Children,” Lambert reviewed not only the epidemic of autism but also other childhood epidemics, such as autoimmune diseases, and their environmental root cause
  • Epidemic Answers’ research project, “Documenting Hope,” is analyzing the environmental causes behind chronic conditions and what we can do to reverse them
  • Autism and most other chronic childhood diseases are caused by a constellation of factors that contribute to the total toxic load of modern living

In the featured video, I interview Beth Lambert, who in 2009 founded Epidemic Answers, a research organization focused on helping children with autism and other chronic diseases.

When I graduated medical school, the incidence of autism was 1 in 10,000. For the first decade of my medical practice, I didn’t have a single autistic patient. By the mid- to late-1990s, I was treating hundreds of autistic children in my practice, and since then, autism has reached truly epidemic proportions.

In her 2010 book, “A Compromised Generation: The Epidemic of Chronic Illness in America’s Children,” Lambert reviewed not only the epidemic of autism but also other childhood epidemics, such as autoimmune diseases, and their environmental root causes.

“I cataloged these kids who were getting better and told their stories,” she says. “Since that time, I have been documenting stories of kids who have reversed all kinds of conditions, and I have launched a nonprofit organization to help connect parents with the resources they need to help their kids get on the road to recovery.

Subsequently, I also started several research studies to look at the environmental causes of autism, ADHD and autoimmune diseases, and what can be done to help reverse these [problems].

So, it’s really become a life mission for me to help people understand that their kids don’t need to be sick, and there’s plenty of tools and resources we have today to solve this epidemic. It’s just information and access to resources. That’s really it. Because that’s the answer, I’m just hell-bent on getting that message out there.”

Studies Underway

Chris D’Adamo, who co-wrote my paper on linoleic acid (LA), published in the journal Nutrients, is the research director for the Epidemic Answer’s research project called “Documenting Hope,” which is looking at the environmental causes of chronic conditions and what we can do to reverse them.

“Our first study is gathering tons of information about what it means to be a child in modern America,” Lambert explains. “What they are eating, what they are putting on their skin, what they are doing all day long — screen habits, sleep — anything you can imagine that is as part of their health. We correlate all of these things with health outcomes, symptoms and diagnoses, et cetera.”

They’re also working on an intervention study in which they’re doing a deep dive into the health of a small group of children with chronic health conditions to identify the root causes. Each child is then placed on a customized 18-month program to reverse their condition and their progress is documented along the way.

“So, we’re not only trying to understand what is causing these conditions, but what we can do to reverse them,” Lambert says.

“We know we need to gather the evidence, because for over 10 years, I’ve been talking to physicians who will say, ‘Well, there’s no evidence that autism is reversible. That’s only anecdotal.’ Well, if it’s only anecdotal, why aren’t we doing research to demonstrate that it is possible? Why don’t we pull together some evidence of hope for these children who are impacted?”

Lay of the Land

As explained by Lambert, in the 1980s, a movement of parents who suspected their child’s autism was not necessarily genetic and irreversible started gaining traction. Physicians also began asking questions, wondering whether it’s a systemic problem as opposed to just a brain-based one, and started opening to the possibility that it might be reversible.

“They started looking into the GI tract, they started looking into toxicity and nutrition — all these kinds of things … Defeat Autism Now was one of the first physician and parent movements where they got together and had conferences. AutismOne was another.

I would say the biggest legacy of that movement right now is probably TACA, which used to be called Talk About Curing Autism … They are looking at the root causes of autism and provide resources for parents that … are looking for nutrition changes, how to detoxify a child, and how to approach it from a biomedical perspective.”

Unfortunately, many autism organizations have struggled to gain traction because the only autism treatments that are reimbursed by insurance are applied behavioral analysis (ABA), physical therapy (PT) and occupational therapy (OT).

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Putting the Cart Before the Horse

The widely accepted form of treating autism, ABA, basically trains the child into expected or typical behaviors. Oftentimes, however, ABA is putting the proverbial cart before the horse. As explained by Lambert:

“They have brains and bodies that aren’t talking to each other, the communication’s out of whack. That needs to be addressed first. That’s why I talk about root causes, because if you can address the root causes and what’s going on that precipitates the behaviors we associate with autism, then you’re going to have all kinds of success using modalities like ABA or OT or PT.

They can all be helpful in modalities, but not until you look at some of the things that precipitated the symptoms in the first place …

No one’s asking about the child’s diet. No one is asking about how they’re sleeping, or how they’re pooping, or are they going outside? Are they sitting in front of a screen? Nobody’s asking those questions. But those are all really important for kids, especially kids on the spectrum.

When you’re talking about a child who is not going to be able to live independently unless we intervene, who may not be able to do things for themselves unless we intervene, you have to start asking questions about the health of their whole body, because the brain is connected to the body, and if you have something out of balance in the body, it’s going to impact your brain and it’s going to precipitate symptoms of autism.

So, going back to the origins of this whole movement, there were a lot of parents and practitioners who started asking the right questions, asking about nutrition, asking about their environment.

And when they followed the path to bring their child’s body back into balance by eating nutritious foods, getting them outside, making sure they’re sleeping, making sure their environment is detoxified, the symptoms of autism started evaporating.

That to me is so profoundly inspiring. If we know that by changing the environment you can improve this child’s life and perhaps drop that diagnosis, help them to thrive, why wouldn’t we be pursuing these options? That’s where TACA came in to try and to close that gap.

Epidemic Answers has started to not just do that for kids with autism, but for kids with all kinds of chronic conditions, whether it’s Type 1 diabetes or rheumatoid arthritis or autism. You just look at the root causes and your child can have a better outcome if you make those changes that you need to their environment and their lifestyle.”

The Real Cause of Autism: The Toxic Load of Modern Living

Root causes contributing to the epidemic of chronic diseases in children include (but are not limited to) things like processed food loaded with sugar and harmful fats like linoleic acid, gut dysfunction, childhood vaccines, antibiotic overuse and mold.

But it’s almost never just one of those things, but rather a constellation of contributing factors. Genetics also plays a role. For example, your genes dictate how well your body can detoxify. But contrary to popular belief, genetics are rarely the sole or even primary cause, because genes are epigenetically regulated, meaning they’re influenced and modified by the environment.

“At the end of the day, when you start looking in the literature, and you start compiling all of these stories, you begin to see a picture of what is causing autism,” Lambert says. “It’s what we call the total load of modern living. The total load is a concept that’s been around for a very long time, especially in environmental medicine …

Patricia Lemer, who wrote a book called ‘Outsmarting Autism,’ first applied the concept of total load to neurodevelopmental conditions like autism, where she would say, basically, ‘It isn’t one thing that causes autism. It’s really a perfect storm, a total load. It’s too many stressors of modern living on a body that doesn’t have enough resources to withstand those stressors.’

Here’s an example. Why is it that two children go into a pediatrician’s office, one gets their 18-month vaccines and the other one gets their 18-month vaccines, one develops autism and the other one doesn’t? Is it genes? Is it what the child ate that day? Is it the fact that one child had a sickness and the other one didn’t?

Was it because this child was on antibiotics when he had vaccines and this one wasn’t? There are so many variables in each child and in each story. So, that’s where I think the total load concept or total load theory really stands up is because there’s so much medical literature on modern living and the ways that we live in the modern world and how it damages your health.

Inflammatory foods, processed foods, the enormous quantity of sugar that modern children consume, the number of pharmaceuticals children have, the antibiotics, for instance … Antibiotics … destroy your gut bacteria. What is the significance of that? That gut bacteria regulates everything from your immune system to your digestion of food and your metabolism.

So, all of those factors are going to impact a child, especially when they are in that critical developmental time. So, if you think about an infant and all the work they have to do to get to crawl, and walk, and talk, and relate to the humans in their lives, all of that takes an enormous amount of energy.

If their body is burdened with toxins from the laundry detergent, and from the mercury and cadmium on their toys, and from the inflammatory foods they’re eating, and their vaccines and their antibiotics and their proton pump inhibitors … that’s when you’re going to see them begin to develop symptoms, whether those are skin symptoms, like eczema, allergies, or whether it’s neurodevelopmental symptoms.

As we’re going through this developmental timeline, if you have an enormous burden of stressors, inflammation going on in your body, and you’re supposed to be developing vision or speech, your body’s too busy dealing with all those stressors, so you’re going to have an arrested, impaired, or delayed development.

The short answer is, it’s not one thing. Autism is not caused by one thing. It’s caused by modern living. And all the things that we do that we think are normal, the food we eat, the medicines we take, the activities we do — sitting inside and playing on devices rather than doing the things that humans evolved to do over millions of years.

We are so disconnected from nature. We don’t eat natural food, we don’t do natural activities. We don’t even see the sunlight anymore. So, that, in a nutshell, is really what’s causing, not just autism, but the epidemic of asthma, obesity, diabetes, autoimmune diseases. It’s all part of the same thing.”

Multipronged Treatment Approach Is Required

Epidemic Answers is the only group currently conducting research to identify root causes and how to reverse chronic childhood diseases, and preliminary data confirm that the more stressors a child has, the worse their health outcomes.

They’re also one of the few groups looking at the impact of multiple interventions at once. Most studies focus on one thing at a time, but that’s not how the real world works.

“These kids who have recovered from autism, they never did one thing at a time,” Lambert says. “The parents did everything all at once to support that child and get their body what it needed to course correct … You can’t just do one thing.

You have to address diet at the same time you’re addressing sleep, at the same time you’re addressing stooling, at the same time you’re addressing integrating the brain and the body with therapies that help correct those developmental problems that emerge.

By doing all of those things at once, we hypothesize that these kids can get better, that they can drop their diagnoses. That’s why we’re doing the research like this, because people don’t believe it. Anecdotes don’t carry weight.

We need to do the research in order to convince the medical community that this really is the way to go. Kids are developing these conditions because of the way we’re living, so we have to change the way they’re living in order to get them better.”

Basic Nutritional Considerations

I strongly suspect linoleic acid in processed food is a major contributor to ill health, so making sure you’re feeding your child whole food, ideally organic, is key. Sugar is frequently thought to be the primary culprit, but I believe linoleic acid is far more dangerous in the long term than sugar.

Now, that doesn’t mean carbohydrates are unfairly criticized. My first book, published in 2004, was “The No-Grain Diet.” Many autistic children put on a no-grain diet fared quite well. But while grains contain sugar, many also have high linoleic acid content.

Resistant starches can also cause problems, as the fiber, which your body cannot digest, ends up fueling gram-negative bacteria that produce endotoxin in your colon. Endotoxin causes loads of inflammation and increases your serotonin level.

Serotonin is probably another major contributing factor for these kids. Lowering their serotonin levels and increasing GABA, an inhibitory neurotransmitter, would probably be quite helpful.

Other key strategies include spending more time outdoors in natural environments and minimizing your electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure. These things don’t cost anything, and they not only can reduce your child’s risk for autism but also most chronic degenerative diseases.

Adventures in Healing Conference

If you want to learn more about how to address autism and/or chronic childhood diseases, you don’t want to miss the Adventures in Healing conference, which will be held November 10 through 12, 2023, in Orlando. The conference has two tracks, one for professionals and one for parents, and I’ll be speaking at both.

“It is meant to simulate some of what we’re learning in our intervention study. Our intervention study through Documenting Hope is called the FLIGHT Study. Part of what we’re doing in there is bringing in experts from a variety of perspectives. We have a nutrition expert. Somebody who understands the environment, and what kinds of environmental toxins can impact a child.

We have somebody who does functional medicine. We have people who bring in structural health, like the dental piece, the oral motor piece and vision. All of these pieces are being looked at in each individual child in our intervention study.

In this conference, we wanted to represent that with speakers. So, we’re having speakers who can speak about environmental elements, [such as] Amy Ziff, who knows a lot about the environmental toxins in your personal care products, and how to get those out of your home.

We have a dietician and a nutritionist coming in to talk about specialized diets for kids with chronic conditions, autism and autoimmune diseases and more. We have functional medicine doctors coming in to talk about things like mold in the environment. We have doctors who are coming in to talk about rewiring the brain to the body.”

Consider Donating to Epidemic Answers

Please, consider making a donation to Epidemic Answers today, and I will match your donation dollar for dollar up to $10,000. I believe the work Lambert is doing is incredibly crucial for our future. If we can crack the nut of autism, we will also be able to help people with other conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease, which is affecting people at increasingly younger ages.

make a donation now

To learn more, please visit EpidemicAnswers.org and/or DocumentingHope.com. Epidemic Answers also has a membership community called Healing Together, where you can learn how to tackle your child’s most challenging health symptoms. As explained by Lambert:

“It’s a path forward and a way to not just reverse autism, but all of these modern living conditions, including the ones at the other end of the spectrum like Alzheimer’s.

Healing Together is a support group. We show a step-by-step process how to do the diet changes, how to change your environment, what kinds of therapeutics to seek for your child’s particular symptoms.

We provide life support. We do research, but we also provide support and education and outreach to families who are impacted and are looking for the tools and resources to reverse their child’s condition.”

Posted in Autism, Children | No Comments »

Posted by: | Posted on: August 8, 2023

More Vaccines Equal More Deaths


Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/08/08/more-vaccines-equal-more-deaths.aspx
The original Mercola article may not remain on the original site, but I will endeavor to keep it on this site as long as I deem it to be appropriate.

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola     Fact Checked     August 08, 2023

more vaccines equal more deaths

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • A peer-reviewed study published in 2011, using 2009 data, demonstrated that “among the most highly developed nations, those requiring the most vaccine doses for their infants tended to have the least favorable infant mortality rates”
  • Earlier this year, that study was replicated using 2019 data, still finding a robust negative correlation with vaccine doses. A second follow-up analysis also included mortality data on neonates and children under 5, using datasets from 2019 and 2021. All three categories — neonates, infants and under 5’s — have higher mortality rates the more vaccine doses they’re given
  • Other studies have shown that the timing of vaccine administration can impact the mortality risk. The gender of your child can also make him or her susceptible to injury and death, and the sequence in which they receive the vaccines can heighten or lessen the risk of death
  • A German study compared outcomes between people who got the COVID shot and those who didn’t. During 2021, symptomatic COVID-19 complaints were more frequent among the unjabbed, but during 2022, the ratios of COVID infection in the two groups narrowed until, finally, the jabbed group was 18% more likely to get COVID, and the COVID infections experienced by the jabbed group were more severe. The rate of severe persistent symptoms of COVID was also 2.5 times higher among the jabbed
  • The jabbed report being diagnosed with new chronic health problems at a rate 2.5 times higher than the unjabbed, and menstrual problems among women are four times more frequent in the jabbed group than the unjabbed group

Two new studies can now be added to the growing body of evidence showing that the “safe and effective” narrative you’ve been fed about vaccines is far from the truth, whether we’re talking about the COVID jabs or conventional childhood vaccinations.

Routine Childhood Vaccinations Increase Mortality Rates

The first, a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Cureus1 in late July 2023, found that vaccines given to children under the age of 5 in developed countries are associated with increased mortality. The more doses given, the higher the infant mortality.

This study is a follow-up of an investigation conducted in 2011,2 using 2009 data, which demonstrated that “among the most highly developed nations, those requiring the most vaccine doses for their infants tended to have the least favorable infant mortality rates.” Earlier this year, they replicated that study using 2019 data,3 still finding a robust negative correlation with vaccine doses.

Here, they expanded the analysis further to also include mortality data on neonates and children under 5, using datasets from 2019 and 2021. As it turns out, all three categories — neonates, infants and under 5’s — have higher mortality rates, the more vaccine doses they’re given. As reported by the authors:4

“Linear regression analyses of neonatal vaccine doses required by nations in our 2021 dataset yielded statistically significant positive correlations to rates of neonatal mortality (r = 0.34, p = .017), infant mortality (r = 0.46, p = .0008), and under age five mortality (r = 0.48, p = .0004). Similar results were reported using 2019 data.

Utilizing 2021 data, a post hoc Tukey-Kramer test indicated a statistically significant pairwise difference between the mean neonatal mortality rates, mean infant mortality rates, and mean under age five mortality rates of nations requiring zero vs. two neonatal vaccine doses.

There was a statistically significant difference of 1.28 deaths per 1,000 live births (p < .002) between the mean infant mortality rates among nations that did not give their neonates any vaccine doses and those that required two vaccine doses.

Using 2019 and 2021 data, 17 of 18 analyses (12 bivariate linear regressions and six ANOVA and Tukey-Kramer tests) achieved statistical significance and corroborated the findings reported in our original study of a positive association between the number of vaccine doses required by developed nations and their infant mortality rates …

Further investigations of the hypotheses generated by this study are recommended to confirm that current vaccination schedules are achieving their intended objectives.”

Studies Refute Idea That More Vaccines Mean Better Health

The paper goes on to cite studies that question the idea that we can vaccinate our way to better health and lower mortality. For example:

• A 2012 scientific review5 in BMJ Open found that vaccines can have nonspecific effects that either increase or decrease mortality from infectious diseases that are not targeted by the vaccine.

There are also gender differences when it comes to how a given vaccine affects infant mortality, and the sequence in which vaccines are given can play a role as well. For example, nine studies found that infant girls were dying at higher rates than boys when the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) vaccine was given after a high-titer measles vaccine.

• A 2017 EBioMedicine study6 found that all-cause infant mortality in Guinea-Bissau more than doubled after DTP and oral polio vaccines were introduced.

• A 2018 study in the journal Vaccine also concluded that the sequence in which vaccines are given affects all-cause mortality.

Girls who received a live measles vaccine followed by a pentavalent vaccine (DTP + haemophilus influenza type B + hepatitis B) were significantly more likely to die from all causes within six months, compared with girls who received vaccines in the recommended (reverse) order (pentavalent first, then the live measles vaccine).

Catching up on missed pentavalent doses was also associated with higher mortality than simply skipping them. As noted by the authors, “It is assumed that providing missing vaccine doses will always leave the child better off than not providing them. This may be wrong.”

There are several take-homes from these studies. First, the more vaccines your child gets, the greater his or her risk of dying from any cause. Second, the timing of the vaccines can impact this risk.

Third, the gender of your child can make him or her susceptible to injury and death, and fourth, the sequence in which they receive the vaccines can also heighten or lessen the risk of death. That’s a lot of variables, yet our health authorities act as though one size fits all. The massive increase in vaccine doses on the childhood vaccination schedule also correlates with dramatic increases in noninfectious childhood diseases, including autism.7,8

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Comparison Study Reveals Disastrous Effects of COVID Shot

The second study I want to delve into here is a German study that compared outcomes between people who got the COVID shot and those who didn’t. The study was done by Andreas Hoppe, Ph.D., a mathematician and data analyst. For the past 16 years, he’s worked with medical systems biology modeling and patient data, among other things.

In 2022, the COVID jabbed were 18% more likely to get COVID than the unjabbed, and their infections were more severe. The jabbed also report being diagnosed with new chronic health problems at a rate 2.5 times higher than the unjabbed.

His 15-person team also includes scientists from other fields, as well as medical doctors. Hoppe described his team’s findings in an interview published on Manova,9 a German news site, July 21, 2023. Quotes cited below have been translated from German using the DeepL10 online translator. Here’s a quick summary of what they found after looking at two years’ worth of data:

During 2021, symptomatic COVID-19 complaints were higher in the control group than the jabbed group, but during 2022, the ratios of COVID infection in the two groups narrowed until, finally, the jabbed group were 18% more likely to get COVID
In 2022, the COVID infections experienced by the jabbed group were more severe than the control group’s
The rate of severe persistent symptoms of COVID was also 2.5 times higher among the jabbed than the unjabbed
The jabbed report being diagnosed with new chronic health problems at a rate 2.5 times higher than the unjabbed
Menstrual problems among women are four times more frequent in the jabbed group than the unjabbed group
There was no discernible benefit even among the most vulnerable

As noted by Hoppe, comparing a treatment group against an untreated control group is a basic scientific procedure that allows you to determine whether a treatment is useful and safe. Every COVID jab maker ditched this gold standard in late 2020, early 2021, by offering the real jab to everyone in the control group, for “ethical reasons.”

As a result, there’s no official data on outcomes, and our health agencies have further muddled the science by fiddling with the algorithms in our public and military databases to hide side effects.

How the Study Was Completed

Hoppe explained how the study was done:11

“Of course, we don’t have a double-blinded study here because people know whether they are vaccinated or not. But we have been able to collect a lot of data from unvaccinated people anonymously for this. This brings us a good step closer to answering the question of whether it was good to vaccinate in the first place …

A group of our team, consisting of therapists and physicians, created a questionnaire that collected an extremely large amount of data. The intake form alone asked about 40 questions, some of which included 40 listed individual complaints. In total, the intake sheet alone came up with 240 individual responses …

The regular questionnaire, which was answered every 14 days, also had this number of questions. So, over the course of two years, an immense amount of data has been created … We set the limit at six completed questionnaires in order to trust the data. Around 7,000 people have thus entered the data collection with their regular information since August 2021 …

The core question was: has a new complaint occurred in the past 14 days … although we deliberately did not restrict ourselves purely to complaints that were already known side effects. We included all possible types of complaints — from coughs, colds and hoarseness to strokes or other serious illnesses.”

Of the regular participants in the survey, 95% were unjabbed and 5% were jabbed. When asked how one can possibly compare 5% to 95%, Hoppe explained, “With around 400 vaccinated people, we still have a sufficiently large database. You could also take exactly this number from the unvaccinated, then the cohorts would be equal, but that is not necessary for a statistical test.”

Importantly, those who got the jab at the start of the study were quite healthy and very comparable to the unjabbed controls, so preexisting conditions cannot account for the large discrepancy in outcomes between the two groups. According to Hoppe:

“[COVID] vaccination was and is a disaster and not good under any circumstances: In all age groups, those vaccinated ended up worse off than the control groups. Not even among vulnerable, whom we also surveyed.”

If you’re wondering why I haven’t included a source link to the study, it’s because there is none. Hoppe doesn’t believe any of the scientific journals will publish it, so the data will be published as a book instead. His team is also considering further data collection, with a focus on infertility, which has skyrocketed around the world ever since the COVID jabs were rolled out.

Resources for Those Injured by the COVID Jab

Aside from autopsy assessments — detailed in “Study: 74% of Post-Jab Deaths Caused by the Shot” — case reports of harms and various other studies, things like job statistics, disability claims, life insurance claims and all-cause mortality statistics also tell us that the COVID jabs are having a devastating effect.12 All have skyrocketed since the introduction of these COVID jabs, not to mention the shocking emergence of “sudden death” of otherwise healthy people, including athletes.

If you got one or more jabs and suffered an injury, first and foremost, never ever take another COVID booster, another mRNA gene therapy shot or regular vaccine. You need to end the assault on your body.

The same goes for anyone who has taken one or more COVID jabs and had the good fortune of not experiencing debilitating side effects. Your health may still be impacted long-term, so don’t take any more shots.

When it comes to treatment, it seems like many of the treatments that worked against severe COVID-19 infection also help ameliorate adverse effects from the jab. This makes sense, as the toxic, most damaging part of the virus is the spike protein, and that’s what your whole body is producing if you got the jab.

So, eliminating the spike protein is a primary task to prevent and/or address post-jab injuries. Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine both bind to and facilitate the removal of spike protein, while proteolytic enzymes like lumbrokinase and nattokinase, taken on an empty stomach (between meals), appear to help degrade the spike protein. According to Dr. Peter McCullough,13 bromelain and curcumin14 can also do this.

For a comprehensive treatment plan, see the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) I-RECOVER protocol. It’s continuously updated as more data become available, so be sure to download the latest version straight from the FLCCC website at covid19criticalcare.com.15 Additional detox remedies can be found in “World Council for Health Reveals Spike Protein Detox.”

Posted in Children, Mortality, Vaccinations | One Comment »

Posted by: | Posted on: August 2, 2023

Infant Vaccines Linked to Increase in All-Cause Mortality, New Research Shows

© August 1, 2023 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc.
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Reproduced from original article:
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/infant-vaccines-all-cause-mortality

A new study finds developed countries requiring the most vaccine doses for infants have higher childhood mortality rates, contradicting assumptions that more vaccines equate to lower deaths. The data suggest unintended consequences may increase all-cause mortality.

By Angelo DePalma, Ph.D.

childhood vaccine mortality feature

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Developed nations requiring the most neonatal vaccine doses tend to have the worst childhood mortality rates, according to a peer-reviewed study published July 20 in Cureus Journal of Medical Science.

“Health authorities emphasize that vaccines save lives,” lead author Neil Miller told The Defender. “Yet our data suggests that when developed nations require two versus zero neonatal vaccine doses, or many versus fewer vaccines during infancy, there may be unintended consequences that increase all-cause mortality.”

Miller, director of the Institute of Medical and Scientific Inquiry in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has been researching this topic since the early 2000s. In a 2011 paper with the same co-author — Gary S. Goldman, Ph.D., an independent computer scientist — they showed that developed countries requiring the most vaccine doses for infants had the least favorable infant mortality rates.

In 2021, they replicated those results using updated data, and earlier this year, they responded to critics of their findings.

In their latest study, Miller and Goldman expanded the scope of their earlier analyses to consider the effects of two vaccines — hepatitis B and tuberculosis — both typically given soon after birth.

The study calculated the effect of these shots on mortality rates for neonates (up to 28 days post-birth), infants (up to 1 year old), and children under 5. Analyses were all based on separate data from 2019 and 2021.

Mortality data and vaccine schedules were collected from UNICEF, the World Health Organization and national governments.

Nations were categorized by the number of neonatal vaccine doses (zero, one or two) mandated for newborns to determine if statistically significant differences existed in mortality rates for the three age groups.

After applying standard statistical analyses to the data, the study found a strong association between vaccinations and rates of neonatal, infant and under-5 mortality for both years studied.

“Our findings would be considered moderate correlations which are statistically significant,” Miller said. The correlations are positive, meaning that the more vaccine doses given, the higher the mortality.

“In these circumstances health authorities expect to see negative correlations, that is, a decline in mortality with more vaccine doses. So, any statistically significant positive correlation is a genuine concern,” Miller said.

Miller calculated a highly significant difference of 1.28 deaths per 1,000 live births in the mean infant mortality rates between nations not giving their neonates any vaccine doses, and those requiring vaccination against both hepatitis B and tuberculosis.

For each reduction of six vaccine doses administered during infancy, the infant mortality rate improved by approximately one death per 1,000 live births.

A hallmark of good science is the good-faith openness to test one’s conclusions, a practice Miller and Goldman followed here. To validate their conclusions, the researchers applied 18 different statistical analyses to the data. This is like using several different camera angles to confirm whether a tennis ball hit the line or was out.

Seventeen of 18 statistical treatments confirmed the original conclusion that the more vaccines given, the higher the infant and early childhood mortality rates.

Preorder Now! ‘Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak’

Neonatal deaths and all-cause mortality

In most nations, more than half of all infant deaths (within the first year) occur during the neonatal period (the first 28 days of life), and about 75% of those deaths occur within one week after birth when hepatitis and tuberculosis vaccines are administered.

Deaths occurring during the neonatal period have a disproportionately high impact on the reporting of infant and under-5 mortality rates, but the longer after vaccination the deaths occur, the less likely physicians are to associate them with vaccines given right after birth.

“Hepatitis B and tuberculosis vaccines given shortly after birth, when the immune system is immature and the newborn’s weight is low, may increase vulnerability to serious adverse reactions and deaths that ultimately contribute to higher mortality rates moving forward,” Miller said.

Globally, the top causes of premature death in the under-5 population are premature birth complications, trauma during birth, pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria. These statistics are heavily skewed by developing countries, where hygiene, nutrition, medical care and record-keeping are not up to best-in-class standards.

In the U.S., accidents and homicides are the main causes of infant and early childhood mortality. The leading medical causes for death in infants and children under 5 are developmental and genetic conditions and the consequences of premature birth.

According to Miller:

“Premature birth and low birth weight are common causes of neonatal death, but since vaccines are administered within 24 hours of birth, when these factors are most relevant, it is possible that some of these deaths were precipitated by birth-dose vaccines.

“However, since cause-of-death classifications associated with infant vaccination do not exist, doctors and coroners are compelled to misclassify and conceal vaccine-related fatalities under alternate cause-of-death classifications.”

Relying on all-cause mortality instead of “vaccine-induced injury” — or some other subjective assessment of the cause of death — greatly reduces what is termed “diagnostic bias.”

While considerable uncertainty may exist regarding why someone died, the death itself is not in question.

Miller discussed some of these potentially confounding factors in an earlier paper on vaccines and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), published in 2021 in Toxicology Reports. That study identified SIDS and “suffocation in bed” as common misclassifications: of all reported SIDS cases post-vaccination, 75% occurred within 7 days after the shots.

What does it all mean?

Although using all-cause mortality data reduces many sources of bias, it considers only inputs and outputs, in this case, vaccine doses and death. It ignores everything that happens before the dose and between the shots and death.

This means some unknown factor may be at work causing vaccinated children to expire.

But the positive correlation between vaccine doses and mortality is most easily explained by the conclusion that the number of lives saved by preventing deadly infections is fewer than the lives lost from increased susceptibility to other serious health threats.

Miller’s study also found that vaccines administered shortly after birth correlate more strongly to infant mortality than to neonatal mortality.

This suggests that the negative effects of early vaccinations may be delayed, perhaps by predisposing children to adverse reactions to shots given later, or to other health threats.

Studies have shown that vaccinated low-weight infants have an increased risk of developing life-threatening apnea — sudden, unexplained breathing cessation, especially during sleep. In an earlier investigation of 30 SIDS incidents, the authors found that apnea preceded death by an average of eight weeks.

“This might explain why vaccines administered during the neonatal period are more highly correlated with deaths that occur in the post-neonatal period,” Miller said.

Miller concluded his study with a plea to health authorities worldwide to reconsider mandatory childhood vaccination schedules:

“Vaccine policymakers have an obligation to determine the full impact of their current vaccination schedules on deaths from any cause. More safety research is needed on the number of childhood vaccines that are administered concurrently, cumulatively, and the sequence in which they are given, to confirm they are providing the intended effects on child survival.”

Angelo DePalma, Ph.D.'s avatar

Angelo DePalma, Ph.D.

Angelo DePalma, Ph.D., is a science reporter/editor for The Defender.

Posted in Children, Mortality, Sleep, Vaccinations | No Comments »

Posted by: | Posted on: July 24, 2023

Antibiotics Linked to Increased Risk of Kidney Stones


Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/07/24/oral-antibiotics-and-kidney-stones.aspx
The original Mercola article may not remain on the original site, but I will endeavor to keep it on this site as long as I deem it to be appropriate.

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola     Fact Checked     July 24, 2023

oral antibiotics and kidney stones

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • Five classes of oral antibiotics have been identified as risk factors for kidney stones: broad-spectrum penicillins, fluoroquinolones, nitrofurantoin, cephalosporins and sulfas
  • The association is most pronounced among younger children, and remains statistically significant for up to five years after exposure, except for broad-spectrum penicillin
  • Between 1997 and 2012, the annual incidence of kidney stone disease rose by 16%. The highest increase was seen in 15- to 19-year-olds, among whom the incidence rate increased 26% per 5 years
  • Previous studies have found an association between oral antibiotics and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and colorectal cancer, likely due to disruption of gut microbiome
  • Fluoroquinolones, which are frequently prescribed for upper respiratory infections and urinary tract infections (UTIs) have been linked to an increased risk for aortic dissection (tears in the aorta), which can be fatal

According to research1 published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN) in 2018, oral antibiotics are a risk factor for kidney stones. Health records for 13 million children and adults in the U.K. were reviewed, showing that exposure to five classes of oral antibiotics were associated with kidney stones within three to 12 months post-use. The adjusted odds ratio of kidney stones was:

  • 1.27 for broad-spectrum penicillin
  • 1.67 for fluoroquinolones
  • 1.70 for nitrofurantoin/methenamine
  • 1.88 for cephalosporins
  • 2.33 for sulfas

The association was most pronounced among younger children and remained statistically significant for up to five years after exposure, with the exception of broad-spectrum penicillin. The authors concluded that:2

“Oral antibiotics associated with increased odds of nephrolithiasis [kidney stones], with the greatest odds for recent exposure and exposure at younger age. These results have implications for disease pathogenesis and the rising incidence of nephrolithiasis, particularly among children.”

Kidney Stones in Children Are on the Rise

If this link is true, then we’d expect to see rising rates of kidney stones in young patients, and that’s precisely what we’re seeing. As reported by NBC News, July 8, 2023,3 data show kidney stones are “now occurring in younger people, particularly among teenage girls,” and “diets high in ultraprocessed foods” and “increased use of antibiotics early in life” are thought to be among the key contributors to this trend.

Between 1997 and 2012, kidney stones during childhood doubled.

According to research4 published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology in 2016, between 1997 and 2012, the mean annual incidence of kidney stone disease across age groups increased 1% annually, from 206 to 239 per 100,000 persons.

The highest increase was seen in 15- to 19-year-olds, among whom the incidence rate increased 26% per 5 years. Within this age group, incidence was 52% higher among girls. In men, kidney stones became more common after age 25. According to the authors:5

“These changes in incidence resulted in doubling of the risk of nephrolithiasis during childhood and a 45% increase in the lifetime risk of nephrolithiasis for women over the study period.”

Oral Antibiotics Associated With Inflammatory Bowel Disease

As noted by the JASN authors,6 previous studies have found an association between oral antibiotics and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which is thought to be due to a disruption of gut microbiome.

In May 2022, research7 linking oral antibiotics and IBD was presented at the Digestive Disease Week conference in San Diego, California. Here, the researchers analyzed the health records of more than 2.3 million older adults, aged 60 to 90, who were part of the Danish National Patient Register and the Danish National Prescription Register.

On average, use of antibiotics was associated with a 64% increased risk of developing IBD, and the risk increased with additional doses.8 Compared with those who had taken no antibiotics in the previous five years:9

  • One prescription for antibiotics was associated with a 27% increased risk of IBD
  • Two prescriptions increased risk by 55%
  • Three prescriptions increased risk by 67%
  • Four prescriptions increased risk by 96%
  • Five or more prescriptions increased risk by 236%

Adults who had been prescribed antibiotics one to two years prior to IBD diagnosis had the highest risk. And, while all classes of antibiotics were associated with increased IBD risk, fluoroquinolones, which include brand names Cipro and Levaquin, had the strongest association.10

Interestingly, a very recent study that was just published found that niacinamide may be very useful in the treatment and prevention of IBD11 by converting to NAD+ as a cofactor to produce more ATP in the mitochondria. I have written two reviews that discussed the many other benefits of niacinamide to increase NAD+.

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Fluoroquinolones Linked to Fatal Heart Condition

Fluoroquinolones, which are frequently prescribed for upper respiratory infections and urinary tract infections (UTIs) have also been shown to harm your heart. In December 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a safety announcement12 about fluoroquinolones after four studies linked the antibiotic to an increased risk of tears in the aorta (aortic dissection), which can be fatal.13

The aorta is the main artery in your body supplying oxygenated blood to your circulatory system. The artery comes from the left side of your heart and runs down the front of your backbone. The review by the FDA found fluoroquinolone antibiotics increase the risk of rupture following an aortic aneurysm (i.e., enlargement of the aorta to more than 1.5 times its normal size).

The finding led the FDA to caution against the use of fluoroquinolone antibiotics in those at risk unless there are no other treatment options available. Specifically, the antibiotic should not be used by:

  • Those who are at risk for aortic aneurysm
  • Those suffering peripheral atherosclerotic vascular disease or high blood pressure
  • The elderly
  • Those with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome or Marfan syndrome (genetic disorders)

Antibiotics Linked to Colorectal Cancer

Researchers have also linked the use of antibiotics to an increased risk of colorectal cancer. As reported by Live Science in 2014:14

“… researchers looked at the medical records of more than 22,000 colorectal cancer patients in the United Kingdom, and followed them for an average of six years … The researchers compared the amount of antibiotics the patients had taken at least six months before being diagnosed with cancer, to the amount of antibiotics taken by a group of about 86,000 healthy people.

After controlling for known risk factors for colorectal cancer — including obesity, diabetes, smoking and alcohol consumption — the results showed people who had taken antibiotics, including penicillins, quinolones and metronidazole, were 8% to 11% more likely to develop colorectal cancer … possibly through the effects of the drug on colon bacteria …”

A 2016 study15 also concluded that use of antibiotics was associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer, especially when used frequently, and research16 published in 2017 found that women who had used antibiotics for two months or more were at an increased risk of developing colon polyps, which can be a precursor to colorectal cancer.

Those who used the drugs for a total of at least two months in their 20s and 30s had a 36% increased risk of polyps compared to those who did not, and women who used them for at least two months in their 40s and 50s had a 69% increased risk.

Antibiotics Fuel Chronic Disease by Decimating Your Microbiome

In the article I wrote in February of this year “The New Endangered Species: The Human Gut Microbiome,” I reviewed the documentary film “The Invisible Extinction,” which highlights the work of microbiologists Dr. Martin Blaser and Gloria Dominguez-Bello, who are investigating the links between chronic diseases and the loss of bacterial diversity in the human gut.

Overuse of antibiotics is a major driver of this loss. Elective C-sections and processed foods also contribute to the destruction of our microbiome. According to research published in the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine in 2018,17 Americans have already lost half of their microbial diversity, which is why the risks of antibiotics must be carefully weighed against the benefits prior to use.

Many ‘Health Foods’ Also Contribute to Kidney Stones

As mentioned, diet can also play a significant role in kidney stone development, and processed foods aren’t the only culprits. Oxalate (oxalic acid with calcium attached) account for about 80% of all kidney stones, and high-oxalate foods such as spinach, Swiss chard and beet greens are touted as “superfoods.”

Another high-oxalate food is almonds, which you can easily “overdose” on if you’re eating bread made with almond flour or drinking almond milk, or if you’re on a keto or paleo diet, as they both tend to rely heavily on almonds. Other foods high in oxalate include peanut butter, wheat bran, potatoes, rice bran and dark chocolate.

If you’re prone to kidney stones, these are all foods that need to be avoided as much as possible. High-oxalate foods can also contribute to many other troublesome health problems, as discussed in my December 2022 interviewed with Sally Norton, author of “Toxic Superfoods.”

For example, aside from calcium oxalate kidney stones, other symptoms you might experience if you’re exposed to excessive amounts of oxalate include:

Itchy rashes Interstitial cystitis (frequent urination and bladder pain)
Poor or slow wound healing Frail skin that bleeds easily (as your connective tissues are being damaged)
Joint pain Osteoporosis (as the oxalates are extracting minerals from your bones)
Calcium deposits Digestive problems
Neurological problems ranging from bad mood and klutziness to tremors Poor sleep
Rheumatologically muscle pains like fibromyalgia Vision problems such as near-sightedness, cataracts and poor night vision
Dental plaque or tartar

The Antidote to Oxalates

Now, there is an “antidote” to oxalates that can be helpful if you’re prone to kidney stones. That antidote is citrate. I take citrates every day: magnesium citrate, calcium citrate and potassium citrate, typically with meals. This way absorption of any oxalates in the meal will be impaired. Aside from citrate supplements, raw grass-fed milk, sardines and lemon juice are great options. As explained by Norton in our December 2022 interview (see link above):

“You definitely need calcium and magnesium with high oxalate meals … The citrates in the minerals are especially important for … getting over the chronic illness of having an oxalate overload in your body. So, if you’re past the age of 10 and grew up on standard foods, you’ve got some degree of deposits in your bone marrow, your joints and glands …

The biggest biohack is calcium [citrate] because calcium promotes the clearing [of oxalate]. Some people can’t even tolerate the calcium because their body is so eager to upchuck this mess from its tissues that calcium gives it too much permission.”

Protect and Support Your Microbiome

Seeing how destruction of your microbiome with antibiotics can contribute to kidney stones, this is another area to pay close attention to. Consider the following to protect your microbiome as much as possible:

Do
Eat plenty of fermented foods — Healthy choices include lassi, fermented grass-fed kefir, natto (fermented soy) and fermented vegetables.
Take a probiotic supplement — If you don’t eat fermented foods on a regular basis, a probiotic supplement can be useful.
Boost your soluble and insoluble fiber intake, focusing on vegetables and seeds, including sprouted seeds.
Get your hands dirty in the garden — Exposure to bacteria and viruses in soil can help strengthen your immune system and provide long-lasting immunity against disease.
Open your windows — Research shows opening a window and increasing natural airflow can improve the diversity and health of the microbes in your home, which in turn benefit you.18
Wash your dishes by hand instead of in the dishwasher — Research has shown washing your dishes by hand leaves more bacteria on the dishes than dishwashers do. Eating off these less-than-sterile dishes may decrease your risk of allergies by stimulating your immune system.19 Additionally, many dishwasher detergents have dangerous chemicals so if you do use detergent be careful to select a nontoxic one.

Avoid
Antibiotics, unless absolutely necessary. If you do use them, make sure to reseed your gut with fermented foods and/or a high-quality probiotic supplement.
Foods that are high in oxalates.
Conventionally-raised meats and other animal products, as CAFO animals are routinely fed low-dose antibiotics.
Chlorinated and/or fluoridated water — This includes during bathing or showering.
Processed foods — Excessive sugars, along with otherwise “dead” nutrients, feed pathogenic bacteria. Food emulsifiers such as polysorbate 80, lecithin, carrageenan, polyglycerols, and xanthan gum may have an adverse effect on your gut flora.
Agricultural chemicals — Glyphosate is a widely used herbicide that and could potentially kill many of your beneficial gut microbes if you eat foods contaminated with it.
Antibacterial soap, as it kills off both good and bad bacteria and contributes to the development of antibiotic resistance.

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