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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF: RAYMOND OBOMSAWIN
PREFACE
ABSTRACT

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF:

RAYMOND OBOMSAWIN

Raymond Obomsawin was born in the United States on August 16, 1950 and holds dual US and Canadian citizenship. He married Marie-Louise in August of 1976, and they have three, vibrant children: Sunrise, Sunbeam and Sundown. These children--two are still in their teens, and one is twenty-one--have never received the prescribed regimen of childhood vaccines, and due to a healthful lifestyle have exhibited total immunity to the diseases that are common to the childhood years. (Time and again they've been physically exposed to those ill from some of these very diseases.)

Dr. Obomsawin holds over two decades of cross-cultural experience--both in North America and internationally--in the primary disciplines which impact on human bio-social development. He holds a Baccalaureate Degree in Health Education and Communications, Masters Degree in Development Education, and PhD with concentrations in Health Science and Human Ecology.

He is currently serving as President of the Circle of Nations Institute of Life Sciences &Sustainable Development an international R&D institution legally established in Hawaii, and has previously served as: Manager of Overseas Operations for CUSO (Canada's largest International Development NGO); Evaluation Analyst in the Canadian International Development Agency; Evaluation Manager with the Department of Indian Affairs & Northern Development; Executive Director in the California Rural Indian Health Board system; Director of the Office for National Health Development NIB (Now Assembly of First Nations); Founding Chairman of the National Commission Inquiry on Indian Health; and Supervisor of Native Curriculum for the Government of the Yukon Territory.

Some key highlights of Dr. Obomsawin's professional experiences and achievements follow:

• Chaired and served on regional, national, and international committees holding development related policy, management, and research mandates.
• Advised senior decision-makers--in both public and NGO sectors--providing critical analyses and recommendations on international development policies, project, and programming initiatives in health, education, agriculture, nutrition, agro-forestry, environmental sustainability, and multi-year country planning.
• Spearheaded the first world-wide inter-sectoral review funded by a Western government on Indigenous Culture Based Knowledge Systems in Development. The study elicited the involvement of public and NGO sector bio-social development, technical and research institutions in all world regions; and entailed exploratory field missions to the Andean and Upper Amazon regions of South America, as well as East Africa, South and Southeast Asia.
• Organized, administered, and executed socio-politically sensitive evaluation studies on complex bio-social service interventions, as well as educational and development initiatives internationally, eg, as a team member evaluated: UNICEF's Integrated Services Project which served over 900 villages in Northeast Thailand; and other development projects at the Asian Pacific Development Centre, Malaysia; Asian Institute of Management, and The Woman for Woman Foundation, Philippines; and Institute of Social and Administrative Studies, University of the South Pacific, Fiji.
• Coordinated (in Canada and Norway) the initial development of Terms of Reference for a comprehensive evaluation of the United Nations World Food Program--operant in 90 countries under the trilateral sponsorship of Canada, Norway, and the Netherlands.
• Spearheaded the establishment and chaired Canada's National Commission Inquiry on Indian Health which served as a national--grass-roots mandated--indigenous health policy development body.
• Presented--in plenary session--the paper "From Selective to Indigenous Medicine: Repossessing the Ancient Wisdom,' at the International Development Research Centre and National Institutes of Health sponsored International Workship on Traditional Health Systems and Public Policy.
• Presented the keynote address "Re-Discovering Our Roots: The Ancient Wisdom of Sustainable Societies" at the Community Sustainability Resource Institute's 3rd Annual Conference, USA.
• Experienced multi-cultural exposure including private, voluntary, and or public sector interchange in over 25 countries on five continents, as well as Australasia and select Pacific island nations, and
• Produced academically and professionally over 75 articles, reports, proposals and publication documents.

PREFACE

TO THE THIRD EDITION

(MAY 1998)

Dr. Raymond Obomsawin, PhD

This extensive report focuses on the current massive international effort to administer artificial immunization to the children of the world. The actual launching of the World Health Organizations's Universal or "Expanded Program on Immunization" (EPI) occurred in the year 1983. Its overriding purpose was to ahcieve maximum immunization coverage of the world's children. Under the influence of the WHO--which is a United Nations created and sustained multilateral agency--all national political leaders (then representing 158 nation states) made a commitment to achieve 80% immunization coverage in their respective countries by the year 1990. In that year the WHO set a new standard for the governments of the world, ie, a more intensified goal of achieving 90% immunization coverage by the year 2000. As a review document, this report poses an open challenge to the scientific, developmental, and humanitarian basis of this global public policy, in turn urging national governments to establish a far more rational, effective and harmless inter-sectoral approach in seeking to ensure that the children and families of our world community enjoy lifelong natural immunity to infectious diseases.

The research covered in this document tackles the issue of universal immunization from a very broad perspective, thereby going well beyond the more obvious realities of its being a "medical racket" hatched by a pharmaceutical industry beholden to its investors, and religiously dispensed and defended by allopathic medicine men. Through employing trans-disciplinary and integrative analyses it draws upon wide-ranging disciplines and fields of thought as it considers the purposes, policies and practices surrounding mass immunization. The effort to research and pull together this report occurred while I was serving as an Evaluation Analyst in the Evaluation Division at the Canadian International Development Agency. My initial research began early in 1991, contextual to conducting a field evaluation of the EPI component of a major UNICEF project then affecting several hundred communities in Northeast Thailand. The report is being distributed and or sold in its present form under the auspices of a non-profit public health advocacy organization, the Health Action Network Society, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. (As author, I will receive no royalties from either its sale or distribution.)

Since the first edition came out in the early 1990s, the many serious issues and concerns which are raised in this study have not by any means been properly addressed or resolved. The medico-industrial complex has neither wavered nor modified its posture of providing a white washed endorsement and promotion of what is largely an unproven technological fix of dubious origin, which carries its own seeds of disease and death. For the most part, the same can be said for the public sector policies whereby government such as that of the United States place themselves in an untenable conflict of interest position by playing a direct role in the development of new vaccines, the active promotion and enforcement of mandatory artificial immunization, and the monitoring of vaccines for adverse side effects thereby setting its own criteria and degree of liability in the compensation of victims. (Only one in four vaccine injury victims, who apply for compensation under US law, are compensated for their often catastrophic vaccine injuries. Government qualifying rules require that the onset of adverse symptoms must have occurred within four hours of the administration of the vaccine. Despite these severe limitations in legal liability, since passage of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, up to February 28, 1998, compensatory payments have totalled $871 million 800 thousand.)

Sad to say, the public sector's world-wide reliable monitoring for adverse side effects (not excluding that of the US Government) does not appear to have noticeably improved from its abysmal state since the initial issuance of this report. As well, multilateral development agencies such as UNICEF continue to push this unproven and essentially spurious technology on a largely uninformed and intimidated public throughout the Developing World nations. On a positive note, within First World nations public awareness of the problems and dangers associated with mass immunization programs appear to have broadened and intensified. Vehicles of the information revolution, such as the Internet have helped considerably. Even physicians themselves are at long last waking up to and advocating the truth, e.g., in France, 200 doctors have called on their govemement to immediately halt the hepatitis B vaccine program because of the many cases of neurological disorders and multiple sclerosis being caused by this vaccine, and in Switzerland, 500 doctors continue to oppose their govemement's MMR vaccine campaign.

Lawsuits for vaccine damages have as well become increasingly common. In the summer of 1997, various news reports in the Commonwealth countries reported that Dawbams law firm in Norfolk, England is carrying forward a major class action lawsuit for widespread damages arising from Britain's 1994 MMR campaign. In a public statement issued by this law firm it is affirmed that:

We know of hundreds of children who were fat and well before being vaccinated, but who are now chronically ill or seriously mentally or physically disabled. Of some 600 cases: the most common are autism (202); serious digestive problems (110); epilepsy (97); hearing and vision problems (40); arthritis (42); behaviour and learning problems (41); ME (24); diabetes (9); paralysis (9); blood disorders (5); brain damage (3); and death (14).

Bolstering the firm's case is the fact that the affected children's pediatricians and neurologists continue to state in British radio and TV documentaries that the children's varied injuries were in fact caused by administration of the MMR vaccine.

Additionally, growing numbers of affected parents and professionals have been instrumental in the emergence of multiple research and activist organizations such as the Immunization Awareness moni Society (IAS), New Zealand; Vaccine Awareness Network (VAN), Australia; Association for Vaccine Damaged Children (AVDC), Canada; Global Vaccine Awareness League (GVAL), California; and the National Vaccine Information Center (AWIC) in the Greater Washington DC area. This phenomena tells us that there are still some heroic and honest hearted people left in our world who are willing to stand together for the right, and make personal sacrifices of their time, resources, and reputations in the face of the combined efforts of government and industry to both slander and silence them. In fact, in recent weeks a prominent member of the IAS has been in touch with me, and shared information which included the fact that a 1992 survey by their organization found an almost 500% greater incidence of asthma among New Zealand children who've received routine childhood vaccines, than among those who haven't.

It is also of interest that on September 13-15, 1997, more than 500 parents, physicians, university scientists, health officials, legal experts, ethicists, journalists and activists from 34 states and five countries convened for the First International Public Conference on Vaccination. This historic session was organized under the auspices of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC). According to information provided by the NVIC, the Conference inter alia examined issues such as vaccines and infant dealth; biological mechanisms of vaccine injury; vaccines and learning disorders; hepatitis B vaccine injuries; viral vaccinces and chromosome damage; polio vaccine contamination; and vaccine regulation. A number of the more important observations made by the presenters at the conference further corroborate and complement the alarming findings that are raised in my report. Some key observations follow:

• The "P" in the old DPT vaccine is so highly toxic to the human brain that the whole cell pertussis vaccine should be immediately withdrawn from the market.
• Vaccines which cause brain inflammation and severe brain damage, such as DPT, are also biologically capable of causing milder forms of brain damage, such as learning disabilities and Attention Deficit Disorder.
• Live viral vaccines are implicated in brain injuries, such as the MMR vaccine which is now linked to autism, while the same vaccine has never been fully investigated for its long term effects on human immune and neurological systems.
• Live viral vaccines may also be implicated as a cause of genetic damage in humans.
• There are many reports of adults in Canada, who have suffered central nervous system and immune dysfunction or death following hepatitis B vaccination.
• Polio vaccines contaminated with monkey viruses may have caused the development of HIV- I and rare forms of bone, brain and lung cancers in humans.
• Children injured by vaccines and other toxic insults, have disturbances in biochemistry such as imbalances in fatty acid metabolism and neurologic dysfunction such as autistic spectrum disorders and seizure disorders.
• Data from New Zealand and several European countries suggests that early childhood vaccination has caused an increase in juvenile diabetes.
• A combination of multiple vaccinations and multiple exposures to environmental and chemical toxins may cause immune and neurological dysfunction in the general population like that being suffered by Gulf War veterans.
• Government health officials in federal health agencies have withheld information about vaccine risks from the public.

The general consensus among research scientists in attendance was that current immunization programs are causing injuries and deaths because of inadequate vaccine safety research, testing, manufacturing and monitoring for long term effects. What's new? (Conference proceedings are available to the public from the National Vaccine Information Center: #206-512 W. Maple Avenue, Vienna, VA, USA, 22180, Telephone: 1-800-909-SHOT.)

It also bears mentioning that I recently came across a June, 1995 interview with an old acquaintance, the veteran physician to the Aboriginal People of Australia, Dr. Archie Kalokerinos. The interview was published in the International Vaccination Newsletter (Krekenstraat 4, 3600 Genk, Belgium). Archie is in many ways a man deserving of great recognition for his brave struggle with the establishment forces in his country, who attempted to block his efforts to expose and reverse the massive death rates (as high as 50%) being caused by mass immunization in a population at great risk to its dangers. In this interview he states that it was this "extreme hostility" that:

. . . forced me to look into the question of vaccination further, and the further I looked the more shocked I became. I found that the whole vaccine business was indeed a gigantic hoax. Most doctors are convinced that they are useful, but if you look at the proper statistics and study the instances of these diseases you will realize that this is not so . . .

My final conclusion after forty years or more in this business [medicine] is that the unofficial policy of the World Health Organization and the unoffical policy of the 'Save the Children's Fund' and ... [other vaccine promoting] organizations is one of murder and genocide. . . . I cannot see any other possible explanation. . . . You cannot immunize sick children, malnourished children, and expect to get away with it. You'll kill far more children than would have died from natural infection.

Although the public sector in Canada hired a biomedical protagonist of artificial immunization to attack and undermine the original findings and observations contained in this document, nothing was effectively challenged or disproven in this determined effort, nor has there been any challenge from any other quarter since. Furthermore, I've received some very good news from a reliable source in Montreal, Canada, that a number of practicing physicians in that city have ceased using vaccines in their practice after having read this report. I fully trust that it will prove of lasting value in informing and influencing other professionals, parents and interested lay persons who may be honestly seeking to explore both sides of the controversy for the first time.

Finally, it is my sincere hope that the re-issuance of this document will provide a considerable source of valuable documentation and commentary for those who are at the forefront in the battle for biomedical truth and right in a world largely beholden to the bottom line of capitalists who value their profits above seemingly everything else. In the end, the truth with prevail.
 

"Discovery Consists In Seeing
What Every body Else Has Seen
And Thinking What Nobody
Else Has Thought . . . "

Albert Szent-Gyorgi

ABSTRACT

Introduction

Despite the widely accepted view that millions of children now enjoy freedom from various life threatening infectious diseases, and thus improved health, because of highly effective and safe vaccine programs, at the outset of the 90's an Evaluation of Canada's International Immunization Program Phase I (CIIP--I), concluded that in fact there are "many pressing questions which remain to be investigated within EPI (Expanded Programs of Immunization) and Primary Health Care." A range of critical issues relative to Universal Childhood Immunization (UCI) and EPI programs have been examined and responded to in the main report. These follow:

The Unresolved Issue of UCI/EPI Effectiveness and Impact

The verifiable measurement of UCI/EPI effectiveness and impacts, has been pervasively deficient in the major immunization programming investments made by The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)--approaching $150 million--in the 1986-1991 time period. The aforenoted CIIP--I evaluation study further noted that the actual impact of UCI/EPI on mortality levels remain essentially undetermined and unsubstantiated. To quote: "at present it appears that there is no conclusive evidence on the impact of immunization on child mortality from all causes. . . . It may be that EPI's effect is merely to bring about replacement mortality, whereby children . . . succumb to other diseases instead. The uncertainty over the impacts of EPI remain a major question in PHC [primary health care] programming." In light of the compelling need for the proper and periodic evaluation of the impacts of publicly financed programs, this deficiency remains a very serious one.

Unexpected and unexplainable outbreaks among "immunized" persons, have led immunologists to now seriously question whether their current understanding of what constitutes reliable immunity is in fact trustworthy. For example, the admission is being made that immunity (or its absence) cannot be determined reliable on the basis of history of the disease, history of immunization, or even history of prior serologic determination. There is as well an emerging body of mathematically based epidemiological research which suggests significant problems with UCI/EPI targeted efforts for the control and eradication of measles in the Developing World, where in spite of high measles immunization coverages, measles epidemics are being reported with surprising frequency.

Vaccine failures in the Oman polio epidemic could not be explained by failures in the cold chain, nor on suboptimum vaccine potency. It was further observed that the efficacy of OPV in inducing humoral immunity has been lower than expected, and that primary reliance on routine immunization may be inadequate to achieve the goal of eradicating polio by the year 2000. (Similar polio outbreaks have been occurring in other highly vaccinated populations, e.g., the Gambia, Brazil, and Taiwan.)

The Unresolved Question of Potential Adverse Effects

Another basic issue that has never been addressed in UCI/EPI programming is the need for the effective monitoring and evaluation of potential vaccinal adverse effects. Past estimates on the degree of adverse reactions are both unreliable and optimistic since actual monitoring efforts have generally been negligible. Furthermore, many physicians and nurses are not cognizant of the importance of reporting untoward reactions, and or remain unaware of their clinical features. Overall, the evidence strongly suggests that the chronic underreporting of vaccine-induced morbidity, disability, and mortality is in fact the norm, whether in the Developing or Developed Worlds. The first definitive policy statement on this issue by the World Health Organization (issued on April 1991) indicates the WHO's recognition of the significance of this problem. It should be considered as a priority issue in future UCI/EPI research, monitoring and evaluation.

The Unresolved Issue of Long-Term Adverse Effects

A minority of qualified scientists are now postulating that the full vaccine schedule as routinely employed in early childhood vaccination inevitably weakens the immunologic system of the child, leaving this system crippled in its ability to protect the child throughout life, and in turn opening the way for other infectious diseases due to such immunologic dysfunction. It is also being postulated by such scientists that mass immunization is directly contributing to the now widespread escalation of various auto-immune, degenerative disease and allergic conditions.

The Unresolved Issue of Safer and More Effective Alternatives

Sufficient evidence now suggests that an increasing awareness of the potential dangers that are being increasingly associated with mass vaccination programs, will serve to precipitate public demand for greater research investments in the further exploration and testing of promising and danger-free alternative prophylactic methods. A considerable body of literature on lifestyle (especially nutrition) based prophylaxis and treatment for both bacterial and viral infectious diseases suggest that this is the optimum alternative to the artificial immunization dilemma.


The Unresolved Question of Ethics

UCI/EPI--as presently conceived and executed--represents two major departures from the time honoured ethics and traditions of medicine:

• that all forms of treatment should be individualized, particularly when prescribing or injecting substances which carry the potential for disease, disablement, and death; and
• the objectively informed patient (or parent) should always have absolute freedom to accept or reject any given measure or therapy, and have reasonable opportunity to consider alternatives.

Conclusion
The foregoing observations indicate that there is a genuine need for world governments to reconsider their policies with respect to universal childhood immunization, ensuring particular focus on clarifying the vital issues of the short and longer term impacts of UCI/EPI, and the pressing need to establish far safer and more effective alternatives.

 

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