Michael Belkin wrote:
Lisa Koenig - Producer
John Donvan - Correspondent
Ted Koppel - Moderator
Subject: Nightline 10/14/99 "Dangerous Vaccines?"
Dear Sirs,
Your October 14th segment on vaccine risk/reward was scientifically
deficient and misleading.
You should treat vaccine risk in an impartial and scientific manner,
rather that simply being a disinformation conduit for vaccine
manufacturers and quasi-government health officials who have credibility
problems and extreme financial conflicts of interest. I suggest
investigating the following:
1) Consult a high-caliber Neurology textbook on the subject of
Post-Vaccinal Encephalomyelitis. You will discover that severe
neurological reactions to vaccination are an acknowledged scientific
fact and have been observed since the inception of mass vaccination
programs. Those who suggest that encephalitic and convulsive reactions
to vaccines are simply a "coincidence" betray their own ignorance of
neurology and the history of vaccination and/or their own financial
self-interest in declaring vaccines "safe."
2) Your lead pro-vaccine "expert" Dr. Katz committed perjury before the
House Government Reform Committee several months ago when he
emphatically insisted twice that the whole-cell pertusis vaccine is not
given in this country anymore (I was there). Katz, as one of the
godfathers of vaccination certainly knows that the whole-cell pertussis
vaccine is scandalously still used in combination vaccines, despite
twenty-year-old scientific studies showing that it has a high incidence
of severe adverse reactions. In fact, Katz has written a medical journal
article on the "Need for Combination Vaccines" (look it up on Medline)
so he can hardly claim ignorance on the issue. His pertusis vaccine
claim was exposed as a lie in the hearing by CDC officials who were
questioned on the matter by Chairman Dan Burton. If Dr. Katz is willing
to deliberately lie under oath to Congress (or worse yet, if he is
ignorant about subjects on which he has written medical journal
articles), then what business does he have on your program and why
should anyone believe anything he says? He has destroyed his own
credibility and you are doing a disservice to your viewers by presenting
him as an authoritative scientific expert. Katz also has extreme
conflicts of interest because he receives funding from vaccine
manufacturers, so anything he says about vaccine reactions is suspect --
like that of any source whose livelihood depends on repeating the
official party line of those writing his paycheck.
3) As for the matter of doctors threatening to take babies away from the
parents if they do not get a vaccine, I have taken a case report of
exactly such a situation from a mother who has a Master's Degree in
Public Health. Her child had severe convulsions after receiving the
hepatitis B vaccine on each of the first two doses. She refused the
third dose and her doctor threatened to call the State Health Department
and have the child taken away by the State if she didn't get the third
shot. She relented, the child had convulsions again and is now severely
autistic. You are being extremely deceptive if you assure your viewers
such things do not happen in the US.
4) As for the risk of the hepatitis B vaccine which is given by mandate
in this country -- official CDC and FDA statistics show that in the 0-1
age group, babies are 20 times more likely to report a hepatitis B
vaccine adverse reaction than to report a case of the hepatitis B
disease. One third of the 25,000 hepatitis B vaccine adverse reaction
reports are serious (death, hospitalization, disablement). My
5-week-old daughter died hours after receiving her second hepatitis B
vaccine. Brain swelling (encephalitis) was observed at her autopsy. I
was the first witness on the victim's panel in the May 18th
Congressional hearing into the hepatitis B vaccine. My testimony is
attached as an adobe acrobat file. As a former Salomon Brother's
proprietary trading strategist and a current advisor to many of the
largest financial institutions in the world, I have the requisite
statistical background to interpret scientific data. Please read my
testimony, as I have studied the FDA hepatitis B adverse reaction data
and present the results in my official written Congressional transcript.
The Rotavirus vaccine was just withdrawn from the market after about 100
adverse reaction reports. The hepatitis B vaccine has generated 250
times more adverse reactions -- and yet the FDA, CDC and American
Academy of Pediatrics still recommend this vaccine for newborns. This is
a major public health scandal that you should investigate. Hepatitis B
vaccine manufacturers are facing criminal lawsuits in France.
In conclusion, I strongly urge you to revisit the vaccine safety issue
from a more informed viewpoint and impartial manner. The October 14th
segment was an unscientific whitewash of the issue of vaccine
risk/benefit issues. ABC viewers deserve better than the fraudulent
scientific claims of perjurers and medical prostitutes who have a vested
interest in preserving public ignorance of the risk of vaccine adverse
reactions. You may indirectly cause more deaths and neurological damage
in babies and infants by erroneously assuring parents that vaccines do
not provoke such adverse reactions.
Michael Belkin
President,
Belkin Limited