World media and government science advisors acknowledge the limitations of the regulatory process for mRNA vaccination.
We shouldn’t understate the naivete of the NZ government, media, and scientists during the pandemic. The tabloid-style stories of severe Covid outcomes, the authoritative voice of Dr. Anthony Fauci (who has financial conflicts of interest), the allure of the word vaccine, and the exaggerated death toll in foreign lands, all combined into a convincing call for immediate and coercive action. Yet behind the stories, the highly profitable pharmaceutical PR system was running at full steam playing on the fear factor. New Zealand fell head over heels in love. Love knows no reason and that was certainly the case here.
New Zealand is a long way away from the rest of the world. We have a tradition of proud independence and self-sufficiency, but we rolled over and played follow the leader. No one in a position of influence struck a note of caution, especially not our Prime Minister. We instituted the largest public borrowing program in New Zealand history and spent it on a US mega corporation with a poor safety record and a history of punitive malpractice judgements. The government instituted saturation advertising of vaccine safety and efficacy, and then followed up with mandates, sackings and social exclusion. Our media shouted down those few asking questions.
Times have changed.
The prestigious and conservative Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has aired concerns about poor regulatory decisions at the US Food and Drug Agency (FDA) about booster shots. They join a growing international chorus of highly qualified and influential voices.
On April 3rd in an opinion piece entitled “FDA Shuts Out Its Own Experts in Authorizing Another Vaccine Booster” Dr. Marty Makary, a surgeon and public policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine writes:
The FDA last week authorized Americans over 50 to get a fourth Covid vaccine dose. Some of the FDA’s own experts disagreed, but the agency simply ignored them.”
Eric Rubin, editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine (arguably the world’s most influential medical journal) and a member of the FDA advisory committee on vaccines told CNN last month:
I haven’t seen enough data to determine whether anyone needs a fourth dose”
Dr. Cody Meissner, also a member of the FDA vaccine advisory committee and chief of pediatric infectious diseases at Tufts Children’s Hospital agreed saying:
the fourth dose is an unanswered question for people with a normal immune system”
A third member of the committee, Dr. Paul Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia went further. He told the Atlantic magazine that he advised his 20-something son to forgo the first booster.
The WSJ article described the effect of boosters as fleeting, mild, and short-lived.
Two top FDA officials, Marion Gruber, Director of the FDA Office of Vaccine Research and Review and her deputy Paul Krause, quit the FDA in September last year complaining of undue pressure to authorize boosters and a lack of data to support their use.
Unbelievably, the US Centre for Disease Control (CDC) rubber stamped the FDA decision to approve a second booster without even convening its panel of external independent vaccine experts.
Safety testing of mRNA vaccines is inadequate, incomplete, and biased
The WSJ article sounded a note of alarm saying that neither the CDC nor the US National Institute of Health (NIH) had made a priority of studying vaccine complications. Moreover their VAERS data collection and analysis process is incomplete and inadequate. In other words, the safety investigation to date of adverse effects of mRNA vaccination is incomplete and potentially misleading.
The central question raised by the WSJ opinion piece is why wouldn’t the US regulators wish to undertake accurate and complete investigation of adverse effects of mRNA vaccination? Have pharmaceutical interests been able to influence decision-making at the FDA to their own commercial advantage at the expense of safety considerations?
A leading authority the British Medical Journal agrees, on March 16 it published an article entitled The illusion of evidence based medicine in which it said:
Evidence based medicine has been corrupted by corporate interests, failed regulation, and commercialisation of academia.”
The lessons for NZ are obvious
We have stifled debate and slavishly followed FDA advice. Now there is a need for reevaluation and debate. We have travelled a long way down a one way street, but it appears to be a dead end. The triumphant articles published about a survey of vaccine resistant people born in Dunedin was a low point in uncritical NZ mainstream media publishing. We have to regain an objective voice.
A paper published on April 5th in the New England Journal of Medicine found that any measurable protective effect of the fourth inoculation (which in any case, it found, is very small in absolute terms) disappeared after just 8 weeks. Moreover a paper in the Lancet on April 8th admits that boosters carry a risk of additional side effects. Both these papers skirted the obvious safety questions in favour of weak praise for vaccine orthodoxy. In contrast the WSJ article asked the important question:
Who is actually getting serious about measuring the extent of adverse events, rather than continuing to urge uncritical acceptance of a largely ineffective vaccine?
So far New Zealand media have steered clear of questions. Dr Ashley Bloomfield has refused to institute mandatory reporting of adverse events following mRNA Covid vaccination and he has excelled at denying vaccine exemptions to those injured by the first shot. Silence is no longer tenable, in actuality it never was. Questions have to be asked. No ifs or buts. Overseas media outlets of the thinking kind are waking up.
If we can’t face debating rationally with our critics, we are a nation drifting onto the rocks of ignorance and prejudice.
Time for us to wake up.
Guy Hatchard PhD was formerly a senior manager at Genetic ID a global food safety testing and certification company (now known as FoodChain ID)
Important correction and apology for Editors re: WHO Hepatitis Alert press release. The UKHSA has issued a statement saying none of the children in the UK suffering from a novel form of Hepatitis have received an mRNA vaccination. Although the medical discussion in our press release calling for investigation was correct from a precautionary standpoint, it is clear that mRNA vaccination has now been ruled out as a possible causal factor. We apologise for any unnecessary concern our release might have caused.
