The Story About Fast-tracked Swine Flu Shot Fiascos - and Other Vaccination Fiascos to Come
(Ed note: My locally famous father was one of the thousands of naïve, trusting victims of the 1976 national media campaign that hyped a new, experimental, fast-tracked Swine Flu vaccine. Dad obediently followed the advice of his physicians, who likely never acknowledged their role in the fiasco. My father acquired the classical, vaccine-induced, permanent AND incurable Guillain-Barre Syndrome in both of his hands. For the remaining decades of his life, he never went fishing again.)
In the fall of 1976, dozens of Americans died within 48 hours of receiving a fast-tracked swine flu vaccine that had been promoted by the Gerald Ford administration. To allay the public fears that threatened to unravel a heavily-promoted, CDC mass inoculation program, President Gerald Ford rolled up his shirtsleeve and received his shot in front of the television cameras.
More than 40 million others followed his lead. But two months later, the campaign was abruptly stopped: More deaths had followed and hundreds were reporting serious side effects, including paralysis.
Today, Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton are “courageously” volunteering to take any or all of the many fast-tracked coronavirus vaccines, on nation-wide television to defuse the natural hesitance about Big Pharma’s experimental, fast-tracked vaccines. (No mention has been made if these vaccinology-illiterate presidents were also willing to force their young relatives or grandchildren to also get vaccinated with fast-tracked vaccines.)
On March 24, 1976, President Gerald Ford (one of the “dimmest bulbs” ever to occupy the US White House) announced a fast-tracked national swine flu immunization program in the White House Press Briefing Room.
President Gerald Ford being vaccinated (directly into his triceps muscle!!) with the 1976, fast-tracked Swine flu vaccine on October 14, 1976. The person with the toxic syringe was vaccinology-illiterate White House physician Dr William Lukash – who likely never actually vaccinated any patient in his entire professional life.
When Mike Wallace and CBS’s 60 Minutes (from 1979) Still Had Guts - and television journalists weren’t yet totally controlled by Big Pharma)
Here is the link to the important “60 Minutes” Mike Wallace program about the 1976 Swine Flu Shot Fiasco with one of the “last of the truly investigative journalists” who are no longer allowed to tell unvarnished truths on Main Stream television”
Remember Vaccine Rule # 1: NEVER allow any vaccinology-illiterate healthcare practitioner to inject into your muscles ANY vaccine (ESPECIALLY those with DNA or RNA in them) whose ingredients have not been thoroughly, independently tested. For the future health of each of us AND the planet, ALL vaccines need to be tested for:
- short-term safety;
- long-term safety;
3) short-term efficacy; AND
4) long-term efficacy.
NO VACCINE that has been fast-tracked by any of the many corrupted pharmaceutical entities (like the Big Pharma-controlled government agencies like the NIH, the CDC, the NIAID, the FDA) or ANY of the hundreds of the for-profit Big Pharma corporations that have achieved essentially total control over Big Media, Big Government and Big Medicine.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
In the fall of 1976, dozens of Americans died (and thousands were permanently disabled) within 48 hours of receiving the experimental swine flu vaccine. To allay the public fears that threatened to unravel the mass inoculation program, President Gerald Ford rolled up his shirtsleeve and received his shot in front of the television cameras.
More than 40 million naïve Americans followed his lead. But two months later, the campaign was abruptly stopped: More deaths had followed and hundreds were reporting serious side effects, including permanent, incurable paralysis.
"We're all reviewing the process that took place in 1976 to understand the lessons learned," said Richard Besser, acting director of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). "We may, as a nation, be faced with a similar decision' about how to address a flu pandemic.
If there was a single factor behind the debacle three decades ago, it was the speed of the decision making, fueled by a political climate in which dissenters were chastised and punished, as government records show.
"They moved too quickly. Mistakes were made," said Dr. Harvey Feinberg, director of the Institute of Medicine, who investigated the scandal for the federal government. "People had vivid memories of the 1918 flu epidemic; of young people dropping dead (actually, young, experimentally-vaccinated-upon military recruits – GGK) dropping dead. It colored everything."
Production and field-testing of the vaccine was rushed. Among other problems, the single-shot doses that were produced did not work on children. Vaccine production was shut down by the time the error was caught, and it was too late to produce second doses.
"The first thing we learned is this must be done in a step-by-step fashion. There are points along the way that you need to build in where people can say 'yes' or "no'" to allow for adjustments, said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "In 1976, it was like a choo-choo train."
The Fast-Tracked Swine Flu Affair of 1976
Just weeks after health officials had identified the swine flu strain at Fort Dix, an Army training center in New Jersey. It was largely contained there, and within months -- before the first shot was given -- it was thought by most medical officials to no longer be a pandemic threat.
The production of the vaccine was also fast-tracked. And when hundreds of Americans began developing Guillain-Barre Syndrome, the neurological disorder that can cause paralysis, experts blamed the speedy development.
Dr. Robin Robinson, a director at the Department of Health and Human Services who oversees pandemic responses, said that even as officials take steps to develop a swine flu vaccine with sufficient doses for every "man, woman and child," those plans would be dialed back if the pandemic "fizzles out."
But watchdog groups fear a repeat, particularly because laws passed after the terrorist and anthrax attacks of 2001 allow for accelerated production and field tests of a vaccine when an emergency is declared. On April 26, the Obama administration declared the spread of swine flu a public health emergency.
"We don't want them unnecessarily speeding up field tests," said Barbara Low Fisher, president of the non-profit National Vaccine Information Center, which frequently criticizes vaccine policy. "There are many reasons to be concerned if they take this path."
Federal Drug Administration spokeswoman Mary Long said it was too early to say whether a vaccine would be developed on an accelerated timetable, "but there is flexibility" to do so, given the public emergency declaration.
Even if the production is not accelerated, Wenzel and others say decisions about vaccine production, distribution and risks need to be clearly spelled out to the public.
"Talk to Americans like you are sitting with them at the kitchen table," he said. "Disclose the risks."
Warren Cikins, a Fairfax County resident who believes his life was dramatically altered by the last swine flu scare, gives the same advice.
Just three weeks after receiving his shot 33 years ago, Cikins suffered his first in a series of autoimmune disorders, temporary blindness in his right eye, which lasted for a year. That was followed by permanent back problems, along with colitis, he said.
Cikins, a former county supervisor, believes his ailments were related to the shots, although he was never able to prove that.
This time around, Cikins said, the government should disclose the risks of getting vaccinated balanced against those of getting the flu.
"I am angry," he said. "They knew a certain percentage of us would suffer serious repercussions, and they withheld this from us. They need to let people make an informed decision."
The federal government ultimately reached court settlements with hundreds of victims who said the 1976 vaccine caused neurological problems. In its final reckoning, the government counted 25 deaths associated with the shots.
In the medical community, however, there is some disagreement about the rate of adverse reactions. Wenzel said neurological disorders showed up at a rate seven times higher than with regular flu vaccines.
Dr Gary G. Kohls lives in the USA and writes a weekly column, entitled Duty to Warn, for the Duluth Reader, Duluth, Minnesota’s alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns deal with the dangers of American Friendly Fascism, corporatism, Oligarchy, militarism, racism, malnutrition, and Big Pharma’s over-drugging and over-vaccinating agendas as well as other movements that threaten the environment, democracy, civility, health and the sustainability and livability of the planet and the future of the children.
His Duty to Warn columns have been re-published around the world for the last decade. They deal frequently also deal with Big Vaccine’s over-vaccinating, Big Medicine’s over-screening, over-diagnosing and over-treating agendas
Many of Dr Kohls’ columns have been archived at a number of websites, including:
http://duluthreader.com/search?search_term=Duty+to+Warn&p=2; http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/gary-g-kohls;
http://freepress.org/geographic-scope/national;
https://www.lewrockwell.com/author/gary-g-kohls/?ptype=article; and https://www.transcend.org/tms/author/?a=Gary%20G.%20Kohls,%20MD