America’s patrons of the theatric and visual arts, the lovers of film, dance and music, are among the nation’s most diehard advocates for liberty, self-expression, and art’s civil rights to challenge the failures and wrongs in the social and political status quo. During every decade, during every generation, many of our most memorable artistic achievements and performances are recognized as such because they raise relevant and timely insights that stir controversy. Projected on the screen, films can magically crack the veil of our collective illusion, the mythic, wonderland fantasy of self-deception and ignorance perpetuated by governmental and corporate powers to manipulate a mentally compromised mainstream media. By their very nature, documentary films offer an alternative story to the scripted propaganda streaming across our TV screens and monitors. Frequently they adventure into a deeper reality that so often underlies the mere posturing and veneer of half truths and lies that take hold of society and masquerade as fact. For this reason, artistic truth and censorship are a horrible marriage and have never been suitable bedfellows.
The recent controversy over the acceptance and rapid withdrawal of the documentary film, Vaxxed: From Coverup to Catastrophe, at Manhattan’s Tribeca Film Festival, is an alarming case of censorship to protect the guilty and demonize a messenger of warning, the film’s director Dr. Andrew Wakefield.[1] Popular scientific consensus has yet to tackle the huge uncertainty gap to identify the most probable causes of autism. Legitimate medical protocol and integrity demands honest debate of all the scientific evidence, regardless of its undesirable conclusions. Yet the CDC and Big Pharma adamantly refuse to engage in such a debate and review. Therefore the expurgation of Wakefield’s film is a dangerous step closer to widespread medical McCarthyism.
What is equally disturbing is the mass media’s outcry to denounce a film before its release. In unison, a barrage of press simultaneously condemned the festival’s co-founder, actor Robert De Niro, for his decision to screen Vaxxed at Tribeca. Within a 72 hour period we witnessed ABC, CNN and MSNBC, the UK’s Guardian, Time Magazine, the Washington Post and the LA Times, the New York Times, Forbes, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Rolling Stone, Variety and many others ridiculing De Niro’s original decision then celebrating its withdrawal two days later. From pariah to messiah, De Niro caved into powerful private interests. It should be comforting to know that all of these publications and news bureaus are on the ready to report simultaneously en masse as this story develops.
What we do know is that De Niro experienced formidable opposition to screening Wakefield’s film. In a private email sent to many of us who oppose the CDC’s vaccination schedule and who recognize the serious scientific shortcomings in the body of studies the CDC relies upon to make its unsound claims concerning vaccine safety and efficacy, Robert Kennedy Jr wrote that De Niro informed him that he was “under huge pressure to not show the film.” No mention is provided about the source of this pressure. However, knowing a little bit about the film’s real story will bring the culprits to light.
A thorough review of the mainstream media’s news bits reveals a remarkably similar editorial script. The media’s central message frames Dr. Wakefield as a “discredited” British gastroenterologist who fabricated research in order to mislead the world that the MMR vaccine causes autism. For this reason, we are persuaded to blindly accept that Vaxxed is simply another example of misinformed anti-vaccine lunacy that will endanger the lives of children across America. Therefore, we should ignore the film and save our money, because our shining experts sitting in the high towers at the CDC have already concluded that vaccines do not cause autism. It is better to go back to sleep and not worry about Vaxxed’s medical crime story. On the other hand, this is a story that has likely contributed to the approximately 3.5 million American children and adults with autism today.
In fact, none of these journalists or reporters even know the film’s entire storyline themselves. It has never been publicly released. Any journalists who have seen it would have done so illegally and in violation of the confidentiality agreements between Tribeca and the producers of Vaxxed.
What is rather extraordinary and beyond coincidence is that all of these publications convey identical messages and even share the same quotes and sequential ordering of content and statements. For example, why is a statement by film director Penny Lane, a relatively unknown person with no association whatsoever to vaccine science and policy, notably mentioned in a significant number of these articles? How does this person’s vitriolic comments against Vaxxed end up appearing in The Guardian, New York Times, CNN, Vanity Fair and other news reports all at once? The original script(s) was evidently composed by an unnamed third party(s) and distributed throughout these publications for personalized editing and immediate release. Nevertheless, the message remains the same. And even more curious, none of this press accurately addresses the film’s central story.
During the past eight years, we have directed and produced three award winning documentaries about vaccine injury, autism, and the serious flaws and failures in CDC-approved vaccine science. These films, however, have focused more upon the medical science that challenge vaccine safety and efficacy rather than the rampant corruption in our federal health agencies in Washington. There was no outcry over these films being screened at film festivals across the nation, although considerable venom came forth from the pharmaceutical paid trolls in the blogosphere and the Sci-copaths in the cult of evidence based medicine. While our films are explicitly anti-vaccination, Vaxxed isn’t. So what might account for this massive media outrage?
Vaxxed is not anti-science. Nor is it anti-vaccine. Instead it presents unquestionable evidence of corruption and fraud that is anti-CDC. The film endangers the professional credibility and integrity of the nation’s most powerful federal health agency as well as the private vaccine industry’s profits that the CDC protects. If it were simply a visual screed of voices opposing mandatory vaccinations, the documentary would have its burst of limited popularity and quickly be forgotten as so many anti-vaccine films are. Vaxxed, on the other hand, incriminates federal officials and scientists at the highest levels, including former CDC Director Julie Gerberding, with the intentional coverup and manipulation of the agency’s own research data to continue its public relations charade that vaccines under no circumstances are associated with the US’s increasing autism crisis in our midst.
According to Dr. Stephanie Seneff at MIT, the autism rate can be projected to reach 1 in 2 boys by 2025.[2] In the meantime the CDC has preferred to seal its eyes and ears to this trend. Instead it scrambles to find any other culprit or explanation besides the toxic stew of chemicals and viruses contained in the 10 million vaccinations given annually to approximately 4 million American babies under one year of age.
To sustain the nation’s vaccination rates, to preserve corporate profits, and to keep Americans convinced that vaccines will keep their children protected and alive, the CDC requires a dynamic marketing and public relations apparatus. And the tentacles of the government’s health agencies are today wrapped around mainstream media and the entertainment industry. Unknown to the general public and many in the medical profession is the existence of the CDC’s sophisticated public relations and media operations. Tax dollars are spent to train journalists about framing medical news and articulately contest controversial stories that challenge the federal agencies’ and pharmaceutical industry’s national health and vaccine agendas. This broad network of journalists are employed by mainstream media companies, magazines and newspapers, and freelancers and provide the CDC with a daunting army of writers, reporters, columnists and newscasters to commence its bidding. Threats, fear mongering, and outright hatred written towards vaccine opponents are commonplace mainstream journalistic schemes. What they also share in common is either complete ignorance or denial of the science challenging cherished pro-vaccine beliefs.
When we try to understand how and why so many mainstream journalists, writers and television and radio broadcasters can recite the identical mantra about vaccine safety, promulgate identical storylines and share a similar disdain and animosity towards those who question the CDC’s claims that deny vaccines’ contribution to autism, we can look at the joint CDC-Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) fellowship program. Scores of health editors, writers and reporters throughout the nation’s leading mainstream media corporations and publications—MSNBC, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle to name a few on the fellowship’s webpage—have passed through the CDC’s Atlanta campus for a week’s worth of intense instruction in national public health policy. According to the AHCJ’s fellowship information, journalists are indoctrinated in conventional federal health policies regarding epidemiology, global disease prevention, pandemic flu preparedness, vaccine safety and autism. They also receive training in “navigating databases such as the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey and CDC publications” to assist their research and writing. Afterwards they return to their companies to propagandize the CDC’s ideological stance on vaccination and receive notices and scripts about stories to report and release.[3]
For example, during the 2004 National Influenza Vaccine Summit, then director of Media Relations at the CDC and spokesperson for the National Immunization Program, Glen Nowak, presented the agency’s “Seven Step Recipe for Generating Interest In and Demand for Flu Vaccination.” His Powerpoint presentation outlines a concise public relations campaign, along a timeline covering the flu season, for journalists and media agencies to follow in order to increase flu vaccination rates. The outline includes specific periods during the flu season when the media is recommended to induce and increase public fears about the pending dangers of influenza and even possible death. In defense of the CDC’s PR efforts, Nowak publicly stated on National Public Radio that the vaccine “manufacturers were telling us [CDC] that they weren’t receiving a lot of orders of vaccine for use… It really did look like we needed to do something to encourage people to get a flu shot.”[4]
Five years later, during the H1N1 swine flu non-epidemic, we observed and reported how the CDC’s flu propaganda outline and storyline recommendations continue to be put into practice to the letter by mainstream news sources such as the New York Times, Washington Post and almost every large television news network.[5]
Yet that is not all. The CDC’s control over the media runs deeper.
During a recent interview on the Progressive Radio Network, award-winning investigative medical journalist Celia Farber introduced an organization that has remained relatively hidden from the public’s view: Hollywood Health and Society (HHS), headquartered at the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communications.[6] According to its website, the organization “provides entertainment industry professionals with accurate timely information on health storylines.” Farber describes HHS as “both horrendous and fascinating.” It delivers consultation, writers and scripts for television, Hollywood films and documentaries. And who offers this expert consultation? HHS’ top funders, including the CDC, the National Cancer Institute, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and the world’s largest private financial source for vaccine development and propaganda the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
HHS’s mission states:
In partnership with our funding agencies, we offer several resources, including quick facts, briefings and consultations with experts, case examples, panel discussions about timely health issues, a quarterly newsletter with health updates called “Real to Reel,” and an expanding list of tip sheets written specifically for writers and producers. Tip sheets are available on the CDC website, as well as the NCI website. The broad range of topics includes influenza, toxic mold, smallpox, cancer, autism, motor vehicle crashes, obesity, adolescent health issues, antibiotic resistance, clinical trials and much more.[7]
Consequently there is no surprise genie behind the media undertaking a collective effort to denounce the Vaxxed documentary. It also explains why these writers in unison condemned an unreleased film. What responsible reporter, with any degree of journalistic integrity, would judge a film based upon a three minute trailer? Yet that is exactly what occurred.
If we can agree that the mainstream media’s blitzkrieg against Vaxxed is at least in part a CDC PR campaign then it would account or it being so widespread. In addition to the CDC, and perhaps even the State Department over concerns that Vaxxed might pose a threat to the country’s national security interests (aka corporate interests and profits) there are also conflicts of interest running throughout the Tribeca Film Festival itself. Gary Barnes at TruthKing.com has identified the festival’s deep ties with Big Pharma.
De Niro’s co-founder of Tribeca is real estate investor Craig Hatkoff, the brother-in-law of billionaire equity moghul Alan Patricof. Patricof is the founder of Apax Partners, one the world’s largest private equity firms that invests heavily in pharmaceutical and biotech corporations, many focusing on vaccines, vaccine delivery systems and the lucrative business of contracting vaccine clinical trials. Patricof’s son, Jonathan, happens to be the President of Tribeca Enterprises, which owns the Tribeca Film Festival.
Among the festival’s largest sponsors is the Alfred Sloan Foundation, which has awarded the festival $500,000. Vaccine fanatic Bill Gates is also a contributor.[9] A bigger smoking gun is the presence of Dr. Peter Kim, former president of Merck’s Research Laboratories who was directly responsible for the launch of the companies HPV Garadsil vaccine, Zostavax to prevent shingles, and Paul Offit’s Rotateq vaccine for rotavirus, sits on the Foundation’s board of trustees.[10] He is therefore intimate with Merck’s current president of Vaccines, Julie Gerberding, who is featured as a principal in the CDC’s actions to cover-up knowledge of the MMR vaccine and thimerosal’s association with autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders.
Again, Vaxxed is not anti-vaccination. Both Wakefield and the film’s producer Del Bigtree have repeatedly stated on record they are not opposed to the principles of vaccination. These are the side issues the media ignores, but again this is not what the film is about.
The real story being censored by the federal agencies and the pharmaceutical industry centers upon Dr. William Thompson, a former Merck scientist who became a senior epidemiologist at the CDC’s Immunization Safety department in 1997. In 2014, after a conflict of conscience, Thompson came forth with material evidence proving that the CDC has known for almost fifteen years that a causal relationship exists between the MMR vaccine, the vaccine preservative thimerosal (which is still included in the flu vaccine administered to pregnant women and children) and autism. This information was shared during numerous taped conversations with molecular biologist Prof. Brian Hooker, who in the past has testified before Congress and has diligently attempted to get the CDC’s scientific data through repeated Freedom of Information Acts. In addition, Thompson turned over 10,000 copied pages he privately retained of research documents, statistical data, meeting notes, internal CDC emails and correspondence to Congressman Bill Posey under legal whistleblower protection. He admitted that many of the most damning documents and data records were destroyed in his presence by his colleagues to assure they never reach the light of day. At the time, he agreed to testify under oath and confess his personal participation in perpetuating the CDC’s frauds and lies before Congress.[11]
A recent New York Times article identified Thompson as a “former center employee.”[12] Since it has become standard protocol at the Times to get its facts wrong, Thompson in fact remains at the Center. Following his blowing the whistle, he was put on administrative leave of absence, chastised for breaching CDC protocol and threatened with termination. While on leave, Thompson shopped around for a university position. During a recent Progressive Radio Network conversation with Prof. Hooker, he believes the CDC realized Thompson was far more dangerous outside the Immunization Safety Office. He would have had more freedom to further expose the CDC’s obstruction of justice and the extent of scientific fraud that could jeopardize the entire agency and perhaps warrant prison sentences for many of its former and current rank and file officials. The pharmaceutical industry would also suffer dramatically. If the media had reported on the urgently important story that Vaxxed recounts, there would be nationwide public outrage and vaccine rates would likely plummet. Consequently, the CDC retained and awarded Thompson with a $24,000 retention bonus and promotion. Today he remains silent somewhere within the CDC’s halls of deceit, scandal and vice.[13]
And Congressman Posey? After pleading to colleagues on the floor of Congress to launch an investigation into the volumes of evidence convicting the CDC with widespread fraud and corruption, nothing was done. Legislators are too indebted to the pharmaceutical lobby. They would prefer autism rates to increase because there is far too much profit to be gained by those funding their campaigns to stay in office.
Prof. Hooker is also familiar with censorship and has personally encountered CDC vengeance. In 2014, he submitted a research paper based upon the CDC data provided by Thompson to the peer-reviewed journal Translational Neurodegeneration. Using the CDC’s own research, the paper shows a 350% increase of autism among African American boys who received the MMR vaccine according to the national vaccination schedule compared to boys who received it after 3 years of age. The journal approved it for publication but immediately confronted CDC demands for its removal. Hooker’s paper was suspended and never published due to fabricated claims of a conflict of interest.[14]
Although parents are educating themselves increasingly about vaccine risks to their new born infants and children, the vast majority of Americans retain an unswerving faith in our medical authorities. They cant imagine that our federal health agencies would ever permit our children to be exposed to something unproven or known to be dangerous. Our media repeatedly parrots CDC claims that vaccines, even when multiple injections are given on a single day, are safe and do “not cause any chronic health problems.” Further, they claim that the ingredients contained in vaccines are either harmless or found in such miniscule quantities that they pose no health risks. Unequivocally parents are led to believe there is no association between vaccination and the rising incidence of autism spectrum disorder. Anyone who questions the safety of vaccines is immediately labeled as irresponsible or a quack who subscribes to pseudoscience.
On the US government’s website Vaccine.gov, we read that “a vaccine must go through extensive testing to show that it works and that it is safe before the FDA will approve it.”[15] The Thompson-CDC story presented in Vaxxed shows this to be a patent lie.
The William Thompson revelations are vaccine industry’s smoking gun that many physicians, scientists, and parents of neurologically impaired children have suspected for a couple decades. Although the release of documents to Congress reveals corruption at the highest levels at the CDC, it also further confirms previous known evidence of administrative cover-ups, manipulation of research data, threats and deceit, contracting a felon, and pressure upon medical journals to publish falsified studies that are now embedded throughout the CDC’s immunology and vaccination division.
Two important examples relate directly to falsified peer-reviewed studies in prominent medical journals that are repeatedly cited to discredit vaccine-autism associations. Both cases were reviewed in Congressional subcommittee hearings and top CDC officials were interrogated and reprimanded. Today in retrospect, and with nothing changing over a decade in the CDC and now thousands of documents turned over by Thompson, we know for certain that CDC officers, including Julie Gerberding and the CDC’s current National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities director Coleen Boyle, dodged Congressmens’ direct questions.
In June 2000, a group of top federal scientists and health officials from the CDC, the FDA, the British Health ministry and representatives from the pharmaceutical industry gathered for a secret, embargoed meeting convened by the CDC at the Simpsonwood retreat center in Norcross, Georgia. The conference reviewed the findings of a large epidemiological study that showed a direct correlation between the ethylmercury preservative thimerosal, then used in most common vaccines and the alarming increase in autism cases. A transcript of the meeting revealed a cold-blooded cover-up of the scientific evidence. During the discussions, CDC epidemiologist Dr. Tom Verstraeten stated, “I was actually stunned by what I saw,” citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between Thimerosal and speech delays, attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism. According to the transcript, Dr. John Clements, then the vaccines advisor at the World Health Organization, stated in the that “perhaps this study should not have been done at all.”[16] Subsequently the CDC conducted a series of further studies to manipulate the data were conducted to whitewash in order to “rule out” thimerosal’s link to autism. We are told that the original data has been “lost” and can’t be replicated.
Dr. Poul Thorsen is a Danish scientist who coauthored 36 CDC studies, two of which are widely cited to disprove an autism-vaccine link. From 2004 to 2010 Thorsen laundered over $1 million in federal grant money allocated for research. The studies regarding the MMR and thimerosal have now been thoroughly debunked after independent analysis and represent a classic case of scientific fraud. Thorsen is currently a fugitive. Attempts by the Department of Justice and FBI to extradite him have been continuously thwarted by the CDC and Thorsen continues to walk openly as a free man.[17]
Although ethylmercury, or thimerosal, has been removed from the majority of vaccines given to children, it continues to used as a preservative in influenza vaccines given to children and pregnant mothers. Therefore, this threat has not disappeared completely. Aluminum compounds, on the other hand, continue to be used widely in vaccines as adjuvants. There is a large body of biological and chemical literature and science showing clearly both toxins’ association with abnormal neurodevelopment.
A 2004 study conducted by Northwestern University Pharmacy professor Richard Deth and researchers from the University of Nebraska, Tufts and Johns Hopkins University found that Thimerosal and other vaccine toxins disrupt the biochemical process of methylation in the human body. Methylation plays a significant role in normal DNA function and neurological growth in infants and children. The group’s findings suggest that toxicants introduced through vaccinations contribute to conditions such as autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.[18]
Alarming health consequences of aluminum were reported in a 2011 study conducted by immunologists at the University of British Columbia. The study revealed that rates of autism spectrum disorder among children are greater in countries where children are exposed to the highest amounts of vaccine aluminum. The authors noted “the increase in exposure to Al [aluminum] adjuvants significantly correlates with the increase in ASD [autism spectrum disorder] prevalence in the United States observed over the last two decades”. A second UBC study published in a 2014 issue of Immunotherapy discusses aluminum’s neurotoxic effects the central nervous system. This research identifies aluminum as a prime trigger for autoimmune and inflammatory responses, altering genetic expression and contributing to neurodevelopmental disorders.[19]
Even with all this evidence, mass media continues to parrot the CDC’s mantra that the vaccine-autism debate has ended. If we believe this, then no further research is necessary; in fact the CDC remains steadfast in its position to put up obstacles to prevent any follow up studies to be conducted. Only a thorough house cleaning of the pharmaceutical shills dominating the CDC’s administration and policy making can bring this house of cards down. Vaxxed is an exceedingly important step in that direction.
Totalitarian states are more than structures of governance ruled over by narcissistic, psychopathic despots. These states appoint very bright people, often geniuses, into high positions of authority in order to keep the regimes’ propaganda and lies alive for an uninformed public. They also require an obedient mass media apparatus of crony journalists and writers who can counter and discredit oppositional voices and groups on rapid notice. Sadly this is the state of today’s American medical establishment that no longer tolerates dissention and alternative science that challenges its cherished dogma. And this is mostly clearly observed in the federal protection of bad vaccine science. This suppressive edifice of institutional scientific denialism is unlikely to disappear anytime in the near future. Only an informed and better educated citizenry motivated to express public indignation will lead to efforts to hold every federal health official accountable.
Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries. Dr. Gary Null is the host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on nutrition and natural health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including Autism: Made in the USA and Silent Epidemic: The Untold Story of Vaccination.
NOTES
[2] http://www.anh-usa.org/half-of-all-children-will-be-autistic-by-2025-warns-senior-research-scientist-at-mit/
[3] AHCJ-CDC Health Journalism Fellowships. http://healthjournalism.org/prof-dev-fellowships-details.php?id=27#.Vv6y0KvrbzI
[4] Richard Gale and Gary Null. “The Public Relations Machine for the Vaccine Complex.” Progressive Radio Network, October 7, 2009
[5] Ibid.
[6] Celia Farber Interview, Progressive Radio Network. March 29, 2016
[7] www.HollywoodHealthAndSociety.org
[8] “Connection to Big Pharma and Vaxxed Being Pulled Revealed.” https://truthkings.com/really-pulled-vaxxed-tribeca-movie-festival/
[9] “Sponsors of the Tribeca Film Festival Revealed.” https://truthkings.com/sponsors-tribeca-film-festival-revealed/
[10] Peter Kim, Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_S._Kim
[11] Brian Hooker Interview. https://prn.live/progressive-commentary-hour-03-29-16/
[12] “Pulled from Festival, Anti-Vaccination Film Will Run in Theater,” New York Times, March 30, 2016 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/movies/pulled-from-tribeca-film-festival-vaccination-film-vaxxed-will-run-in-theater.html
[13] Brian Hooker interview, op. cit.
[14] Ibid.
[15] www.Vaccine.gov
[16] http://www.robertfkennedyjr.com/articles/forbes.082215.html
[17] https://sharylattkisson.com/researcher-who-dispelled-vaccine-autism-link-most-wanted-fugitive/
[19] Shaw, Christopher A, Dan Li, and Lucija Tomljenovic. “Are There Negative CNS impacts of Aluminum Adjuvants Used in Vaccines and Immunotherapy?” Immunotherapy 6, no. 10 (2014): 1055-071. Accessed November 17, 2015. doi:10.2217/imt.14.81.