“Do the Terraneans still practice child labor under oppressive conditions?” inquired the other commissioner.
“At present, one hundred million child and adolescent laborers on this planet are made to work in toxic tobacco farms, gold mines, and everything in between.”
They walked on. From somewhere above, a woman threw garbage from a window, and scavenging pigs and dogs rushed in. “The city is completely infested with rats, Your Graces,” observed Aratta after they passed great many of them. “Even hospitals are crawling with them.”
They were now strolling along a foul-smelling creek full of debris and refuse. Where the stream retreated, it left oily green puddles bubbling with miasmatic, stenchy gas. Around them, the air was dark from the smoke belching from factory chimneys. And through the haze, they made out in the distance tanneries, bone mills, and gasworks.
“To avoid financial loss, diseased meat was made into sausages,” explained Aratta as they walked by a food stall laden with piles of pickled herrings approaching putridity. “To make a shilling, no ploy was too small, no ruse too trivial.” He smiled grimly. “They mixed gypsum or chalk with flour, blended pepper with pounded nutshells, and milk may have come from diseased cows covered with sores.” His eyes gleamed with irony. “Free market dynamics at their finest.”
“Indeed,” said one the commissioners dryly.
“Your Graces, those vermin-infested cities were breeding grounds for diseases. Coupled with a compromised immune system of the malnourished, thousands were dying of typhoid, typhus, cholera, and other illnesses. Things were to transform in the decades to follow.
“Over the strong opposition of slumlords, the government began to do away with overcrowded housing, and owners were forced to make alterations to unlivable tenements. Vermin-infested cellars were shut. Cities constructed proper sewage systems and provided clean, chlorinated water. On top of which, toilets facilitated a sanitary disposal of human waste. Toxic-emitting factories were pushed outside the residential areas. The volume of food inspections increased. Pasteurization of milk became standard. And they stopped the usage of formaldehyde to prevent souring.
“Subsequently, the number of those dying of scarlet fever, whooping cough, and typhoid plummeted. By the early 1940s, deaths from typhoid fever had become exceedingly rare. Scarlet fever death rates hit bottom, even though a segment of the population is still, unknowingly, colonized with the bacteria to this day.
“Your Graces,” stated Aratta, “it is this array of sanitation measures that was ‘the world’s most triumphant achievement in medicine and public health.’”
Chapter 41
Undisclosed Location, Off-World, the Commission Building
Those in attendance rose up and bowed as all the seven commissioners took their seat.
The commissioners were scheduled to attend one of the most important sessions of the hearing. However, the Nature Survey Group was not quite ready for them, and so they had a bit of time on their hands.
As a group, they decided to take part in a short session of some mild interest.
“Always looking for a shortcut.” Chuckling, the presiding chair wagged his finger at the Terranean woman standing in front of the bench. “Always looking to bend nature around you.” He peered down at the handful of people in the room. “All right, let us take a peek at this.” He laid out some papers.
“Your rationale is clear,” the chief commissioner opened. “Everything else being equal, who would want to have one’s child experience a disease, even one as mild and innocuous as chicken pox, let alone as exhausting and prolonged as whooping cough? More significantly, who wants to risk infrequent but all too real possible complications such as pneumonia, rarer yet encephalitis, and rarer yet death?
“Your record suggests that vaccines at the very least prevent the more severe expressions of certain diseases for the vast majority of people for a number of years. Some deaths have been dodged. Some cases of debilitating complications have been avoided.”
The presiding chair went on, “I confess our interest has less to do with the state of physical health of your people and more to do with examining how you, Terraneans, tackle complex adaptive systems, in this case, the immune system of one’s body and that of the community as a whole.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” said a slim woman in a black pantsuit standing on the hexagonal bamboo floor. She was the only Earth person to be a government official. Sandra Davis worked for one of the US agencies. The commissioners did not bother to learn the name of the agency. They were told she represented the prevailing policy and mindset of those in charge. For their purpose, this sufficed.
The chief commissioner said, “Let me first state the facts as I understand them.” He looked down at a sheet of paper one of the aides had provided him with. “You inject your newborns with noninfectious hepatitis B virus surface antigen along with genetically engineered saccharomyces cerevisiae cells. At the same time, you inject aluminum hydroxide, disodium phosphate dihydrate, and sodium dihydrogen phosphate dihydrate.” He looked up. “I gather you inject the aluminum compounds to the newborn to trigger an inflammatory response.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” said Sandra Davis. “Otherwise, as you may know, the immune system will not react in the case of inactivated vaccines. For the record, I want to state that in the natural order of things, we ingest far larger quantities of alumi—”
“Larger quantities of aluminum compounds that are ingested, get processed by the gut, and much of them excreted,” called out the single person sitting in the small gallery. “We cannot deduce from this the effects of aluminum-compound nanoparticles that are injected. Likewise, we cannot compare effects aluminum may have on infants by evaluating possible impact of aluminum on older people, whose brains and immune systems are more developed.”
“Who are you, sir?” asked the chair.
“You can address me as Dr. Mark, Your Honor.”
“Dr. ‘Mark’?”
“I’d rather not provide my full name. Vaccines are alleged to be healthy and benign; however, questioning them is anything but. I don’t want to come to the attention of the vaccine politburo, Your Honor. I am here on behalf of physicians who are afraid to speak out.” And took an oath to “first, do no harm to pharmaceutical companies,” he thought bitterly.
“Interesting,” murmured the presiding chair and added loudly, “Very well, Dr. Mark.” He looked back down, studying the list in front of him. “Let’s see what you do next,” he said. “When your infants are eight weeks old, you proceed to inject them with the mixture I noted. At the same time, you add live reassortant rotaviruses, diphtheria toxoid, tetanus toxoid, acellular pertussis, haemophilus influenzae type b strain, antigens of various streptococcus pneumoniae, and three poliovirus antigens. In addition, you inject the muscle with sucrose, sodium citrate, sodium phosphate, sodium hydroxide, sodium chloride, polysorbate 20.” He glanced at Sandra Davis. “Fetal bovine serum, monobasic monohydrate, 2-phenoxyethanol, aluminum phosphate, aluminum hydroxide, and amorphous aluminum hydroxyphosphate sulfate.”
The chief commissioner frowned. “I am unfamiliar with that last aluminum compound.”
“It is a blend of one of our vaccine manufacturers. It produces a stronger response than common-variety aluminum compounds.”
“I see. Does the list of ingredients sound about right?”
“I believe so, Your Honor.”
“At four months, you bring the infants in and administer essentially the mixture you introduced at eight weeks.”
“Yes sir.”
The chair was reading. “And then again at six months.”
He went on, “At about twelve months of age, you inject the babies with four virus strains of influenza A and B, measles virus, mumps virus, rubella virus, varicella virus, and inactivated hepatitis A virus, formaldehyde, sodium deoxycholate, sodium bicarbonate, sorbitol, mono
sodium L-glutamate, human albumin, potassium phosphate monobasic, potassium chloride, mercury, aborted human fetal tissue derived fibroblasts.” He looked up.
Sandra Davis shrugged. “These are cell lines we use to grow some of the microbes you listed.”
“How small are the human DNA fragments you inject into toddlers?” asked one of the commissioners.
“Perhaps about two hundred and fifty base pairs.”
Momentarily, the presiding chair resumed, “The last few injected ingredients are bovine calf serum, neomycin sulfate, and polysorbate 20.” He set aside the sheet of paper in front of him. “I understand that during childhood and adolescent years up to seventy-two doses are administered with mixtures somewhat along those lines.”
“Correct.”
“Your Honor,” called Dr. Mark, “you should also account for some contaminants found at least in some vaccines—which include trace amounts of lead, chromium, tungsten, and iron.”
The presiding chair glanced his way. “Are negligent practices…typical in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals?”
“In some cases,” replied Dr. Mark. He thought some more about it. “Mostly with generic drugs,” he said. “To maximize profits, manufacturers may cut corners. Some generics may work as advertised, others contain harmful impurities, or release their active ingredients in a single burst rather over a period of hours, or degrade rapidly in warm environments, or contain no active ingredients, or underdose patients—which is the worst thing you can do when you try to kill off microbes.”
“Ah, yes; the free market dynamics on your planet Lord Aratta alluded to earlier.” The presiding chair mulled this. “Let us continue,” he eventually said. “I understand that each year, the US government’s National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program remunerates parents whose children are determined to suffer harm due to vaccines. The more severe conditions include neuromyelitis optica, acute hemorrhagic leukoencephalitis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and transverse myelitis. There have also been cases of multisystem organ failures followed by death.”
Sandra Davis was vexed but carefully hid it. She had expected this point to come up. “Your Honor, dozens of people die each year from aspirin, but it does not mean we, as a society, stop using it. Vaccinations, like all medical procedures, are not one hundred percent risk-free. Yet, they are some of the safest medical practices in existence. What you spoke of has to be put in the context of the many millions who are vaccinated each year.”
“Your Honor,” said Dr. Mark. “C. diff, a bacterial infection, currently kills over ten-thousand people in America each year. Those with high amounts of interleukin 6 are almost eight times more likely to die of C. diff than those with low levels. And injected aluminum appears to elevate interleukin 6 levels in some people.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Look, all I am saying is that the vaccine risk-benefit analysis is not that straightforward.”
“Indeed,” said the presiding chair. “Well, this brings us to the heart of the matter: the lifetime health of vaccinated individuals operating within an overwhelming vaccinated population versus that of unvaccinated individuals operating within a broader unvaccinated population. In short, the question is whether your national pediatric vaccination program is a net benefit or a net drawback.”
The woman in the designer black pantsuit and elegant pumps looked back at the presiding chair calmly.
“Your Honor,” Sandra Davis said in a matter-of-fact tone of voice, “the question has been thoroughly examined and is settled.” She walked over and laid on the commission’s bench a stack of papers. Those were the peer-reviewed articles selected in another context by the National Academy of Medicine.
The chair leafed through the stack quizzically. “I don’t understand…you handed us thirty-seven different studies.” He thumbed through them a bit more. For a moment he conferred with an aide. They still had some time on their hands. “So be it,” he eventually said and ordered the articles to be distributed evenly among his associates. “Give us about half an hour as we look through them. We will see what we’ve got here.”
No one was talking during that time. The only sound in the room was the rustling of papers as the commissioners read through the documents. They spent a few minutes conferring in low voices. Finally, the presiding chair raised his head. “You are dealing with complex adaptive systems here. Madam, do you understand the concept?”
“In general terms, I do. Among other things, it entails emergent properties not found in the discrete constituents.”
“Aye. Tinkering with the immune system of the individual and of society as a whole is not like tinkering with the brakes of a car.” He removed his reading glasses and regarded her. “These studies offer woefully inadequate, reductionist analyses. It is not only a matter whether a given vaccine indirectly prevents possible complications from one disease or another; there is an entire ecology of microbes in the body to account for. After being injected with vaccines, how well the body handles physical ailments, from cradle to grave? Are possible resultant microbe mutations factored in? What immunity package the vaccinated mother passes on to the vulnerable newborn? Individually or as a whole, your studies do not address these things.”
The presiding chair continued, “From what I can tell, you repeatedly inject your cocktail into a system complex beyond your comprehension.” He absently rubbed his forehead and sighed. “Then you peer through a keyhole to see if a disease was dealt with, serenely oblivious to all else that may transpire.” He studied her. “You have no real idea what you are doing, do you?”
For a moment, Sandra David was quiet. “Sir, we are doing the best we can.”
One of the commissioners leaned forward. “Is that really the case? These studies are fragmentary, inconclusive on many issues, even on their own terms. They compare somewhat different variations of mixtures, and dosages, then note possible variances in health outcome. How does this assortment of studies evaluate the combined lifetime net benefits and drawbacks of the vaccination program?”
Silence. The Earth representative had no response to this.
“Let’s put this aside,” a third commissioner said finally. “Where is the data from your control group of the unvaccinated for which you compare the research subjects?”
“Ethical concerns prohibit such a thing.”
“I am not sure I understand you,” said the presiding chair, holding up his hand against the muttering of his associates. “Are you saying you don’t have clinical studies using wholly unvaccinated people as a control group?”
“Unvaccinated subjects would have been left vulnerable, consigned to an elevated risk of severe illness and even possible death.”
They weren’t sure what to make of her answer.
“We understand your country contains hundreds of thousands if not millions who choose not to vaccinate their children,” one commissioner said, tapping his fingers on the bench. “You will not be asking people to take any alleged risks they have not already chosen to take on their own. Or in a case of a retrospective study, you will not be asking for anything at all, beyond permission to access your databases and compare the medical histories of the unvaccinated and the vaccinated—well, at least as a starting point.”
Sandra Davis put her arms on the lectern, cool and unruffled. “The first, as I said, is too risky, the latter, too expensive and, well, complicated.”
The presiding chair peered at her, frowning. Suddenly he threw his head back and laughed. He got to his feet and shook his head, chuckling. In high spirits, he walked out, and all but one of the commissioners followed him. He found the Earth woman and the organization she represented absurd. At any rate, he obtained the answer he sought regarding Terraneans’ approach to complex systems.
And so the unscheduled session came to an end.
Four of them remained in the chamber and took seats in the winged chairs in one of the room’s corners: Arat
ta, Sandra Davis, Dr. Mark, and a commissioner who had chosen to remain.
Sandra Davis was not sure what had just happened, but two of the foreigners were in attendance, willing to listen to what she had to say. And she came here to say it.
She got right down to it. “Baseless insinuations related to vaccine safety from alarmists such as Dr. Mark have contributed to an increase in a vaccine-hesitancy condition and the reemergence of dangerous vaccine-preventable illnesses like measles and pertussis. Even a brief period when vaccination programs are disrupted can lead to children’s deaths.”
Dr. Mark didn’t miss a beat. “Which is precisely why you ought to jump with both feet into a large-scale study that compares the overall long-term health of vaccine-free people to that of those who follow the schedule. This will decidedly prove your claims about the singularly benign nature of your pharmaceuticals and bring into the fold many who refuse to get on with the program.”
With the fear of losing his medical license, he had bottled his thoughts on this matter for far too long. It was somewhat eerie that he was finally speaking his mind in another world. But maybe these strangers, whoever they were and whatever their intentions may be, would listen and do something about it all. Because sure as heck no one else was going to.
His thoughts dwelt on all the clinical trials of pediatric vaccines he had reviewed.
They had allocated only a few days or weeks to monitor possible adverse effects—which as a matter of course was an insufficient period to note any potential immune and neurological issues. But then again, this probably was the very reason for the brevity of the monitoring period. Moreover, the control groups were not given inert placebos; instead, they were injected with other vaccines, during the clinical trial or prior—vaccines that had not been tested against an inert placebo either. But then again, this probably was the very reason for the pseudo-control groups: to have the vaccinated and the control groups yield similar adverse event rates, then declare the piloted drug to be safe. Past the smoke and mirrors, no vaccine was ever tested for safety prior to administering it to the children of America. With no genuine safety clinical trials, the entire vaccine doctrine was but a pharma-propped house of cards.
The Earth Hearing Page 47