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August 2024

Deadly Vaccine Disinformation

“There is no vaccine that is safe and effective.”

-RFK, Jr.

Debut: On July 6, 2023, RFK, Jr. (aka “Junior”) made the above minatory quote on a podcast. It sums up his decades-long quixotic crusade against all vaccines and his many more screwball contrarian stands on various topics. Basically, if mainline medicine has an opinion on something, Junior, will claim to have some special knowledge that the opposite is true. For example, he believes that AIDS is not caused by the HIV virus, that 5G cell phone towers causes cancer, that an herbicide causes teens to become transgender, and so on. The reams of scientific evidence  contrary to these special insights of his he simply dismisses as vague, conspiratorial plots invented by “big” government, “big” pharma, and “big” others designed to control you and me, or depopulate the world,….or something.

Unfortunately, there are others like Junior who too readily eschew normal standards of logic and evidence and buy into such febrile musings. Also, unfortunately, such bias-confirming fabulism is dangerous—it costs people their health and lives. Junior is indeed directly responsible for misery and even deaths caused by his vaccine disinformation. I relate two such examples below.

Disinformation is false information which is deliberately intended to mislead. In contrast, misinformation is wrong information that is spread without malicious intent.

Measles: Kennedy played a part in one of the worst measles outbreaks in recent memory—one that caused the deaths of several children. It began in 2018 when two 12-month old infants in American Samoa tragically died when nurses mistakenly prepared the combined measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine with expired muscle relaxant rather than with sterile water as they should have. The muscle relaxant killed the children. It was an egregious medical error that should not have happened. The Samoan government overreacted and temporarily suspended the entire vaccination program, which enticed anti-vaccine advocates—including Kennedy and his nonprofit, the Children’s Health Defense—to manipulate the Samoan tragedy for their own interests in order to spread their vaccine disinformation. Junior falsely claimed on his Facebook page that the Samoan tragedy “proved” that the MMR vaccine was deadly. Even after it had become abundantly evident that the MMR vaccine wasn’t responsible for the infant deaths, Junior visited Samoa and met with senior officials to convince them that the MMR vaccine was deadly. Influenced in part by his actions, the Samoan government suspended its measles vaccination program.

As a result, the vaccination rate dropped precipitously from 74 percent in 2017 to 31 percent in late 2018, well below the level needed for “herd immunity.” The next year, 2019, a traveler brought measles to the islands, which precipitated a rapid measles epidemic in the under-vaccinated population (note: measles is the most infectious virus we know. Measles epidemics are explosive). Between September and December of that year, at least 5,700 people contracted the disease and 83 died. Most deaths were in children under four years old, who should have just received their MMR vaccines. During the outbreak, in a 4-page letter to the Samoan prime minister, Junior claimed that the measles deaths were caused by the vaccine, not the virus. But, the deaths were in unvaccinated children! The deaths were wholly preventable and Kennedy should have been held at least partly culpable for this preventable tragedy and the deaths of the children.

Hepatitis B: Junior often claims that the “big” US government is not to be trusted. We can go back and forth on that—it depends on what the topic is. An unfortunate topic of his at one point, however, was the hepatitis B vaccine. In the early 90s, the CDC recommended hep B vaccines for all newborns. Junior, of course, not believing that any vaccine is safe or effective needed to find some way to dissent.  He pointed out that there are only three ways to contract  hepatitis B: 1) from sharing needles as a drug addict, 2) from unprotected sex with a prostitute, or 3) unprotected gay sex. He was correct on these three points, but completely ignored an important fourth group, childen.

If sinning adults are the only ones at risk for catching hep B, why in the world would the CDC recommend the vaccine for newborns? According to Junior’s elastic logic, it was because the prostitutes, drug addicts and promiscuous gay males didn’t want to buy the vaccine so the vaccine makers, Merck and Glaxo, were losing money! And behold, a compliant “big” CDC began recommending the vaccine for newborns so “big” pharma could continue to rake in the dough. This was according to Junior, without any evidence.

Then, Junior also made the accusation that the hep B vaccine was the cause of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS! His “evidence” was that SIDS “first appeared” about the time the CDC recommended that infants be vaccinated for hep B. The problem is that SIDS, or crib death, was around way before infants were ever given the vaccine. It was just that the medical establishment was just then beginning to recognize crib death as a recurring pattern with a definite cause and the press began reporting on it. According to Junior’s simple logic, it would be more accurate to blame crib death on the press coverage of it instead of the vaccine itself. Junior and other vaccine disinformation spreaders tend to ignore such inconvenient facts that distract from their preconceived biases. Junior needed to find some way to make the hep B vaccine sinister so he invented a dishonest link between the vaccine and crib death that had just popped up in the news.

Here are more compelling facts that Junior ignored when he spread this disinformation. Before the hepatitis B vaccine was recommended for all infants, every year the virus infected about 18,000 children less than 10 years of age!! What?? If it only infects sexually active adults and drugs users, as Junior claimed, how does he account for this fact? He clearly chose to ignore it! Worse, infection with hep B virus early in life dramatically increases the chance of liver cancer or chronic liver disease later in life.

While it is true that hepatitis B virus usually is transmitted through sexual contact or needle sharing, that isn’t how the virus is transmitted to young children. Babies are infected with hepatitis B during birth to a mother who is infected. And young children can also contract hepatitis B when living with someone who is infected and sharing personal items like toothbrushes. Then, there are several studies that have confirmed that the hepatitis B vaccine is not at all related to SIDS. The most common cause of crib death occurs when babies sleep face down. For that reason, in the early 1990s, at the same time that the CDC recommended the hepatitis B vaccine for babies, the American Academy of Pediatrics launched its “Back to Sleep” program, encouraging parents to lay their babies on their backs at bedtime to prevent crib death. It worked.

So, RFK, Jr falsely claimed, with no data, that the infant hepatitis B vaccine caused SIDS. Meanwhile, the number of babies vaccinated with hep B increased, and the “Back to Sleep” program was implemented to prevent SIDS, and the incidence of SIDS sharply dropped clearly showing Kennedy’s lie. How many kids went unvaccinated and are now walking around with liver cancer thanks to RFK, Jr’s lies?

Other spreaders of deadly disinformation: RFK, Jr. a lawyer, and his anti-vaccine non-profit, the Children’s Health Defense, by far are not the only miscreants spreading anti-vaccine disinformation. But, they are among the top of the “Disinformation Dozen” according to The Hill. This “dozen” is responsible for 65% of the disinformation promulgated on social media platforms according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate. But, since the COVID vaccines arrived on the scene, a number of medical doctors also have jumped on the anti-vaccine bandwagon. A few have been professionally sanctioned. A short rogues’ gallery of the most notable MD scofflaws follows:

  1. Sherri Tenpenny—said the COVID vaccines cause “magnetism” and that metal objects would stick to people, and that there was some sort of connection between vaccines and 5G towers. Her medical license was temporarily suspended until she paid a fine for these flagrant lies.
  1. Joseph Mercola—one of the “Disinformation Dozen” called the vaccines a “medical fraud” in order to promote his own online supplement business that included unapproved treatments for COVID—a business worth $100 million! The FDA sent several letters warning him about selling unapproved health products and making false claims about COVID treatments. His YouTube account was permanently banned for this disinformation but his alternative drug business thrives.
  1. Simone Gold—one of America’s Frontline Doctors, an anti-vaccine group that has been mentioned in these pages, discouraged the COVID vaccines while promoting hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin long after they were proven ineffective and disapproved by the CDC. She was disciplined by the California Medical Board, but kept her medical license.
  1. Stella Immanuel—also one of America’s Frontline Doctors also promoted hydroxychloroquine after it had been disapproved. She was disciplined by the Texas Medical Board and had her social media posts removed. Amazingly, she has claimed that 1) alien DNA is being used in medical treatments, 2) gynecological problems are caused by having sex with demons and 3) that vaccines to prevent people from becoming religious are being developed. As of March 2023, she was, by several orders of magnitude, the highest prescriber of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine in the US. For some reason, she retains her medical license.
  1. Lee Merritt—claimed that COVID was a genetically engineered bioweapon designed to exert some sort of social control and that the vaccination dramatically increases the risk of death from COVID itself. The opposite clearly is true. She too  still has her license.
  1. Paul Thomas—A pediatrician has spread general vaccine disinformation to his patients, including about the COVID vaccine, causing many of them to get vaccine-preventable diseases. His license was suspended by the Oregon Medical Board for violating standard medical practices.
  1. Scott Jensen—A Minnesota state senator and family doc spread disinformation about COVID death certificates and the vaccines. He signed up with America’s Frontline Doctors and faced multiple investigations by the Minnesota Medical Board, which were eventually dropped. He has been banned from several social media platforms for promoting COVID disinformation. He is running for governor.
  1. Rashid Buttar—claimed that the vaccine was a depopulation plan and that most people who were vaccinated would be dead by 2025. He has been reprimanded more than once by the North Carolina Medical Board for unprofessional conduct and malpractice. He still practices medicine.
  1. Christiane Northrup—Also one of the “Disinformation Dozen,” promotes alternative medicine and anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, especially disinformation about COVID vaccines. She has used Tarot cards to help her diagnose illness and believes that trauma from a past life can cause chronic illness, and that in a past life she lived in Atlantis, etc, etc, etc. She denied the existence of COVID and believes the vaccines contain artificial intelligence that integrates into DNA making the recipient the intellectual property of the vax patent holders. etc, etc, etc.  Her Instragram account was blocked. She voluntarily gave up medical practice in order to write and publicize these ideas.

Bottom line: The insidiousness and even silliness of anti-vaccine charlatans like RFK, Jr and the others is that while they claim to be saving peoples’ lives, they actually are causing deaths. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that in the nine months between June 2021 and March 2022, 234,000 deaths could have been prevented with the COVID vaccines that these charlatans actively worked to prevent.

How is a death caused by deceitful conspiracies about vaccines different from a death caused by criminally refusing to give insulin to a diabetic in crises, or after telling someone that a loaded gun is unloaded? Both are irresponsible and lead to great harm, just like vaccine disinformation does. Why hasn’t RFK, Jr been prosecuted for the preventable deaths of Samoan children from measles? Why do so many physicians engaging in medical malpractice keep their licenses?

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Tattoos and Vaccines: Muddled Thinking And A Good Idea

“Often wrong, never in doubt”  Anonymous

Muddled thinking. Despite reams of evidence to the contrary, including a recent Nobel Prize for the technology, vaccine fabulists, like RFK, Jr, , Robert De Niro, Jenny McCarthy, my own Senator Ron Johnson, and too many others continue to spread intentional disinformation about the safety and efficacy of the COVID mRNA vaccines. Despite these naysayers, mRNA vaccines are here to stay and new ones are being developed for many other maladies that have been hard to vaccinate for, like cancer, HIV, several animal diseases, etc.

I keep encountering people who belabor the same old disproven canards about millions of people falling dead from the vaccines, about the vaccines being “experimental,” and “gene therapy.” All this disinformation continues despite the fact that tens of billions of jabs have been given to 5.6 billion vax recipients around the world over the last 4+ years. At what point does  fact replace lie and truth supplant fable? The world’s entire medical establishment does not agree with these deceivers, yet they continue to sound the sham anti-vax alarm undaunted. I have pondered in these pages whether this willful dissemination of such disinformation that could affect peoples’ lives and health could be criminal. A case for this could be made.

The funny thing is that these alarmists are announcing the sky is falling over something well tested and vetted while ignoring another very common jab that many of them have likely have gotten without questioning, but that does have significant effects on one’s immune system: tattoos (see vocal anti-vaxer and celebrated tattoo artist, Kat Von D). When you stick hundreds of ink-filled needles into your skin, can it be good for you? Anti-vaxers worry about well tested and vetted vaccines, but never worry about tattoos. Why their selective outrage?

Afraid of needles

Much of tattooing remains mysterious: Scientists aren’t fully sure what makes certain tattoos fade fast, why others stick around when they’re supposed to disappear, or how they react to light. Given the fact that tat recipients are sitting for multiple injections of unknown substances into their bodies that last forever, tattooing would seem like a much better way than vaccines for someone like Bill Gates to poison us; or to use them for something sinister like mind control, or as a way to control the world population, as the vax chicken-littles often frett about with the mRNA vaccines. Why aren’t folks up in arms over this vast potential conspiracy? (Cynicism mine!)

What do tattoos do? The Atlantic recently ran an article about how tats mess with the immune system and a subsequent quick search found other concerning aspects about them. The practice involves poking dozens to thousands of holes into the middle layer of the skin, or dermis, and depositing different formulations of chemicals, or pigments, that permanently remain behind. Contrast that to the single shot of a typical vaccine that deposits into a muscle a single dose of an agent that has undergone extensive testing and approval for safety and that quickly is eliminated by the natural scavenger cells and processes of the body’s immune system so nothing remains soon after the shot is given. Both procedures irritate the immune system, but one is permanent, the other temporary.

When the hundreds of needle pricks deposit ink into the dermis for a tat, the immune system detects an assault on its body and jumps into action. The skin after all, is our immune system’s first barrier and it is well loaded with rapid-response defensive cells that lead the assault on the pigment intruder. This generally works well to heal wounds and clear infections, but the system breaks down trying to fight tat ink. The immune system simply cannot adequately clear that intruder. Rather, the pigments persist in the belly of the immune cells and skin cells, only to again be gobbled up when those cells die and disgorge their undigested contents. Then the process repeats, ad nauseam leaving a permanent stain in the skin.

Over time, the edges of tats fray and become fuzzy as ink particles are gradually shuttled away into the draining lymph nodes, which normally handle viruses, bacteria, fungi, etc. In the nodes, the immune system then revs up to recruit and deliver antibodies and T cells around the body to combat intruders that escape further into the interior. These nodes normally are pale white, but in tattooed people, they can be the color of the tattoo ink.

Thus not only is the skin tattooed, so are the lymph nodes!

It is not clear if all this misdirected immune response to tattoo ink throws the immune system off its game of surveillance against infectious pathogens. One study published last year found that tat ink can affect the function of immune cells. But, in another Australian study, tat ink was mixed with a vaccine in order to track the fate of the vaccine components after vaccination. There was no evidence of any untoward effect of the pigment on the vaccine itself. Other immunological differences between heavily tattooed and un-tattooed people have been noted but it remains unclear whether these are for the better or the worse. So, it remains uncertain whether tattoos are good or bad for one’s immune system.

However, tat ink can be harmful in other ways. The European Union banned certain pigments, that they believe are linked to bladder cancer. And a 2016 report from the Australian government found that >80% of black inks contained carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Other pigments may contain other harmful substances like barium, cadmium, lead, mercury, micro-plastics, etc. Then there always is the real risk of infection or allergic reaction when anything is injected into your body. Nice.

Tattoo-like vaccines: a good idea. In a typical vaccine, the shot is delivered into an arm muscle where the immune system is not as robust as in the skin. The skin being a primary barrier to a hostile outside world is well stocked with an armament of immune sentry cells, muscles deeper in the arm not so much. But, there are enough immune cells in muscles to get the job done and develop protective immunity to antigens which the vax delivers. For an intramuscular vaccine delivered to an arm muscle, usually a comparatively large antigen dose is used and it takes a bit of time to get the immune system in gear. Mobile immune cell cops where the vaccine bolus is deposited gobble up the material like a squirrel shovels nuts in its mouth, and then head to nearby lymph nodes to “report” that an intruder was encountered. This gets the army of T and B lymphocytes ginned up and pumping out antibodies, other immune molecules and cytokines, and other cells to respond the intruder. You are then “immunized.” This also sometimes causes the temporary malaise associated with vaccines—mild fever, fatigue, flu-like symptoms and maybe arm pain. In rare cases, allergies happen, which is a rapidly arising, acute immune response to a component in the vaccine, such as chicken egg material found in many, but not all, flu vaccines. 

However, a few vaccines are actually given in the skin, more like tattoos are administered. Currently this route is used to vaccinate for small pox, TB, rabies, and more recently, mpox (formerly called monkey pox). Some studies, but not all, have shown that the intradermal (ID) vaccine route can outperform the intramuscular (IM) vax route. For this reason, other vaccines are now being developed to be given this way simply because the skin immune system is more robust and this might provide a more effective way to vaccinate, and it uses less vaccine material. This is called intradermal vaccination.

But intradermal (ID) vaccines are not that easy to administer. If not done properly and the vax material is injected too deep, which is easy to do, their efficacy can drop precipitously, just like Biden’s presidential chances plummeted after the disastrous debate. So, medical folk are actually looking at different vaccine technologies, including using tattoo machines to administer effective ID vaxes on a large scale across many clinics large and small. One technique using a DNA vaccine, called DNA tattooing has been tested in animal models and human trials and was inspired by traditional tattoo machines, which are pretty easy to use.

Bottom line: The way that vaccinologists have taken notice of tattoo technology to improve vaccine efficacy is intriguing. They have taken their science knowledge of skin immunology and realized that the pop culture tattoo fad just might improve vaccine technology and public health. That is very cool.

The sad irony is that many people who get tattooed are also vax deniers. Their cognitive dissonance is disturbing. Vax deniers loudly spread disinformation about vaccine dangers, then are completely sanguine about tattoos which inject strange chemicals into their bodies, some of which have been clearly proven to be unhealthy.

That selective outrage betrays the intellectual dishonesty and lack of curiosity of anti-vaccine dissemblers. Too bad we can't vaccinate against that.

Acknowledgment: I am indebted to Frank C. (no relation) for helping procure an article needed to write this blog post, which I had a very hard time accessing without paying a full subscription to the journal. Thanks Frank!

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