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Note:  This column and all future Scandals columns will be dedicated in loving memory to Nicholas Regush, my mentor, my adviser, my inspiration, but most of all, my friend. 

Scandals:    Are vaccines involved in Gulf War Syndrome, autism and other chronic diseases?

As with many complex issues, unless a question is probed deeply and exhaustively, the most interesting and cogent points may be missed. So it is with a 2005 study on Gulf War Syndrome (GWS) and autism, “Chronic Mycoplasmal Infections in Gulf War Veterans’ Children and Autism Patients”. 

In the study abstract, the authors report that “The results suggest that a subset of GWI (Gulf War Illness) patients have mycoplasmal infections, and these infections can be transmitted to immediate family members who subsequently display similar signs and symptoms, except for their children who are often diagnosed with autism.” 

Usually when I write about something, it has to do with vaccines and this time is no different than the rest.  Reading just the abstract, though, one might well wonder what the article has to do with that topic. 

In the body of the paper, however, the authors point out that “contamination with mycoplasmas has been found in commercial vaccines.  In one study 6% of commercial vaccines were found to be contaminated with mycoplasmas.” 

In fact, cell cultures used in vaccines have long been known to be contaminated with mycoplasma and other hazardous substances.  

The finding could explain some confusing results.  For instance, Rebecca Landa, Director of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders and its REACH Research program at Kennedy Krieger Institute, just noted on The Diane Rehm Show that there are regressive cases of autism where the child did not receive any vaccine. She made the point that if children are going to regress, they will regress whether or not they received a vaccine.  On the surface, it would appear to be true and seems to contradict the notion that vaccines cause autism. However, if the mycoplasma results are correct, vaccination might still be indirectly responsible if another family member received a vaccine containing mycoplasma and then went on to spread an autism-causing infection to those unvaccinated children.

Beyond the extraordinary point of this paper - that spread of a vaccine-derived mycoplasma infection to an unvaccinated person might result in GWS or autism - is another startling implication:  mycoplasma might actually cause autism if contracted directly via a vaccine.

There are other suspected problems related to vaccine contamination.  One that has been widely discussed, including by me (1,2), involved the accidental contamination of polio vaccine with SV40, known to be a hamster carcinogen.  It is now thought by some to be responsible for certain human cancers.  There is an excellent book on this topic, “The Virus and the Vaccine: The True Story of a Cancer-Causing Monkey Virus, Contaminated Polio Vaccine, and the Millions of Americans Exposed”. 

Bovine diseases, including bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) contaminate a proportion of vaccine cell cultures. Might their presence in some vaccines be at least partly responsible for illnesses like Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease, at least one type thought by some to be a form of BSE?

We know from New York Times reporter David Kirby’s award-winning, riveting account of the thimerosal/autism controversy, “Evidence of Harm”, that there is plenty of reason to question the use of at least one additive, thimerosal, in vaccines.  My column “Ethylmercury Shmethylmercury” outlines some of that evidence. 

Another vaccine additive recently made the news.  In “Vaccines show sinister side”,  it was reported that “new, so-far-unpublished research led by Vancouver neuroscientist Chris Shaw shows a link between the aluminum hydroxide used in vaccines, and symptoms associated with Parkinson’s, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease), and Alzheimer’s.”   

Yet another vaccine additive, squalene, has been tied to GWS.

To top everything off, it has been known for at least 20 years that even harmless viruses may recombine in the body to form new, lethal ones.  (What does this say about the recombination potential of the “harmful” ones we are vaccinating ourselves against?) 

Who knows what else lurks beneath the surface?  Given the ongoing apparent refusal to properly address these and other urgent vaccine safety matters, we are left only to speculate, wonder and worry.   

Vaccines are potent chemical, viral and bacterial soups.  For too long, the possibility that harm might result from the wanton use of these substances has been essentially ignored or dismissed by the “experts”.  

As I said in a previous column, “Sounds like a prescription for disaster to me.  We're already seeing a huge ‘unexplained’ increase in autoimmune and chronic disorders among both adults and children.” With chronic disease, including among children, rising to menacing levels, so does the grave need to understand and fearlessly address both the causes and contributing factors .   

My father used to say, “If wishes were horses, then beggars might ride”.  But, of course, wishes are not horses, and wishful thinking about vaccine safety will only get us nowhere good, fast. 

Nothing is simple or obvious when it comes to the immune system. Evidence of likely damage from vaccine ingredients continues to pile up:  As many as 1 in 166 children could have autism alone - boys being hit considerably harder than girls. The devil does appear to be in the hard-minded examination of unfettered details and connecting their dots. Blithe assurances that the benefits of vaccines (far) outweigh their risks, assurances mostly bought and paid for by the vaccine manufacturers themselves and disseminated by “experts” who mostly have financial ties to them, are sounding more hollow by the day.  

If the “experts” are going to trivialize and ignore discomfiting evidence, then maybe we'd just better learn to ignore the “experts”.  Our very survival may depend upon it. 

*If you are interested in learning more about the vast array of possible vaccine side effects and why many of us remain concerned, despite “expert” protestations to the contrary, click here.

by Sandy Gottstein (aka Mintz)

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." - Wendell Phillips (1811-1884), paraphrasing John Philpot Curran (1808)

Sandy Gottstein (aka Mintz) is the publisher of the website "Vaccination News, a Non-Profit Corporation", and writer of  the columns "Scandals" and "Out of Control". 

Past Scandals and Out of Control.

©Copyright 2006 by Sandy Gottstein. All Rights Reserved. This content may be copied in full ONLY with copyright, contact, creation, authorship, and information intact (including all links), without specific permission, and ONLY when used in a not-for-profit format. If any other use is desired, permission in writing from Sandy Gottstein is required.