Vaccines-Vaccine Victims-MedGen17

MEDICAL GINOCIDI PART SEVENTEEN If htstoty repeats rtself, mass immunization agarnst AIDS could lead to a deadly epidemic BY GAAY NULL A glaring example of modorn tnedtcine s questtonable status as a humane sctencc IS the professions predtlectton toward mass vaccinat1011 programs At one PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW UNANGST t1me. few doctors were opposed to these programs. The medical commun1ty con-Sidered vaccines harmless. therefore the fact that many had never been proven-effective didn’t bother anyone. Over the years. however. evidence has been ac-cumulating that suggests that some vac-cines are not only of questionable effi-cacy. but that they can be extremely toxic as well. especially when adm1n1stered to infants and young children. as they often are. This has led a grow1ng number of physicians and medical researchers to speak out against mass Immunization. particularly when the medical establish-ment insists that such programs are mandatory. In his recent book. OPT A Shot m the Dark ( 1985). researcher Harris L. Coulter does an in-depth analySIS of the contro-versial OPT (diphtheria. pertuSSIS [or whooping cough). and tetanus) vacci-nation. The controversy surrounding this vaccine stems from the pertuss1s com-ponent. which has been linked to ill-nesses that can result in mental retar-· dation. convulsive seizures. and paralys1s. While these severE}_reactions may affect only a small minority. others may be more subtle and far more per-vasive. Children may develop chronic in-fections. or behavioral problems such as hyperactivity or retarded development. which often manifest ‘themselves as learning disabilities in school. Ironically. there was a d ramatic de-crease in the death rate from whoop1ng cough before any program of mass vac-c ination was ever introduced. Vincent A. Fulginiti. M.D .. a noted pediatrician and spokesman for the Amencan Academy of Pediatrics. writes. “Prior to the wide-spread use of pertussis vaccine. both the incidence of pertussis and the case-fa-tality ratio declinEld. A 50-fold reduction in incidence and an 84 p~rcent reduction in case fatality were recorded in Great Britain in the years between 1947 and 1972 …. These data suggest that per-tussis virulence was declining before the pertussis vaccine and that the incidence of ttie disease continued to fall .. both be-fore and after the introduction of the vac-cine. To further complicate the analysis [of the efficacy of the vaccine). serial studies . . . have shown results va rying from no effect through 20 percent pro-tection to 80 percent protection … Coulter points out that the decline in fatalities from pertussis parallels similar declines in other infectious diseases. such as scarlet fever. measles. influenza. tuberculosis. and typhoid. He suggests that this decline was attributable not to mass vaccination programs. but rather to better sanitation. nutrition. and housing. which resulted in an improvement in the general health of the population. In addition. antibiotics- which were successful in controlling secondary in-fections such as pneumonia and bron-c hitis-improved a child’s chances of surviving whooping cough and va rious other senous Childhood d1seases. In the late 1940s. doctors and govern-ment health off1c1als were campa1gn1ng 1ntens1vely for mass 1mmun1zat1on aga1ns1 pertuss1s. Already at that t1me. the InCI-dence and fatality rate from whooping cough was on the declme. Furthermore. there had been no studies. double-blind or not. on either the safety or efficacy of the vaccine. Consequently. 11 was by any def1n1t1on an expenmental remedy- and the test subjects were the Children of Amen ca. In the 1930s. there had been reports of the vacc1ne’s tox1C1ty. In 1933 a Swed-ish doctor reported two infants had d1ed immediately after vaccination. A few years later American researchers reported that some children reacted w1th h1gh fevers. convuls1ons. and collapse. Then. m 1948. two researchers at Harvard Medical School. Randolph Byers and Frederick Moll. conducted a study in wh1ch they followed 15 children who had reacted se-‘ By definition, mass immunization was an experimental remedy-and the test subjects were the children· of America. verely within 72 hours of receiv1ng the vaccinations. One case they described was of an e1ght-month-old mfant who had reacted with irritability and drows1ness to h1s first shot. The second shot. given three weeks later. caused a more severe re-action. Within 72 hours. he went into con-vulsions: eight months later. “he was blind. deaf. spastic. and helpless … Of the 15 children studied. all of whom had been normal prior to vaccination. “one child recovered completely: three had had too short a period of observa-tion to allow for final conclus1ons: two pursued a long downhill course. ending in death: and the remaining nine suffered from damage to their nervous system. which in most instances promised to in-terfere with competitive living … This was the first of a long series of studies that pointed to the highly dan-gerous nature of the pertussis vaccine. Other studies have introduced the fol-lowing findings: • In 1953. a l ist of 82 cases of pertus-sis-vaccine damage was compiled. In 1958. the medicalliteratur~ documented 107 such cases. 31 of which showed signs of permanent damage. • Between 1946 and 1957. large-scale stud1es conducted m Britam showed that a s1gn1ficant number of children suffered I rom convuls1ons after receiving the vac-Cination. But doctors denied any con-nection. From this study. British and Amencan medical communities both concluded that the vaccine was safe. • In 1960. a Swedish researcher stated “the mc1dence of neurological compli-cations after pertussis does not appear to be as high as that after vaccination … Notmg the decrease 1n the severity of the d1sease 1tself. he concluded. “It is ques-tionable whether universal vacc1nation agamst 1t is justified … • In 1961. an American physician rec-ognized a reluctance on the part of par-ents to bnng their ch1ldren 1n for further OPT vaccination because of violent re-actions to prev1ous shots. He collected data from 52 cases. and found six had collapsed. 14 had persistent vomiting. and 13. uncontrollable screaming. These reports went unheeded by the American medical establishment and government health authorities. By the mld-1950s. the vaccination program was 1n full sw1ng. By the 1970s. however. the debate over the pertussis component of the OPT vacc1ne was renewed by new reports of its tox1c1ty. In 1974 British phy-SICians released a report on their study of 36 cases of neurological illness thought to be attributable to the vaccine. Of these cases. two d ied. four recovered com-pletely, one was permanently paralyzed on one s1de. four were mentally retarded. three had epilepsy. and 22 were retarded and had epilepsy. The report was the ba-SIS of a television program and is be-lieved to have triggered the dramatic de-Cline 1n vaccination from 80 percent to 30 percent of British schoolchildren over the succeeding four years. That same year another British researcher estimated that an average of 80 cases of severe neu-rological damage resulted from the per-tussis vaccme annually. It was not until 1978 that the Food and Drug Administration. the agency respon-sible for monitoring the safety of drugs in this country. commissioned its first study of the effects of the OPT shot-some 30 years after it had been in wide use here and a good ten years after most states had passed legislation requiring pertus-sis vaccination for entry into school. The two-year study. conducted at U.C.L.A .. was. according to Coulter. like so many other· medical investigations in that it was riddled with stati stical manipulations, misleading statements. and unwarranted conclusions. The U.C.L.A.-FD.A. study showed a significant number of adverse reactions to the OPT vaccine. but through the magic of statistical manipulation. downplayed the importance of these often severe re-actions and concluded that “this study supports the conclusion of others that the benefits of pertussis immunization far outweigh the risks … The flaws 1n this study were easily de-tectable. According to Coulter. the data was compiled 1n terms of numbers of vaccinations. not numbers of children who received them (OPT is a multiple injec-tion). This resulted in a much larger de-nominator aga1nst wh1ch adverse reac-tions were measured. Children 1n the study were prescreened for any condi-tions that might pred1spose them to such . responses. In do1ng so. the study failed to replicate normal distribution of the vaccme in the general population. The study did not recogn1ze high-pitched screaming as an adverse reaction. even though many physic1ans consider it a symptom of central-nervous-system irri-tation. Follow-up on Children who showed. severe react1on was hm1ted to JUSt a few weeks. and the F.O.A. d1d not recognize reacllons that occurred more than 48 hours after the actual ‘ntectlon. In attempting to est1mate the total num-ber of children who have been damaged by the vaccine. Coulter says. “We con-cluded that a number of children die from the vacc1ne. There are about 8.000 or 9 .000 cases of sudden 1nfant death (S.I.O. ] per year in the United States. The vacc1ne authonlles adm1t that they can·t tell the difference between the case of a ch1ld dy1ng from vacc1nat1on and the case of a ch1ld dying from some other cause. So they are both classified as sudden 1nfant death from unknown causes. So the question is how many of these cases of S.I.O. ·s m1ght be due to the vacc1ne. We estimated. and 11 1s really difficult to tell how accurate the esllmate IS. that probably a quarter to a half were caused by a vacc1ne. ·· The sam e may be true for Children with epilepsy. There are 25.000 children born every year in the Un1ted States who are d1agnosed as be1ng ep1lept1c from b1rth. But those children are f1rst d 1agnosed after each has had four OPT shots al-ready. S1nce 1t has been reported that the OPT vacc1ne can cause se1zures or epi-lepsy. how many cases of 1nfant epilepsy are congen1tal. and how many really are caused by the vacc1ne? Nobody really knows. Coulter bel1eves that the OPT vaccme IS tust another exa#lpte of the Amencan public being used as gumea pigS for med1cat expenmentatlon for the profit of vacc1ne manufacturers and the med1cal profess1on. both of wh1ch c ampa1gn d ili-gently for mass vacc,nat1on programs. The1r solut1on to the troublesome prob-lem o l adverse react1ons has not been to proceed w1th caut1on 111 vacc1nat1ng Ame ncan ch1ldren. but rather to launch a full-scale lobby1ng effort to conv1nce Congress to fund the Nat1onat Childhood Vacc 1ne tntury Act of 1986. wh1c h would a ss1gn the f1nanc1al rcspons1b1hty lor ln-lllnes caused by the vacc111e J Ant11ony Moms. Pl1 0 . a researcl1 wolog,s t w11o l1as spent more t11an 30 years study111Q vacc111Cs at t11e Nat1o nat lnSIIIutcs of Health (N I H ) and the F.O.A . IS opposed ·to any such scheme. Testi-fying before a House subcommittee last March. Morris stated. “My urgent plea to the members of this subcommittee is. do not fund the compensation program of the National Childhood Vaccine lntury Act of 1986. This program. m my Judgment. will be found to be a black hole for tax-payers· dollars. to be an escape from just responsibility by manufacturers and medical practitioners for the1r product and their practices. and to be an InJustice to children who will be irreparably harmed by mandated vaccine InJections. “Rather. money and efforts should be directed towards reduction or elimination of the need for funding of a seriously flawed compensation system. Money and efforts should be directed toward im-proving vaccines … not towards fund-Ing a seriously flawed compensation sys-tem to pay for damage that should and can be prevented … Could the government be hoodwinked into footing the bill for such a preposter-ous program? It did precisely that in the swine-flu fiasco back m 1976. The Jus-liCe Department reported that s1x years after the end of the sw1ne-flu program. 1.571 lawsuits had been flied aga1nst the federal government for compensation that 11 agreed to provide when the msurance 1ndustry considered it too bad a risk. At that time. 290 suits were settled for $57 m illion and an additional 693 were still pending with total compensation of over $1 b ill1on being sough~ by plaintiffs_ Even with the lim1ted compensation of $250.000 per vict1m prov1ded 1n the pro-posed Nat1onal Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. 1n a letter to the ed1tor of The Wash-mgton Post. the executive vice president o f Dissatisfied Parents Together (a group organized by the parents of OPT victims). writes. “Five more years of American children d ying and becoming brain dam-aged by the current 45-year-old (OPT] vaccme is not only an unnecessary hu-man tragedy. 11 could well bankrupt the federal vacc1ne-1njury compensat1on system recently approved by Congress … (The vaccine compensation system re-ferred to will not become effective until Congress approves a fundmg system as contamed 1n the 1986 lntury Act.) Even before a fundmg mec hanism IS set up for a compensallon program. 1ts bankruptcy can be foreseen. One vac-cmatlon scheme after another has been proven to be e1ther largely Ineffective or highly tox1c or both. Nevertheless. the proponents of these schemes are con-stantly proposmg new vaccinations for what often turn out to be manufactured ep1dem1cs. At best. the target of an im -mun1zat1on program IS usually a disease that IS showing a natural decline in InCI-dence and morbid1ty before the vaccine IS even mtroduced. Morris has long been a cntic of Influ-enza vaccmes. for 1nstance. He says that with the current state o f medical knowl-edge and technology. we do not have the means to develop a vacc1ne against the flu. because Influenza v1ruses can and do 111 fact spontaneously mutate by changmg their surface molecules. Each change represents a new stram of the wus that may or may not be resistant to the vacc1ne. depend1ng upon the degree of mutation. Consequently. as soon as one vacc1ne 1s prepared. 11 may be neces-sary to prepare another and still another . ad 1nfimtum. Most flu shots are merely Ineffectual-that 1s. wh1le they may be a waste of money. at least they do not cause harm. Thi s. however. was not the case of the sw1ne-flu vacc1ne. wh1ch represented perhaps the most dramatic example of ” pohllcal 1mmun1zat10n … There 1s little doubt that sw1ne fl u was at one lime re-sponsible for one of the largest pandem-ICS that the world has ever seen. In 1918 the ~w1ne-flu wus was responsible for 15 to 25 m1llion fatalities The swine-influenza wus went 1nto h1ding until 1976. when Private Oav1d Lewis collapsed and d ied 1n a matter of hours at Fort 01x. New Jersey. His death was traced to a v1rus that was related to the sw1ne flu. Some med1cat authont1es feared that th1s was JUSt the f1rst case of what could turn out to be a new epidem1c of the disease. Fortunately. th1s proved to be a false alarm. In the years after Lew: is’s death. no other similar fatalities were reported. A nationwide search turned up a few isolated cases. but researchers ruled out the possibility of human-to-hu-man transmission and attributed the cases to contact with pigs. But the alarm was sounded nevertheless. Under the d irection of the Centers for Disease Con-trol (C.O.C ). the nation began to arm for battle against a deadly epidemic. There were. of course. a handful of doctors. scientists, and government of-ficials who were urging a more conser-vative approach. For example. consumer advocate Ralph Nader’s Health Re-search Group stated that everyone was being overly alarmist and that the push for nationwide vaccination was just a waste of taxpayers’ money. Congress-man Henry A. Waxman (0-Calif.) and for-mer congressman Andrew McGuire (0-N.J .) suggested that the whole scheme was a “rip-off” by the vaccine manufac-turers. But these voices were ignored in favor of far more influential pro-vaccine advocates. One of these was Or. David Senser of the C.O C . who drafted the in-itial memorandum that described the swine flu and recommended a course of action. This report started with a statement of ” fac ts”: “( 1) In February 1976 a new strain of wus . . . was isolated from an out-break of disease among recruits in train-ing at Fort Oix. New Jersey. (2) The virus is antigenically related to the influenza virus. which has been implicated in the cause of the 1918-1919 pandemic which killed 450.000 people-more than 400 of every 100.000 Americans. (3) The entire U S populat1on under the age of 50 1s probably susceptible to th1s stra1n. (4) S1nce 1930. the virus has been l1m1ted to transmiss1on among sw1ne .. w1th no secondary person-to-person transmis-SIOn (5) In an average year. 1nfluenza causes about 17.000 deaths (nme per 100.000 populat1on) and costs the nation approximately $500 million. (6) Severe epidemiCS, or pandemics. of inf luenza occur at approximately ten-year Inter-vals In 1968- 69. mfluenza struck 20 per-cent of our populat1on. caus1ng 33.000 deaths ( 14 per 100.000). and cost an es-timated $3.2 bil lion. (7) A vacc1ne to pro-tect aga1nst sw1ne flu can be developed before next flu season.” Most of Senser’s “fac ts” are b1ased or d istorted. Fact No. 3 . for 1nstance. 1s not even a fact. but a statement of a “prob-ability … wh1ch 1n turn IS more a possibility than a probability. Fac t No. 5 fa1ls to men-lion what proport1on of the 17.000 annual deaths ··caused” by Influenza wer.e of peo-ple suffenng from deb11itat1ng pnmary d1seases o r who were 1n a weakened cond1t1on to beg1n w1th: such as following surgery. And wh1le 1t was true. as stated 1n Senser’s memorandum. that a vaccine could probably be developed before the next flu season. Senser fa1ls to note that such a rap1d development of the vaccine would necessanly preclude adequate testing for 1ts safety and eff1cacy. W1th ‘”fac ts” and recommendations put m these terms. 1! should come as no sur-pnse that very few politicians would adopt any other stand on the 1ssue than that recommended by Senser. Says David Mathews. former secretary of the De-par tment of Health. Education. and Wel-fare (now the Department of Health and Human Serv1ces). “As soon as I heard about the swme flu and it s Implications for a pandemic. I realized that the politi-cal system would have to respond. There was no way out. as long as the sc1entists suppor ted 1!. … You can’t face the elec-torate later. 1f the pandem1c arnves. and say that the probability was so low that the costs outweighed the benef1ts. The people would never forgive us.” L1ttle over a week after Senser first circulated h1s memorandum. Mathews wrote a note to the head of the Off1ce of Management and Budget warn1ng that a request for fund1ng the sw1ne-flu program was on its way. In th1s note Mathews substantially upped the political stakes by stating that “there is ev1dence that there will be a ma-JOr flu ep1dem1C com1ng th1s fall. The in-d1cat1on IS that we w1ll see a return of the 1918 flu v1rus that IS the most wulent form of flu The ball was off and rolling. By March 1976. President Ford. who had long been cnt1C1zed for be1ng 1ndec1s1ve. came out firmly 1n support of a national 1mmuni-zat1on program. The Senate passed the sw1ne-flu appropriations bill in April19, 1976. by a vote of 61 to seven: it was approved by the House on Apnl 12 and s1gned mto law by President Ford on April 15 Rarely 1n the histor y of th1s country has our federal government moved with such speed and with this degree of co-operation. espec1ally in an election year. (It should come as no surpnse that at-tached to this b ill were amendments for additional fund1ng for the C.D.C. and the FDA. the government agencies most in-timately 1nvolved in the immunization program.) By April 1976, the program was under way. but it was soon announced that Parke-Davis. one of the vaccine manu-facturers. had prepared several million doses using the wrong virus. thus delay-ing the delivery schedule by four to six weeks. The manufacturers also discov-ered that they could produce the vaccine at only half the rate they had initially es-timated This rendered the plan of mas-Sive Immunization prior to the next flu season highly unlikely. While tests of the vaccine indicated that 1t was about 85 percent effective in adults over the age of 24 and appeared rela-tively safe in children from ages three to ten. it also caused excessive adverse re-actions. In addition. the recommended dosage for young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 was only 50 percent effective. while larger doses also caused adverse reactions. Perhaps the most formidable obstacle to the swine-flu immunization program was presented by the insurance com-panies. which by April 1976 were send-Ing out relatively clear messages that they d id not intend to cover indemnity and de-fense costs for damages resulting from thi s program. Just two years earlier. the Supreme Court had upheld a decision awarding $200.000 in damages to the family of an eight-month-old child who had developed polio after inoculation with the Sabin live-virus polio vaccine. Un-derstandably, the insurance company was not enthusiastic at the prospect of being left holding the bag for an immu-nization program as vast and as hastily coordinated as that of the swine flu. With the insurance companies out of the picture. the only alternative. other than letting the program die. was for the fed-eral government itself to insure the pro-gram. This course was adopted because the prestige of the presidency had been put on the line 1n Ford’s initial announce-ment of the program. Had the program orig1nally been announced at some lower level instead of going to the “heroic” ef-for t of trying to save the prograrn by leg-ISlating the government into the insur-ance business. the administration would have let the program die in those last days of July. Like the rest of the swine-flu program. the federal government’s assumption of liab ility was not w ithout controversy. Congressman John Dingell (D-Mich.) said that the bill was “an absolute unbridled, total. unlimited assumption of responsi-bility and liability,” rather than simple in -surance. The late congressman Walter Flowers (D-Aia.) warned that the bill would open the floodgates to a myriad of law-suits against the federal government. while former congressman John Moss (D-Calif.) pointed out that Congress was re-acting to a national emergency that no longer existed. In fact. it had by that time been four months since the swine flu had appeared anywhere in the world. Congressman Waxman stated that the drug manufacturers and the insurance industry were being let off the hook by the bill. “We are being used,” he said. ” I think we are making a big mistake.” But in the end. the Senate also capitulated. On August 12. 1976. the National Swine Flu Program of 1976 was signed into law by the President. amid the fanfare of the press and the medical establishment. The program started on October 1, 1976. On October 11. it was reported that three elderly people had dropped dead shortly after receiving the swine-flu vac-cme at a clinic in Pittsburgh. The C.D.C. later investigated claims of over 2.000 serious reactions to the vaccine, 181 of which resulted in death. Of these. 142 deaths occurred within 48 hours of im-munization. When the statisticians made appropriate adjustments for age, sex. and other medical factors and compared these numbers w ith what would be ex-pected in the general population, they concluded that the number of supposed vaccine-related deaths was actually be-low the number of deaths that would have been expected to occur by chance dur-ing any given 48-hour period. had vac-cination not been given. Thus, by the magic of statistics. the C.D.C . was able to “prove” that the swine-flu vaccine really was safe and represented no threat to the health of Americans. But all the magic in the world could not have saved the reputation of the swine-flu vaccine when the development of a rare and serious disease called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS). which produces poliolike symptoms. was connected with the vaccine. In the third week in November. the first case of GBS was reported to have de-veloped in a patient shortly following his swine-flu vaccination. During the follow-ing week, three more cases were re-ported, one of which was fatal. By March · 1977, there were 843 cases. over half of which occurred in persons wl:lo had re-cently received the vaccine. When these cases were analyzed. researchers esti-mated that the “relative risk” of devel-oping GBS was 12 times greater in vac-cinees than in nonvaccinees. By February 1978, when Congress submitted its final report on the program, 1,241 claims (including 103 for wrongful death) had been filed . It appears that our government, prod-ded by the medical establishment. health officials, and pharmaceutical manufac-turers. is only too ready to disregard the lessons of the not-so-distant past. Testi-fying in Marc h 1987 before a House sub-committee in connection with the Na-tional Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, Dr. Morri s stated, “In 1977. in tes-timony before the House Subcommittee on Health and Environment, at a hearing on review and evaluation of the swine-flu program, I testified that when I left the Food and Drug Administration in 1976, there was no available te chnique to measure reliably and consis tently neu-rotoxicity or potency of most of the vac-cines then in use, including OPT vaccine. Today, 11 years later, the situation re-mains essentially the same. And today this subcommittee is considering a funding mechanism for a vaccine-injury compensation program.” Will Morris’s warnings agains t the pit-falls of the currently proposed indemni-fication program receive any more atten-tion than they d id ten years ago when he spoke out against the swine-flu pro-gram? If his tor y repeats itself, probably not. In the early 1970s. Morris was advis-ing the government on the questionable safety and efficacy of the Hong Kong flu vaccine. He was ignored then, as he and many others were ignored when they counseled caution with the swine-flu vaccine later in that decade. The swine-flu affair is not an isolated event in this country’s medical history; nor is it by any means an exception to the rule of how medicine operates, es-pecially when the government gets in-volved. We are seeing the ve r y same scenario, with the same actors. using the same script in the push fo r a federal in-demnification program for OPT vaccines. This scenario is also being played out on the AIDS front. The state of the public panic around AIDS is not unlike that pro-moted around swine flu in 1976. And it is precisely this kind of panic that leads the American public to believe that their only salvation lies in a miracle drug or a vac-cination. Again, Morris warns us to pro-ceed with caution. “I see the same thing developing with AIDS. There are political pressures to do something about AIDS. There are congressmen who are tremen-dously interested in being in the forefront of the AIDS program. There are scientists who want to be the fi rst to develop an AIDS vaccine. It’s written up al ready in the newspapers. There have been head-lines: :A-IDS Vaccine Ready fo r Human Trials.’ This is sheer and utter nonsense. If the scientist believes there is a vaccine ready for human trial, then he hasn’t thought about it thoroughly. But it makes a nice headline. “With the techniques now available, it is not possible to make a vaccine that will work against AIDS. There are a number of reasons why. First of all, AIDS differs from most viral diseases in that. with measles, for instance. the objective of the vaccine i s to induce in the recipient anti-bodies that will be protective against measles. The same applies with mumps and with polio; the purpose of the vac-cine is the formation of antibod ies that will protect the recipient agatnst the In-fecting agent. That’s not true with AIDS. The antibody in this disease is not a pro-tective antibody. “One of the reasons that there is no effective vaccine against influenza is that the influenza virus mutates rapidly. It has the capability of creating many flu strains against which the vaccine will not be ef-fective. The same applies to AIDS-the AIDS virus mutates. So even if it was pos-sible to c reate a vaccine against one strain, that vaccine would not be effec-tive against another strain. To c reate an effective vaccine, it would have to pro-tect against a multiplicity of strains. “Furthermore. even if it was possible to develop a vaccine against AIDS, how would you test whether it worked or not? If the incubation period for the disease ranges from many months to many years, it is impossible to determine the efficacy of a vaccine.” Even a cursory examination of the di-rect ion in which AIDS is being pushed ind icates that it will not be long before a vaccine is announced and a mass inoc -‘ Our government, prodded by the medical establishment, is only too ready to disregard lessons of the not-so-distant past. ulation program initiated. When this oc-curs. there is a strong likelihood that in the current state of AIDS hysteria, the mass vaccination program will com-mence prior to any adequate testing. This is , in fact. precisely what has occurred with the experimental drug AZT, the test-ing of which was stopped almost as soon as it began. because the medical estab-lishment considered it ” unethi cal” to withhold this drug from anyone suffering from AIDS. Now, not only is AZT out of its experimental stages, but the pharma-ceutical company manufacturing it and the medical profession allied with federal agencies like the N .I.H. and the FD.A. are pushing Congress to pass a bill to fund the use of this drug, which has never been proven to be an effective cure. Morris disc usses the current politics surrounding AZT: “There was a hearing held before one of the congressional committees on the tenth of March [ 1987 }. The subject under discussion was the funding for the use of the new drug AZT and who will pay for this drug. Suppos-edly, it will cost anywhere from $7.000 to $10.000 per year per patient to supply this drug. I read from the opentng re-marks of the chairman of that committee: ‘We cannot permit the health-care sys-tem to keep this drug away from people any more ethically than we could permit the health-research system to do so. Gtv-ing patients nothing because they have no money and no insurance can be ra-tionalized only if (it’s] part of a system that provides health miracles lo the wealthy and health neglect to the poor.’ “Now, he’s talking about ‘a mtracle. · a ‘health miracle.’ AZT. He wants to get money appropnated so that the poor can get this drug costing $7.000 to $10.000 per year. Nowhere in his statement does he talk about the shortcomings of this drug. First of all . the manufacturer says tt’s not a cure. but a treatment. and that is cer tainly the case. Thts drug came about because when it was tested by the pharmaceuttcal companies and coop-erating doctors. it was found that AIDS patients on AZT at the end of 24 weeks had a stgntftcantly lower d eath rate than the control group. So they broke the code and said we cannot deny people the use of this drug …. And indeed there were striking results. There was. I believe, only a single death in the AZT-treated group. The number of deaths in the control group was much greater. They went to Con-g ress and to the FD.A. and asked per-mission to test this drug tn larger num-bers. What they didn’t say was that at the end of 48 weeks. that d ifference was no longer detectable-that is , the number o f deaths were comparable. That means that at best this drug prolongs the life of an AIDS patient for several months, possibly a year. But there is no evid ence that a long-term benefit will be derived from the use of this drug. It’s like taktng an aspirin tablet for a tumor. Instead of using this fantastic amount of money for the pur-chase of this drug, we should be looking for a better drug.” AZT is also not without its side effects. which can be serious. If a patient sur-vives on the drug for any period of time. there is a good c hance that senous ane-mia will develop. necessttattng blood transfusions. The drug is also responsi-ble for kidney damage. Additionally. AZT. according to Morris . has no effect on secondary diseases such as pneumo-cystis pneumonia or Kaposi’s sarcoma. which are the most common causes of death in AIDS patients. So what about the safety of an AIDS vaccine? Given the little we know about the virus and the rush to get a vaccine on the market as soon as poss1ble. based on past his tory. one thing tS clear: The potential for disaster abounds. If history repeats itself with an AIDS vaccine, the results could be a real epidemic. espe-cially if the vacctne is rushed into a mas-sive nattonwide program. We saw wtth the polio vaccine that the rush to get the vaccine on the market resulted in batches thar contained live polio virus. The polio vaccine was also subsequently shown to contain a substance. SD40. that caused cancer in animals. Every indic ation points to the conclusion that we are moving in the same direction with an AIDS vaccine. unless the American public finally de-cides that it has had enough of medical experimentation and profiteering at the expense of hu·man health. Medicine is now the No. 2 industry in this nation. second only to defense. The question is. how much larger does it have to get and how many more people have to d ie at its hands before we finally get fed up? Editor’s note: The author wishes to ac-knowledge the valuable assistance of Trudy Golobic in compiling this article. Reprints are available to readers. Please send a stamped. self-addressed enve-lope with a check or money order for $100. payable to Penthouse lnt’l. to . Ed-itorial Department. Penthous e. 1965 Broadway. New York. N.Y 10023-5965. Allow two months for delivery. or-. Reprint from December 1987 PENTHOUSE