Vaccines that kill children? Geoff Metcalf interviews mandated-immunization

opponent Michael Belkin (original) (raw)

By Geoff Metcalf
� 2000 WorldNetDaily.com

Michael Belkin was a financial forecaster and statistician uninvolved in medical policy -- that is, until his infant daughter died after receiving a hepatitis B vaccine. Since then, Belkin has devoted himself to battling mandated immunizations and the powerful forces involved. Belkin has testified before Congress in opposition to forced hepatitis B vaccinations. WorldNetDaily writer and talk show host Geoff Metcalf recently interviewed Belkin about his work in combating government-mandated vaccines.

Metcalf's daily streaming radio show can be heard on TalkNetDaily weekdays from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern time.

Question: How did you first get involved in the issue of mandated hepatitis B vaccines?

Answer: I learned about it the hard way. My daughter died about 15 hours after getting the second hepatitis B shot at the age of five weeks. I did an investigation and the first thing I found out was that hepatitis B is a disease of basically intravenous drug users and promiscuous homosexuals and heterosexuals. It is a blood-transmitted, sexually-transmitted disease. And they are giving it to babies.

Q: Children are not at risk but they are required to get this shot?

A: Yes. And therein lies a huge story. The way that vaccines are licensed and regulated and marketed in this country is a major scandal. Under the Freedom of Information Act, I got the adverse reaction report from the FDA. It turned out that as of two years ago, there were 25,000 adverse reactions reported to the FDA, including 440 deaths. The median onset was one day. I'm trained in statistics. I'm a graduate of U.C. Berkeley and am a former strategist at Solomon Brothers. I work with data -- I work with statistics. I provide econometric and financial market forecasts for some of the largest financial institutions in the world.

When I saw this data and started going through this, over and over I found the same thing that happened to my daughter. In the middle of the night, she became extremely agitated -- having tremors and making funny sounds -- and then she just went out like a light. That was it. She couldn't be resuscitated.

They found a swollen brain in the autopsy report. My wife's brother is a doctor in the UK studying neurology and we talked to him right away. He said, "Swollen brain -- that's a vaccine!"

Q: How often is this happening?

A: This obscure panel under the Centers for Disease Control decided in 1991 that they were going to give the hepatitis B vaccine to everybody.

If you get an acute case of hepatitis B, you may end up in the hospital, but you will survive. In 90-95 percent of the cases, you get permanent immunity just like you would with the flu or anything else. In 5 percent of the cases, you will wind up with liver problems, probably decades later.

Q: So what are they trying to do with this vaccine?

A: They are trying to eliminate some rare form of liver problems that comes from risky behavior by giving this vaccine to everyone.

Q: Perhaps it's the cynic in me, but this sounds like a classic case of the drug companies pimping a product for profit.

A: Absolutely. In the United States, you have to get a product licensed by the FDA. You do a phase-one, phase-two and phase-three trial. Then, if they like the results, you get it licensed. The next step is to go to the Centers for Disease Control. In the case of vaccines, they have this particular panel called the ACIP [Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices]. I've sat through their meetings and know pretty much what goes on there. Basically, they rubber-stamp whatever the drug companies put in front of them.

But this committee comes up with language saying, such and such a person should get this vaccine at such and such a date. Then the drug company lobbyists take that recommendation from the ACIP and they go around to all the state legislatures and state health departments saying, "Did you see what the CDC says to do?" And the American Academy of Pediatrics, of course, jumps in. There are huge donations flowing back and forth between all these people. It's a huge conflict of interest.

Q: How many states mandate this? In California, at least for now, you still have the opportunity to say, "No, I don't want that vaccine."

A: It's a state-by-state situation. There are philosophical exemptions, medical exemptions and religious exemptions, depending on the state you live in.

Q: We just told our doctor no, and he shrugged it off as no big deal.

A: You can still get investigated by state social services departments. For instance, if you don't vaccinate your child, they will exclude him from school. You really have to know what you're doing. You have to know the law, and you have to come back at them and use the law in your favor. You might have to get a lawyer if you want to send your kid to public school these days.

What you're up against is basically the drug companies and the Centers for Disease Control. It's for the profit of Smith-Cline -- that's who makes this vaccine. They are using the government as their marketing department.

Q: You can call them a marketing department. Some would call them a pimp.

A: Yes. They're saying you have to take this vaccine, inject it into your body and pay us for it. And if you die or develop adverse reactions that are reported to the FDA, tough luck.

Q: What recourse do you have to negative or the most negative consequences of taking this drug?

A: They have ring-shielded themselves with a government compensation program. By the way, after I started doing my research, I started being contacted by all kinds of people. I am constantly being contacted by parents whose children had convulsions, became autistic, had brain damage or died, as well as adults who developed progressive neurological disease. You start out with joint pains and it eventually develops into demyelination of the brain -- things resembling multiple sclerosis. But if this happens to you, first of all, they tell you it's a coincidence -- you're just dreaming. It's like eating Cheerios and getting in a car accident and blaming it on the cheerios.

Q: This sounds like what they told the guys with Agent Orange, the Gulf War Syndrome victims and guys who had problems with the anthrax vaccine. There is a common thread here.

A: Right. It is really a militarization of the U.S. culture, because those were all soldiers, and I have sympathy for them. But generally, you are not considered to be in the Army and have to take these toxic substances with no choice in the matter if you're a civilian. It turns out the Centers for Disease Control is basically a military organization. If you look at them, they wear uniforms. They dress up in uniforms and march around their compound one day a week. They take great pride in being a paramilitary organization.

Q: I didn't know that.

A: It is very strange. They look like Col. Klink of "Hogan's Heroes" to me. It would be funny if that were all they were. But what they are doing is more like a vaccine Gestapo, and it's not funny. By the time you get around to going to your pediatrician or going to school, they tell you that you have to have this toxic substance for a sexually transmitted disease -- either as one of the first things in life or as the cost of admission to school. It's ridiculous. They have completely usurped liberty in this country.

Q: There is a gaggle of websites with information. Where should we direct readers?

A: There are many groups springing up across the country. It's almost like citizens' resistance to the Vietnam war. In many states, there are local organizations that are trying to get the word out about vaccine choice and the risks of taking vaccines, because the doctors are not telling you about it at all. They tend to say, oh, it's perfectly safe -- a magic bullet. Then they disown you if you get an adverse reaction or your kid dies or something. I can't even get our medical records out of the pediatrician.

Q: Why? Your daughter died.

A: I requested it by registered mail. The doctor is just refusing. I'm not unique. This is pretty standard when it happens to parents. The doctors are brainwashed by the drug companies. The drug companies buy them lunch all day long.

Q: Are the doctors afraid of malpractice suits?

A: They are in denial. It's almost like a huge psychological brainwashing. They think that they are preventing disease, that they are like God's angels banishing disease and that they can't do any wrong. Then they refuse to admit it. This is very standard.

Q: I found one website that I want to direct our readers to. You participated in those congressional hearings back in May of 1999.

A: Yes.

Q: Whatever became of them?

A: It seemed nothing at the time. I was the first witness on the first victims' panel in the first hearing into hepatitis B vaccine. Hearings were conducted by Congressman Dan Burton of Indiana, who is chairman of the Government Reform Committee. Basically, it was a very strange experience. I went down there and I was attacked by the Democrats. They attacked the victim. [Rep. Henry] Waxman and his ilk tried to denigrate me. They said, "You don't know what you're talking about. It's all just an accident." In other words, the Democrats are talking the mainstream health department-drug company policy line. The Republicans are the ones who are digging to get at the truth. It was completely turned upside down from the way I thought it would be.

In answer to your question, it seemed like it was an exercise in futility. But two months after those hearings, there was a flurry of action. Thymerasol, which is a mercury-containing preservative in all vaccines -- mercury is the second most toxic metal there is -- is being removed from all vaccines because they realize they are giving so many vaccines that it is way over the permissible level.

Q: And this stuff is cumulative too, right?

A: Yes. And mercury is one of the things that crosses the blood-brain barrier, so it might be responsible for some of these adverse reactions. It's probably not the only thing.

Q: So what are they doing?

A: Do you think they are withdrawing all the vaccines that are out there on the market? No way! That would cost money.

Q: So are they using them up?

A: Yes. So when you go into a doctor and he gives you a vaccine, it probably still has thymerasol in it because they are working through the inventory. It is not cost-effective to remove a harmful product from the market.

Q: Even if it's killing people?

A: Yeah. Now Dan Burton has just issued a request to Health and Human Services, Donna Shalala, who is the one who is on top of CDC and everything, requesting that they immediately remove all thymerasol-containing vaccines in the United States. But she is not even answering his letters.

Q: Barbara Fisher, the co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, filed a couple of requests under the Freedom Of Information Act. Has she ever had any response to those?

A: No. I work with the National Vaccine Information Center, that's the website you referenced. I'm a volunteer on the hepatitis B program with them. I went down there and testified at the ACIP and we submitted a FOIA [Freedom Of Information Act] request a year or two ago.

Q: Basically asking federal health agencies to release public copies of peer-reviewed scientific studies?

A: Right. The data they used to show that the hepatitis B vaccine was safe to give to newborn infants and to everyone else. Science is supposed to work like this: You're supposed to do a study, it's supposed to be peer-reviewed, published in a peer-reviewed journal, and then it's legitimate science.

Q: Public record -- anybody should be able to get it.

A: Yes. The CDC hardly ever does that. But I managed to ambush the chairman of the ACIP -- he was chairman in 1991 -- I ambushed him a short time ago in New York at the New York Cornell Medical School when he was giving a lecture on vaccines in the new millennium. I asked him -- and I have a tape of it -- "What published peer-reviewed study did you use in 1991, when you were chairman, to give this vaccine, the hepatitis B vaccine, to newborn infants?" There was never any vaccine given to newborn infants before this one.

Q: And what was his answer?

A: His answer was: "You are quite right. There was no published peer-reviewed study."

I just gave a talk on this issue and the title of the talk was "Shoot first and ask questions later." That's what they are doing. They are giving these vaccines without knowing if they are safe. And then when the adverse reactions come in, they just go into a drawer at the FDA and nothing is done.

Q: This lack of informed consent -- it has sparked fear and distrust of all vaccines. Haven't they reached the point of diminishing return where it would be in their best interest, if they still want to peddle this stuff, to release the peer-reviewed data so people can see it is safe?

A: The study wasn't done! That's the problem. They have nothing to release. That is what I got him to admit.

Q: Well then, it should be a no-brainer. You simply withdraw the drug.

A: This is total scientific fraud. And you get these leaders of the CDC and people going up there saying, "Well, parents don't know what they are talking about. They are making unscientific judgments." To these guys, it is only true science if the government says it's true. And they don't have to have any evidence. They don't have to publish anything. They just say, "If we say it's true, it's true, and if we say it's not true, it's not true."

Q: Like global warming?

A: Yeah, but this is really despotic, intrusive. It reaches way down into your veins. This is not just some rule you have to follow -- this is going into your body.

Q: I found somewhere a piece that revealed the hepatitis B vaccine reaction reports actually outnumber the disease reports.

A: Yes, in newborns. This is a rare disease. You're not liable to contract it. There are 10,000 cases reported to CDC a year -- about 50 in the 0 to 1 age group. Now I went through the data, and there are 20 times more adverse reactions reports to the FDA _after_vaccination -- convulsions, liver damage, brain damage.

Q: They should withdraw the drug and do the studies they didn't do in the first place.

A: Listen, I'm in business. I have nothing against the free market. I mean this is what I do. I predict and give financial market forecasts. I came from the Austrian school before this -- where the free market always gets everything right. But this is a case when you have these monopolistic pharmaceutical manufacturers ramming unsafe products down -- without even testing them -- and then using the government to mandate that you _have_to take them. There is something seriously wrong with the way that vaccines are regulated.

Q: Hepatitis B is not widely contagious. That makes it different from some of these other diseases they push vaccines for, doesn't it?

A: It is contagious with blood or anal sex. That is how most of the people getting this disease contract it. It's not something you are going to get by breathing in the air. You really have to share bodily fluids.

Q: Statistically, the prospect of an infant getting it is pretty remote.

A: There are four million babies born every year in the U.S., but only 50-something cases of hepatitis B. That's a .001 percent incidence. And the babies that got it probably got it because their mother had the virus. That's the bottom line. In newborns, it's basically a crime against humanity to give them this vaccine.

Q: How does the CDC defend the indefensible in this regard?

A: They lie. I'm very sensitive to this because, on Wall Street where I work, you can't just make up numbers.

Q: If you do, you go to jail.

A: I mean you can do it, but eventually you'll get caught.

The Centers for Disease Control -- their own statistics show approximately 10,000 cases of hepatitis B a year in the U.S.

Q: So what do they say is their reason for having to take the hepatitis B vaccine?

A: They say there are 350,000 cases a year. So you go to them and ask, "How did you get that number of cases when in your own table it says 10,000? You claim there are 250 to 350,000." They waffle and say, "We did an unpublished study that 'suggested' that that was the figure."

When you start investigating the CDC and what they are saying about vaccines, _nothing_checks out.

Q: Who is responsible for the oversight of the CDC? Is it Congress?

A: Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala.

Q: Donna Shalala. So ultimately, culpability in this mess has to fall on her desk?

A: Are you kidding? Just pass the buck. If you think that Ford-Firestone is a big scandal -- and I don't want to belittle it, my sympathies go to those victims of that mess -- but there were 100 deaths linked to the tires. There are something like 500 deaths_reported_ to the FDA from hep B vaccines. The former FDA Commissioner Kessler has said vaccine adverse reactions are underreported by a factor of 10. We're talking hundreds of thousands of adverse reactions.

Q: Hepatitis B apparently is not the killer many of us thought it was -- or were led to believe it was. It's a bad thing to get but, frankly, it is not as lethal as suggested.

A: Exactly. Ninety-some percent of the cases will pass.

Q: Also, the U.S. and Western Europe traditionally have always had the lowest rates of hepatitis B in the world.

A: Right. It's more endemic in Asia and Africa. By the way, the reason hepatitis B is endemic in those areas is because of another vaccination program gone bad -- the polio vaccine.

These polio viruses are cultured in monkey kidneys, and they didn't realize there was this cancer-causing virus in it -- which we're all carrying around -- and they are finding in cancers now. But that's another story.

When they did these polio vaccine programs in the past in places like Taiwan and China, guess what? It's not cost-effective for everyone to have his or her own needle. But everyone has to take the vaccine and you only have one needle. Guess how a rare blood disease like hepatitis B got spread around? The World Health Organization admits this. They have data that show that places where hepatitis B is endemic are areas where previous vaccine programs shared needles and transmitted a rare blood disease.

Q: So who is responsible for spreading the disease?

A: It's medicine. The whole idea of universal immunization, to me, is a crock. They take credit for eliminating all these diseases. In fact, the incidence of these diseases declined before the introduction of most vaccines due to the improvements in sanitation and nutrition.

Q: Where is all this heading?

A: This is heading to a universal AIDS vaccine. It's going to be universally mandated. That's what they are working towards.

Q: How do the recommendations of some government bureaucrat turn into state law that mandates immunization?

A: The drug companies have co-opted the system -- the regulatory and the legal system. There's a doctor in upstate New York who thinks he's saving humanity by not letting kids go to school unless they get this vaccine.

Q: He refuses to give up the federal money he will get for complying with the mandate.

A: Partly, he is being bribed. But you know who's behind that? Hillary Clinton. Vaccines for children. This is the one part of their health program that actually went into business. They got a bunch of government money devoted to mass immunization programs and they have instituted these intrusive mandates at the state level. But it is really the drug company lobbyists who are doing it. They are very skilled. They set up these bogus organizations where it looks like there are parents lobbying for the vaccine. And usually the effort is funded and set up by the drug company.

Q: Business and government together in partnership sounds not unlike fascism to some folks.

A: I'm afraid so. You know, the Nazis were big on forced vaccinations too.

Q: I also discovered that federal health officials actually give state health officials money to force these hepatitis B vaccinations. What is that all about?

A: Yes, there are billions of dollars in this. This gets so intrusive. There is really a "Mark of the Beast" angle to this whole thing. Revelation talks about how you can't do anything without the mark. I'm not saying the vaccine is the whole story, but it is one area where there is this sinister force injecting noxious poisons into your veins -- into your children's veins.

There are ways to escape. I'm not saying we are in a total police state yet. It depends on which state you live in. You need to know how the laws work and you need to take the exemptions. And if you have a doctor who doesn't know the kind of things I'm talking about, or they say vaccines are perfectly safe and there is no such thing as a vaccine adverse reaction, or that the adverse reactions are very rare events and much less common than the disease, in the case of hepatitis B they are wrong, and you should get another doctor. If you're a doctor reading this and you believe that, you had better educate yourself.