“Enterovirus D68… has recently become a cause for concern as increasing numbers of children are contracting the virus and dying nationwide. Eli Waller, a four-year-old boy from New Jersey, has been the most recent death as confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on September 25, 2014. According to both medical practitioners and his family, Eli Waller was fully asymptomatic, meaning he lacked typical enterovirus symptoms, before he passed away in his sleep that night. Since his death, over 500 people in over 43 states and the District of Columbia have been diagnosed with the disease, and most of them have been young children. Also disquieting is the fact that Enterovirus D68 has mutated to exhibit polio-like symptoms, such as numbing and limb paralysis. Others argue the spread of EV-D68 is no random coincidence and actually has much broader policy implications; this group contends that this strain of Enterovirus D68 is directly correlated to the influx of undocumented immigrant children from Central America.
An October 2013 study published in Virology Journal found that EV-D68 affected three percent of 3,375 young children infected with a respiratory illness in Central America. While there was no major geographic variation between Central American countries, El Salvador and Nicaragua stood out slightly above others. Although this study was published in 2013, there is no reason to believe the number of cases in Central America has decreased. This is a strain that even the advanced medical field in fully developed countries fails to completely comprehend, much less the health care professionals in lesser developed countries. The recent increase of cases in the United States was exposed shortly after the Obama administration allowed for 37,000 Central American undocumented immigrant children to cross over the border without any health screening, spurring outrage against President Obama’s alleged leniency on illegal immigration…. Politics are overwhelming this issue of public health. The only conclusion to be drawn from the increase of EV-D68 cases in California and other states is that EV-D68 poses a potentially serious public health challenge to the United States….”Cherry-picked from Julia Konstantinovsky’s November 29, 2014 article from the Berkley Political Review (The Not-So-Common Cold: Enterovirus D68)
“The United States is currently experiencing a nationwide outbreak of enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) associated with severe respiratory illness. Many state health departments are currently investigating reported increases in cases of severe respiratory illness in children. This increase could be caused by many different viruses that are common during this time of year. EV-D68 appears to be the predominant type of enterovirus this year and is likely contributing to the increases in severe respiratory illnesses.” From the CDC’s website (Enterovirus D68 in the United States, 2014). The article failed to mention the fact that at the time the CDC was actively investigating cases of polio-like paralysis around the country as well as the fact that there were no hospital beds to hold the sick children in municipalities such as Kansas City. The article has since been removed.
“A polio-like condition that left more than 100 children in the U.S. at least partially paralyzed in 2014 is back, and not much more is known this time around, officials with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say. The CDC is not ruling out any possible triggers….. The illness pattern is very similar to the polio outbreak of the 1940s and 1950s, says Andrew Pavia, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at The University of Utah, except for its scale.” From last week’s article by Karen Weintraub for the oldest scintific publication in the US, Scientific American (‘Poliolike’ Childhood Muscle-Weakening Disease Reappears)
ACUTE FLACCID PARALYSIS
WE SHOULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING YEARS AGO
Every news outlet on the planet is talking about Acute Flaccid Myelitis (AFM), but no one seems to be willing to dig all the way to the bottom due to the potentially politically incorrect roots (plural) that might be lurking there. What am I talking about? For starters, AFM has been linked to a virus known as EV-D68. As the name implies, it is an enterovirus (EV) just like the polio virus. Before going any further, remember what I’ve told you in the past concerning polio? During the epidemics of the 1950’s, blood tests later showed that virtually 100% of the population was exposed to the polio virus but that 90% of those exposed had no symptoms. Of the 10% who did exhibit symptoms, 90% of those had a cold or something similar to the flu, meaning that approximately 1 in 100 of the exposed population ended up with varying degrees of the disease we know today as polio. In light of this, listen to what the European version of the CDC (the ECDC) says in a CHERRY-PICKED (as are most quotes from today’s post) article titled Factsheet About Enteroviruses.
“Enteroviruses area group of viruses that cause a number of infectious illnesses which are usually mild. However if they infect the central nervous system, they can cause serious illness. The two most common ones are echovirus and coxsackievirus, but there are several others. Enteroviruses also cause polio and hand, foot and mouth disease. The vast majority of people infected with enteroviruses—over 90%—will either have no symptoms or have non-specific symptoms, such as sudden fever. A wide range of symptoms can be caused by enteroviruses but most often include fever, mild respiratory symptoms, flu-like illness with fever and muscle aches, fever with a rash and gastrointestinal symptoms.More severe diseases can sometimes develop in certain patients, including brain and heart conditions, pneumonia and hepatitis. Also, the viruses can spread to other organs such as the spleen, liver, bone marrow, skin and heart.”
It should come as no surprise that EV-D68 is one of the thousands of virus that can cause the FLU-LIKE SYMPTOMS we discussed the other day (especially interesting considering the CDC is using their site —- Non-Polio Enterovirus: About EV-D68 — to promote the flu vaccine). What may surprise many is that this so-called “EV Flu” actually goes by several names; all coined in 2014 or prior — Open Borders Flu, Honduran Flu, Guatemalan Flu, etc, etc, etc. If we climb in our time machine and travel back exactly four years we why as we find the debate on this topic raging in similar fashion to the way it rages today. Some of the headlines and quips from this era include…..
- Neil Munro’s Halloween 2014 article for the Daily Caller —– Obama’s Border Policy Fueled Epidemic, Evidence Shows
- Dr. Brian Joondeph’s (MD) article for the 11/17/1014 issue of the Daily Caller —- EV-D68: The Mystery Illness That’s Not Actually A Mystery
- Among other things, the October 2015 issue of the Journal of Clinical Virology (European Surveillance for Enterovirus D68 During the Emerging North-American Outbreak in 2014) showed how this issue was related to Europe’s mass influx of immigrants when it stated, “Cross-border collaboration is essential for an adequate response on emerging viruses. EU strains were genetically similar to those of the United States outbreak, 2014. EV-D68 mostly in children…..“
- Rebecca Jacobson’s October 8, 2014 article for PBS News Hour (These Six Diseases Should Worry You More than Ebola) stated, “the enterovirus 68 has infected at least 628 people since August, most of them small children. Every year, 10 to 15 million people pick up an enterovirus, but enterovirus 68 is an entirely new outbreak. Just as doctors are learning how to diagnose the virus, it is evolving. In Colorado, 10 patients developed polio-like symptoms, with limb paralysis and difficulty breathing.“
- The title of Dr / Prof. Michael LeMay’s book, ‘Doctors at the Borders: Immigration and the Rise of Public Health‘
- Judaical Watch’s November 4, 2014 article (Recently Arrived Illegal Alien Minors Spread Deadly Virus) stated,
- “The humanitarian crisis… let tens of thousands of illegal immigrant minors stay in the U.S…. has fueled a deadly respiratory virus epidemic that’s struck American kids across the country and killed at least nine. Virtually nonexistent in the U.S. before the recent influx of illegal alien minors, Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) is associated with severe respiratory illness and is known to come from Central America. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from mid-August to the end of October state public health laboratories have confirmed a total of 1,105 people in 47 states and the District of Columbia with respiratory illness caused by EV-D68. What the agency conveniently omits is that the deadly virus was first discovered in cities with large numbers of relocated illegal immigrant minors, officially identified by the government as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC).“
So, as you see, this is not just a political issue but a public health issue that could have probably been averted had it actually been dealt with when it came up the first time. Instead, just four short years later, history is repeating itself. Furthermore, contrary to what you may have been told, polio has never really gone away in America, but has instead undergone a number of ‘name changes’.
One of these polio-like diseases is called Transverse Myelitis and has it’s own page on Mayo Clinic’s website stating that the known causes are MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS and other AUTOIMMUNE DISEASES, VIRAL INFECTIONS (HERE’S ANOTHER and ANOTHER), and (gulp) VACCINES. In an age when people who question our nation’s current one-size-fits-all vaccine policies are being castigated as “ANTIVAXXERS,” I would argue that there are far too many people, who for various reasons, have become VACCINE DAMAGE DENIERS. But what about vaccines as specifically related to the disease we are discussing today, AFM?
In February of 2015, one of the oldest and most prestigious medical journals on the planet — the British Medical Journal (BMJ) — published a letter to the editor written in response to a scientific article titled Do We Need a New Approach to Making Vaccine Recommendations? The letter, by a retired pediatrician, Allan Cunningham of Cooperstown New York, which was itself titled Vaccines and the U.S. Mystery of Acute Flaccid Myelitis provided some “interesting” insight to say the least. While reading, remember that all of today’s cases of AFM would have been diagnosed as polio if they occurred in the 1950’s.
“Since August 2, 2014 our Centers for Disease Control has received reports of 107 cases of ‘acute flaccid myelitis’ (AFM), a polio-like illness in children in 34 states. During the same interval there have been 1153 cases of respiratory illnesses associated with enterovirus D-68. AFM affects motor neurons in spinal cord gray matter, resulting in asymmetrical limb weakness; 34% of patients have cranial nerve motor dysfunction. Median age of patients is 7.6 years. So far only one child has fully recovered. EV-D68 is a suspected cause but, thus far, no viruses have been found in the spinal fluid of patients, and only a minority have had an antecedent illness associated with EV-D68. Case-control studies are planned to look for clues, but presently AFM is a mystery disease of unknown cause. It is taboo to suggest a role for vaccines, but some old-timers remember “provocation poliomyelitis” or “provocation paralysis.” This is paralytic polio following intramuscular injections, typically with vaccines. PP was most convincingly documented by Austin Bradford Hill and J. Knowelden during the 1949 British polio epidemic when the risk of paralytic polio was increased 20-fold among children who had received the DPT injection (BMJ 2:1–July 1, 1950). Similar observations were made by Greenberg and colleagues in New York City; their literature review cited suspected cases as far back as 1921 (Am J Public Health 42:142–Feb.1952). I first became aware of PP 10 years ago while browsing through “Krugman’s Infectious Disease of Children” (page 128 of the 2004 edition). AFM may result from a direct virus attack on the spinal cord, or by an immune attack triggered by a virus, or by something else. If a polio-like virus is circulating in the U.S., the possibility of its provocation by one or more vaccines has to be considered.“
Although that last sentence was a stunner, another letter to the editor concerning the same article was published in the same issue of BMJ, this one by French pediatrician, Dr. Claudina Michal-Teitelbaum, which echoed much of what I have said on my site concerning certain aspects of our government vaccination schedules being potentially problematic; ALUMINUM ADJUVANTS, MERCURY and other toxic chemicals, the absolute worthlessness of FLU VACCINES, AUTISM, and a host of others, including the over 300 “NEW VACCINES” that are currently being developed so they can be governmentally ‘forced’ on you and your family. Notice how she also brings up several of the fun little topics I routinely discuss in my EVIDENCE-BASED MEDICINE column.
“I appreciate the light shed by Natasha Crowcroft and colleagues about Bexsero and recommendations for vaccines in general. New vaccines are preventive tools for diseases that are more and more rare, so that no benefit can be identified at a public health and statistical level, although they are more frequently recommended for mass vaccination. Which in turn, automatically and mathematically, increases the probability that the risks overweigh the benefits of a vaccine at a public health level. So, the main ethical issue in this debate is to have irrefutable and methodologically rigorous clinical trials interpreted by scientists and agency officers that have no competing interests, which is not actually the case… with the short term profit outlook of pharmaceutical companies. Also, with the Vioxx scandal, the passive surveillance of vaccines and drugs has proved ineffective to detect much more frequent adverse effects that those that would reverse the benefit risk balance for a vaccine designed for such a rare condition, there other realistic concerns that have to be taken into account. These concerns are about fundamental science and virology and are disregarded when assessing a vaccine. In fact I’ve noticed we don’t talk anymore about science when we talk about vaccines. We talk about money, emotion, belief and technology. Nevertheless the scientific point of view is most relevant for this topic.
Jean-Louis Velizier, a now retired virologist, had anticipated, in the early nineties that, as technology allows that, pharmaceutical industry could be tempted to use little proteins or even peptides to make up vaccines instead of whole bacteria or virus. And he warned that this strategy wouldn’t be correct, because, first, little proteins and peptides immunogenicity is very poor and this would bring to use more and more adjuvant in vaccine. This was true and squalene adjuvant of Pandemrix, the influenza vaccine used in most European countries during the pandemic episode, is thought to have caused narcolepsy. And second, the adjuvant only enhances quantitatively the immunogenic response, but an adjuvant can’t replace [the body’s natural responses]… In my opinion, this shows that a long term vision in needed, and this kind of vision is rather inconsistent with the way the decisions are taken in this field.”
Of the vaccines associated with AFM, I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that the flu vaccine is probably the worst offender. Why? Every year, the flu shot is responsible for significant numbers of SIDE EFFECTS — arguably the most of any vaccine — and on top of that it’s known to cause Guillain-Barre Syndrome; a “POLIO-MIMICKING” paralytic disease. Concerning the whole vaccines-might-be-causing-or-contributing-to-polio-like-illness-situation, let’s dig a bit further into the peer-review.
- A team of four researchers from the Center for Autoimmune Diseases at Isreal’s Sheba Medical Center published a study in a 2009 edition of the journal Lupus titled Transverse Myelitis and Vaccines: A Multi-Analysis. After performing “A systematic review of PubMed, EMBASE and DynaMed for all English-language journals published between 1970 and 2009,” and looking for the words, “transverse myelitis, myelitis, vaccines, post-vaccination, vaccination and autoimmunity,” they discovered that “37 reported cases of transverse myelitis associated with different vaccines including those against hepatitis B virus, measles-mumps-rubella, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and others, given to infants, children and adults.” While this may seem insignificant in the big scheme of things, click the ‘side effects’ link above to see that hundreds of studies have concluded that AE’s (adverse events) are under-reported by about an order of magnitude. In the case of vaccines, THE NUMBERS ARE EVEN MORE SKEWED.
- A 2016 issue of Current Opinion in Neurology (Vaccine-Associated Inflammatory Diseases of the Central Nervous System: From Signals to Causation) revealed that, “people with an autoimmune disease are most likely to be exposed to some vaccines before or after the disease onset. In fact, a number of inflammatory disorders of the central nervous system have been associated with the administration of various vaccines…“
- Researchers from the University of Texas’ Department of Internal Medicine published a case study in the September 2013 issue of Clinical and Vaccine Immunology (Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis following Seasonal Influenza Vaccination in an Elderly Patient) that said…. “Although such occurrences are rare, it should be recognized that certain vaccines might trigger serious neurological immune phenomena such as Guillain-Barre syndrome, seizures, cranial neuropathy, and acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM).” This wasn’t much different than the study done by a dozen neurologists from Fujita Health University’s School of Medicine in Japan (Neurologic Complications Associated with Influenza Vaccination….) that was published in the February 2003 issue of Internal Medicine. “Diagnoses of acute disseminated encephalomyelitis and transverse myelitis with acute motor axonal neuropathy were made…“
- After doing a search of PubMed between 1979 and 2013, a team of neurologists / immunologists published a study in the March 2014 issue of Autoimmune Review (The Spectrum of Post-Vaccination Inflammatory CNS Demyelinating Syndromes) that stated “A wide variety of inflammatory diseases temporally associated with the administration of various vaccines, has been reported in the literature.“
Honestly, after reading Olmsted and Blaxill’s article (The Age of Polio: How an Old Virus and New Toxins Triggered a Man-Made Epidemic) fingering CHEMICALS / PESTICIDES / POLLUTION as the ‘trigger’ to a brand new disease known as polio, exposure to the chemicals found in virtually all vaccines (flu shot included) sounds more plausible all the time. “Outbreaks were not caused solely by poliovirus – the microbe was an ancient and heretofore harmless intestinal bug — but by its interaction with a new toxin, most often innovative pesticides used to treat fruits and vegetables.” In other words, a common virus that humans had been living with without problems for centuries gets exposed to toxic chemicals and bam; mutations. Thus, in the same way that toxic chemicals cause genetic mutations in humans that we call CANCER, it’s been likewise argued that the same chemicals caused the virus to mutate as well.
Just remember that it’s tough to trust much of what comes out of today’s journals (HERE is a proof from earlier this month in BMJ) or the GOVERNMENTAL WATCHDOG AGENCIES charged with protecting us. Case in point is a recent study, also from BMJ (Physicians’ Political Preferences and the Delivery of End of Life Care in the United States: A Retrospective Observational Study), proving that researchers political persuasion has no effect on their treatment recommendations. Oh wait, it didn’t really prove that at all. Although the researchers concluded that “This study provided no evidence that physician political affiliation is associated with the intensity of end of life care received by patients in hospital,” we later learned that of the four doctors involved in the peer-review process, two were regular collaborators with research team members, with one actually being a (drum roll please) business partner.
Before we leave, I want to provide you with one more response to the article, Do We Need a New Approach to Making Vaccine Recommendations?. Guest authoring an article on my friend DR. CHANDLER MARR’S website, Hormones Matter, Dr Viera Scheibner (I was reading her books 25 years ago), provides some insight into this question based, of course, on scientific reasoning. Her short article is also called Do We Need a New Approach to Vaccine Recommendations? and I would suggest you read it in its entirety (HERE).
No matter what your beliefs about infectious disease, it’s always a good idea to avoid it. And if for some reason you do end up suffering its long-term consequences, I would suggest addressing it in a manner not solely reliant on the products of an industry — Big Pharma — willing to lie, cheat, steal, and use you as their biggest (and most disposable) money-making commodity. HERE is a cool article meant to help you help yourself in reducing systemic inflammation, which happens to be the root of most chronic illness and chronic pain. And if you enjoyed today’s post or found it helpful, be sure and share it on FACEBOOK. I already realize that in some ways it’s polarizing material, but that’s OK. Someone will be glad you did.
