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11/26/19
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11:33 ,
Getting the flu shot can reduce the chances of infection. But, at best, the vaccine is only effective 40% to 60% of the time, according to the CDC. Now researchers have data that show how cellular RNA levels change following infection or vaccination. Their work could help make future flu vaccines work better or even aid in the design of a universal vaccine.

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11:33 ,
Bacteria, fungi, and viruses can enter our gut through the food we eat. Fortunately, the epithelial cells that line our intestines serve as a robust barrier to prevent these microorganisms from invading the rest of our bodies. Biomedical scientist have now found that simulated microgravity, such as that encountered in spaceflight, disrupts the functioning of the epithelial barrier even after removal from the microgravity environment.

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07:34 , , , ,

Crohn’s disease is an inflammatory condition that can affect any part of the gastrointestinal tract. Together with ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s is one of the two main types of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Crohn’s affects approximately 500,000 Americans and is a chronic, lifelong condition that typically alternates between periods of relatively stable or absent symptoms (remission) and periods of symptom flare-ups that can last for days, weeks, or even months.

The goal of treatment is to induce remission and then to maximize the chance that patients stay in remission. However, almost everyone with Crohn’s disease will experience a flare-up at some point. If you have Crohn’s disease, it is important to understand what you can do to reduce the risk of a flare, to recognize symptoms of a flare, and to manage flares when they do happen.

Tracking symptoms helps recognize Crohn’s disease flares early

Flare-ups can be triggered by a variety of factors including changes in diet, new medications, infections and antibiotics, stress, and changes in the underlying disease itself. In some cases a specific trigger can be identified, but in many cases the trigger remains unknown.

Symptoms of Crohn’s disease can vary widely. Some people primarily have abdominal pain and diarrhea, while others may have lack of appetite, nausea, or abdominal distension, and still others may have less specific symptoms such as fatigue, joint pain, mouth ulcers, or eye symptoms.

The key is to have a good sense of your baseline symptoms at remission, and how your Crohn’s disease manifests when it is more active. A number of smartphone apps, including Oshi: IBD tracker and myColitis, can help patients better monitor their condition, prompting you to track things like bowel movements, symptoms, and medications. The Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation has developed an easy-to-use symptom tracker. These types of records can help you provide your gastroenterologist with a more complete picture of your disease activity between office visits.

Contact your doctor at the first sign of a flare

You should contact your doctor if you think you are experiencing a flare so he or she can test to see if the flare is due to an infection, or determine if any new medications or exposures, such as recent antibiotics, might have triggered the flare. In the absence of infection or another reversible cause of the flare, your gastroenterologist may recommend a treatment course of corticosteroids, either topical (applied to the lower colon through enemas or suppositories) or systemic (body-wide).

Symptom flares can also indicate a change in your body’s response to your current treatment. For example, each year a portion of patients who take either immunomodulator or biologic medications such as infliximab (Remicade) or adalimumab (Humira) stop responding to their medication. Sometimes a major symptom flare can signify that these medications are no longer working. Your doctor can perform tests to confirm if this is the case and, if necessary, switch you to a different medication.

Dietary and lifestyle changes can help manage Crohn’s disease flares

There are a number of additional measures you can take to help manage flares when they do occur.

Avoid NSAIDs. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen (Advil) or naproxen (Aleve) can impair the ability of the GI tract to protect and heal itself, and can precipitate a flare. If you are having pain, take acetaminophen (Tylenol) instead of NSAIDs.

Quit smoking. Smoking is a strong risk factor for developing Crohn’s disease and can also set off a disease flare. Quitting smoking is strongly associated with fewer flares, decreased medication requirements, and reduced risk of surgery.

Reduce stress. Although stress does not directly cause Crohn’s disease, it does strongly impact IBD symptoms. Many people with Crohn’s disease find the regular use of stress management and stress reduction techniques to be helpful. These can include meditation, deep breathing, biofeedback, yoga, and cognitive behavioral therapy.

Simplify your diet. There is no specific diet that prevents or cures Crohn’s disease, but you may identify specific foods that tend to worsen your symptoms. Keeping a food journal can help you make these connections. There are also several general principles that help most patients feel better when they are experiencing a flare:

  • Eliminate dairy.
  • Avoid greasy and fried food.
  • Limit foods that are high in fiber, such as raw vegetables and whole grains.
  • Avoid foods that tend to cause gas (beans, cruciferous vegetables).
  • Limit your diet to well-cooked vegetables.

Minimize caffeine and alcohol. They may make symptoms worse during a flare.

The bottom line

Most people with Crohn’s disease will experience a flare at some point, even if they take their maintenance medications as directed. Carefully monitoring and tracking symptoms every day will help you recognize a flare-up when it begins. Let your gastroenterologist know about a flare-up and to be sure to follow recommendations for medications and tests. Dietary and lifestyle modifications can also help manage flare-ups when they do occur.

The post Living with Crohn’s disease: Recognizing and managing flares appeared first on Harvard Health Blog.



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07:28 ,
The buildup of scar tissue makes recovery from torn rotator cuffs, jumper's knee, and other tendon injuries a painful, challenging process, often leading to secondary tendon ruptures. New research reveals the existence of tendon stem cells that could potentially be harnessed to improve tendon healing and even to avoid surgery.

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05:53 ,
Researchers have developed a new method to separate between two different types of a common herpes virus (HHV-6) that has been linked to multiple sclerosis. By analyzing antibodies in the blood against the most divergent proteins of herpesvirus 6A and 6B, the researchers were able to show that MS-patients carry the herpesvirus 6A to a greater extent than healthy individuals.

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05:38 ,
Children's average daily time spent watching television or using a computer or mobile device increased from 53 minutes at age 12 months to more than 150 minutes at 3 years, according to a recent analysis. By age 8, children were more likely to log the highest amount of screen time if they had been in home-based childcare or were born to first-time mothers.

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00:19 , ,

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that all newborns receive a shot of vitamin K at birth, which is intended to help prevent a rare condition known as vitamin K deficiency bleeding.1 Babies have very little vitamin K when they're born, which is necessary to help form clots and stop bleeding.

Giving a dose of vitamin K can help babies, most of whom are born with insufficient vitamin K levels, to avoid potentially life-threatening internal bleeding, including in the brain or intestines, but the vitamin K shot is not the only solution. Oral vitamin K can also be used, as can naturally increasing the infant's levels via breastfeeding (which requires that the mother's vitamin K levels be optimized).

Some parents, therefore, choose to refuse the vitamin K shot for their newborn, a medical decision that's well within a parent's rights in most U.S. states. Despite the fact that parents have the right to choose whether or not to allow a vitamin K shot for their child, with many hospitals requiring consent forms for such, some hospitals are persecuting parents for exercising this right.

The issue reached a breaking point in September 2019, when a class-action lawsuit was filed against Illinois hospitals, including Silver Cross, University of Chicago Medical Center and Christ Hospital; the AAP; the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS); and pediatricians by Illinois families who had their babies taken from them for refusing the vitamin K injection.2

Recordings of a meeting of members of the Illinois Department of Health's Perinatal Advisory Committee (PAC) have since been released, revealing that doctors were plotting to take custody of newborns and administer vitamin K injections in violation of the parents' rights.3

Lawsuit Filed After Newborns Illegally Seized

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of families who refused one or more non-mandatory medical procedures, including the vitamin K injection, antibiotic eye ointment or vaccines, for their newborns. In response, hospital or state officials responded with investigations or threats and in some cases even seized the infants. According to the lawsuit:4

"[DCFS] used the power given to them as State officials and/or employees and through their authorities and investigative powers to cause the Plaintiffs to be threatened and coerced into accepting unwanted and unnecessary medical procedures."

In one case described in the Chicago Tribune, Danielle Anderson refused the vitamin K shot for her newborn daughter, as doctors warned that the hospital "would take the baby away" if she didn't relent.5 Hospital security came in to remove the baby, forcing her to call the police, who told doctors to stop pressuring Anderson.

Although she was able to leave the hospital with her baby later that day, she was later investigated by DCFS, who came to her home twice to check on the children. In another case, a nurse left the room with Angela Bougher's newborn — medically kidnapping her — after Bougher refused the vitamin K injection — and they remained separated for about 12 hours.

"I honestly could not understand what was going on," Bougher told the Tribune. "I was in total shock. I've never not had my baby right away."6 The class-action suit that has since been filed alleges that parents had their constitutional rights violated.

"Hours that should have been filled with happiness and family photos were instead filled with uncertainty, they said, as children were temporarily taken into protective custody, DCFS caseworkers were called and the parents were made to feel like criminals," according to the Tribune.7

One of the pediatricians named in the suit is Dr. Jill Glick, who is accused of "[conspiring] with DCFS officials ... to implement a DCFS policy that all of them knew was illegal, and [making] sure that Illinois pediatricians and hospitals carried out this policy using coercive threats... designed to enforce compliance with their desires that no parent be allowed to refuse the prophylactic medical procedures at issue in this case."8

A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request revealed an email from Glick written in August 2017, which suggested parents should be forced to accept such procedures in order to send a clear message to parents who "do not see the medical community as the expert."9

Advisory Committee Discusses Taking Newborns

In an April 2018 meeting of members of the PAC, vitamin K injections were discussed, including cases in which parents signed written refusals. Audio from the meeting has been released, which reveals plans to work with DCFS to take newborns into "protective custody" and administer vitamin K shots illegally against parents' wishes.

The plan includes getting DCFS to agree that the hospital staff needed to take the infants into protective custody, which the officials believed could protect them from getting sued after they administered the vitamin K injection that the parents had refused. A part of the excerpt, published by PJ Media, reads:10

"WOMAN #1: You can take… Protective custody is just the right to do what you think is right for the baby. And, DCFS, if they say, 'yes, that we agree with you, cause this is our rule'. You give the vitamin K and then do any of us really care what happens next?

WOMAN #3: No, but can they sue you then?

WOMAN #1: No, because you have their … you took protective custody. That's the part that we have to assure with DCFS. That when we do this …

MS. LIGHTNER: Need DCFS to assure you.

WOMAN #1: Yes, that's what I mean, DCFS has to say, 'This is our protocol, no matter what else we do: You are protected.'"

State officials and hospital employees are overstepping their bounds in accusing parents of medical neglect for refusing optional medical procedures for their infants. As PJ Media noted:11

"This audio is shocking proof that doctors hold immense power over individual rights. Liberty died around a board room table in Chicago that day. Innocent parents had their children removed from their custody on nothing more than some unelected busybody's opinion that their medical degree was more important than constitutional rights and the right to informed consent."

States Abducting Children in the Name of 'Abuse'

In 1991, the bipartisan National Commission on Children figured out that children were being taken from their families prematurely or unnecessarily because federal formulas give states a strong financial incentive to do so rather than provide services to keep families together.12

Children in foster care bring in revenue for counties, such that The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) — the federal law on which almost all state and local legislation and funding for child protective services are based — mandates states to implement child abuse laws on their own, so they can align themselves for the massive funding and grants that go along with the law.

In theory as the years went by, if the goal for this law — to reduce child abuse in the U.S. — had been successful, then today we should need less funding for these programs, not more. Success also should have resulted in fewer children in foster care and even fewer being put up for adoption.

But in reality, the opposite happened. Instead of less children in foster care, the numbers went up for nine years after CAPTA was passed. And, layers and layers of state and federal government programs and agencies whose funding depends solely on child abuse occurring were created.

Child abuse is a terrible thing, but thousands of child abuse cases may in fact not be child abuse at all, such as in some cases of rickets, caused by either vitamin D deficiency or aluminum adjuvants in vaccines. Infant rickets perfectly mimics child abuse, and the baby will have virtually no symptoms — until their bones fracture.

According to Dr. David Ayoub, a radiologist in Springfield, Illinois, a great number of child abuse cases may in fact be instances of misdiagnosed metabolic dysfunction.13

You may have also heard about the case of Justina Pelletier, who was removed from her parents' custody by Massachusetts child protection officials after Boston Children's Hospital filed a "medical child abuse" complaint against them, following a dispute over Justina's medical diagnosis.

The state kept the teen hospitalized for close to a year and wanted to place her in private foster care. Eventually, a judge ruled the girl should be returned to her parents, but all the while she was unable to receive treatment for the rare mitochondrial disease she actually suffered from.14

Vitamin K Denial Associated With Vaccine Refusal

A study published in Pediatrics revealed that children who did not receive the vitamin K shot at birth were 14.6 times more likely to be unvaccinated at 15 months. The researchers concluded:15

"This is the first population-based study to characterize parents who are likely to decline vitamin K for their infants and whose children are likely to be unimmunized. These findings enable earlier identification of high-risk parents and provide an opportunity to enact strategies to increase uptake of vitamin K and childhood immunizations."

The link adds another layer to the injustice being done to parents exercising their right to informed consent, as it labels anyone who refuses the vitamin K injection as a "high-risk" parent.

The fact remains that protecting such medical decisions form the basis for informed consent, a basic human right in which a person has the ability to voluntarily accept or reject a treatment or medical procedure after being fully informed of its possible risks and benefits.

In the case of the vitamin K injection, while the CDC states it's safe,16 in 2010, I interviewed Cees Vermeer, Ph.D., an associate professor of biochemistry at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, a specialist in vitamin K. He raised several concerns with the vitamin K injection:

  • The amount of vitamin K injected into newborns (0.5 to 1 milligram) is far greater than needed
  • The injection may contain benzyl alcohol, a preservative that may be toxic for the baby's delicate immune system. Preservative-free shots may contain a combination of polysorbate 80 and propylene glycol instead, but these ingredients also have a questionable safety profile. For polysorbate 80, hypersensitivity and possible death are among the known risks17
  • An injection creates an additional opportunity for infection in an environment that contains some of the most dangerous germs, at a time when your baby's immune system is still immature
  • Inflicting pain immediately after birth causes psycho-emotional damage and trauma to a newborn, which is both inappropriate and unnecessary

A Safe Alternative: Oral Vitamin K

While most newborns do require vitamin K, a vitamin K injection is not the only option to attain it. Oral vitamin K drops are a safe alternative that can be given without pain, but because they require multiple doses, hospitals may assume that parents will not follow through with the full dosing. There are a variety of suggested dosages for newborns:

Six-month weekly regimen — One 2-mg oral dose at birth, followed by a once-weekly dose of 1 mg for the first six months of life, provided they're breastfed at least half of the time. This regimen was found to be as effective as the vitamin K shot, Evidence Based Birth reports.18

Three-month weekly regimen — 2 mg at birth, followed by once weekly dose of 1 mg for the first three months was found to be "an efficient prophylaxis against VKBD."19

Three-month daily or weekly regimen — 1 mg dose at birth followed by 25 micrograms per day for 13 weeks, or 2 mg at birth followed by 1 mg per week for three months was found to provide the lowest risk of VKDB.20

Three-dose regimen — 1 mg by mouth at birth, 1 mg at 1 week of age, and a third 1 mg dose at 4 to 6 months of age.21

Three-dose regimen — 2 mg four hours after birth, 2 mg on Day Four, and a third 2-mg dose in the fourth week was found to "adequately" protect infants from VKDB.22 (Omitting the third dose was shown to provide inadequate protection).

Single dose — A single oral dose of 1 mg may protect against early VKDB in exclusively breastfed babies but not late VKDB.23

It's also possible to provide vitamin K to newborns via breastmilk, but most women are low in vitamin K, according to Vermeer, which means their milk will be too. In order to use this approach safely, you need to make sure your vitamin K level is truly optimized, and for most women, the vitamin K absorbed from foods won't be enough, so supplementation might be needed.

The choice of whether or not to allow the vitamin K injection for your baby is yours — not the hospital's or doctor's. It's a good idea to make the decision well before your baby's delivery, so you can inform your obstetrician, hospital and nursing staff of your decision, and request that they have oral vitamin K drops — along with instructions for proper continual dosing — available at your child's birth.



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00:19 , ,

The global vaccine market was valued at $35.8 billion in 2018, and it’s predicted to nearly double by 2024.1,2 One major reason for this exponential growth has to do with the fact that more vaccines are being mandated as a condition for school attendance, while vaccine exemptions are being eliminated.3

After a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2011, vaccine manufacturers are also the only corporations selling products in the U.S. that cannot be sued, even when there is evidence the company could have made a product safer.4,5

After Congress amended the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act at the end of 1987, doctors and medical workers who administer federally recommended vaccines that injure or kill children can’t be sued either.6 In 2016, Congress expanded vaccine manufacturer liability protection to include federally recommended vaccines that injure or kill pregnant women or their unborn infants in the womb.7

This blanket protection from liability is part and parcel of what makes vaccines so profitable — and potentially hazardous.

Making matters worse, state legislatures in California8 and New York9 have passed laws that remove the legal right for doctors to exercise professional judgment and conscience when granting children a medical exemption to vaccination.10,11,12

A recent case highlighted by The Highwire demonstrates just how difficult it has become to obtain a vaccine exemption — even when a child’s life is clearly at high risk for suffering harm from vaccination — and the disastrous ramifications it can have for families whose children are denied school access simply because they’re not willing to roll the dice when it comes to protecting their child from harm.

Vaccination Laws Sacrifice the Vulnerable

In the video above, Del Bigtree, CEO of the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), a nonprofit he founded in 2017, interviews Ali and Orooba Hamideh, who live in New York. Their disabled 9-year-old son, Ameer, lost his vaccine exemption after the passage of New York’s Senate bill S2994A13 in June 2019, which removed all non-medical exemptions to school vaccination requirements.14

Weeks later, the New York health department issued a new rule that denied New York physicians the legal right to grant a child a medical exemption to vaccination unless the reasons given strictly conform to vaccine contraindications approved by public health officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC).15,16

Ameer was born prematurely and suffered a stroke at birth. He was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at age 3, thought to be the result of the brain damage he suffered from his stroke. Ameer also has a rare seizure disorder called Lennox Gastaut syndrome (LGS17).

His seizures began after his first round of vaccines at 5 months of age. His parents, who attributed the seizures to the complications at his birth, dutifully followed the recommended vaccine schedule. It wasn’t until he got a flu shot at the age of 2 that they started asking questions.

As with previous vaccines, his seizures and other symptoms worsened directly after the shot. After researching the matter, and finding others whose stories mirrored their own, they decided to not give Ameer any more vaccines.

They opted to file a religious vaccine exemption for Ameer, simply because it was easier, but the new law meant Ameer could no longer attend school, and he ended up missing months of education and therapy over the summer while his parents turned to Ameer’s neurologist, who has treated him for nine years. She issued a medical exemption, stating:

“Patient carries a diagnosis of Lennox Gastaut with refractory seizures. Patient has a history of hospitalization following immunizations in the past for seizure activity triggered by those immunizations.”

Seizure Disorder Not a Valid Contraindication to Vaccination

With the medical exemption in place, Ameer was allowed back to school. But then, September 12, 2019, the Hamidehs received a copy of a letter from the New York Department of Health sent to Ameer’s school, recommending his medical exemption should be denied. Dr. Elizabeth Rausch-Phung, director of the New York Bureau of Immunization, wrote:

“I have reviewed the documentation submitted by Sarah Finnegan, MD with regard to the medical exemption request for the student in your school …

Lennox Gastaut with refractory seizures is not a valid contraindication to this student receiving MMR, varicella, polio, or Tdap vaccines pursuant to Public Health Law (PHL) 2164 and the accompanying regulations at 10 NYCRR Subpart 66-1. Therefore, I recommend against accepting this medical exemption.”

Ameer was again kicked out, for while the health department didn’t forbid the school to accept the exemption, the school refused to go against the health department’s recommendation, saying it would be “foolish” of them to do so.

“You feel awful,” Ali says. “You have no choice over your child. No choice at all.” Seizure disorders are serious medical conditions, and Ameer’s parents fear that any additional vaccines could cause uncontrolled seizure activity leading to his death.

Since the family started him on a ketogenic diet and CBD oil, Ameer has gone from 20 to 30 seizures a day to none. He’s making progress that simply isn’t worth risking. Yet, as noted by Bigtree, New York state essentially delivered a potential death sentence to this child — all because he’s missing his fifth Tdap booster.

Justice for Ameer — For Now

In desperation, Ali vented his frustration on Facebook, asking for help. The story went viral, being shared more than 100,000 times, eventually making headlines on local news.

As noted by Bigtree, one of the official justifications for removing non-medical vaccine exemptions and mandating certain vaccines is to protect immunocompromised children who cannot be vaccinated.

Yet here we have a child whose history clearly shows he is at grave risk for vaccine damage, whose neurologist agrees vaccination could compromise his health and worsen his already serious condition, and he’s somehow not worthy of that same protection.

Ameer, by the way, is not an isolated case — 26,000 children in New York lost their rights to public education with the passing of S2994A.18

In The Highwire video above, the Hamidehs mention they would take legal action if the school did not allow Ameer back in. Since the airing of that episode, Ameer’s case has been brought to court, resulting in a temporary legal victory.

November 12, 2019, the Erie County Supreme Court judge presiding over the case issued a temporary restraining order to allow Ameer to attend his classes at the CHC Learning Center for the duration of the court proceedings.19 But first, Ali had to present to the court a signed affidavit from the neurologist, confirming the signature on the medical exemption wasn’t a fraudulent one.

This request was so out of the ordinary and the neurologist was so surprised and confused by the request that she initially refused. Fortunately, by the time Ali and his attorney reached the court house, she’d emailed them the signed affidavit. No school representative from the school or state education department attended the hearing. The case goes back to court in December. As reported in an ICAN press release:20

“Because of Ameer's previous severe reaction to the DTaP vaccine — most recently a grand mal seizure that sent him, uncontrollably screaming, to the hospital — his parents Ali and Orooba Hamideh followed the advice of Ameer's physician to not give him an additional dose.

ICAN took up the family's cause and turned its team of attorneys to the case, which pointed out — among other things — New York state law allows any doctor to provide a valid medical exemption, and does not provide the Department of Health the authority to overrule that exemption.

‘This is so satisfying because of what it means for the Hamideh family,’ says Del Bigtree … ‘The State thought they could steamroll the Hamideh family. Their bureaucratic decision regarding Ameer's medical treatment, made without ever even talking to his doctor, could have seriously injured him.’" 

‘Nothing Is Working the Way It’s Supposed To’

At the end of the November 12, 2019, video update above, Bigtree says:

“I will tell you my experience today, in watching how the courts were dealing with this issue, and watching the hoops having to be jumped through that lawyers don’t normally see in any other case … — doctors being forced to sign [an affidavit confirming] their own signature — this is just a bizarre world we are living in right now.

And it’s extremely distressing that in almost every department of our government … nothing is acting or working the way it’s supposed to work. This is not how our system is designed. This vaccine issue is putting everything on tilt. There’s something really wrong here.”

As for how it will all end, only time will tell, but for now, Ameer is allowed to receive the therapy and education he needs and deserves. But what about the tens of thousands of other children in New York and around the nation who have been ruthlessly stripped of their right to a public education?

Some families are making plans to move out of the state because their children are already vaccine injured or have brain and immune system disorders that do not qualify for medical exemptions under narrow federal vaccine use guidelines.

Others say they will quit their jobs and move in order to avoid having to vaccinate their unvaccinated children. One such couple, featured in an August 29, 2019, article21 on Syracuse.com, stopped vaccinating their children after their eldest son developed autoimmune encephalitis after getting the HPV vaccine and was hospitalized for 31 days.

Like the Hamidehs and so many others, this family does not consider themselves “anti-vaxxers” but “ex-vaxxers.” They’ve “been there, done that,” and realized the risks were real and very serious, and weren’t worth taking.

Approved Vaccine Contraindications Are Almost Nonexistent

The fact that a serious seizure disorder isn’t a valid contraindication for vaccination should set off warning bells, especially since febrile seizures is a possible side effect of most vaccines.

Ameer’s case clearly demonstrates just how dangerously narrow the vaccine contraindications really are, and how it’s nearly impossible to get a medical exemption under the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ (ACIP) rules.

Vaccine contraindications are the health conditions ACIP agrees are valid reasons for not getting vaccinated. The problem is, under ACIP guidelines, there’s virtually no health condition or vaccine reaction history that is an absolute contraindication to vaccination, and this is what your doctor has been taught to believe as well.22

For example, ACIP tells doctors that pregnancy or severe immunodeficiency are contraindications to getting live virus vaccines like MMR and varicella zoster — but inactivated vaccines are not an absolute contraindication for either of these groups.23

This is a very important point, because we’re often told that ACIP-recommended vaccines must be mandated for children in order to protect pregnant women and the severely immune compromised24,25 who cannot be vaccinated. Yet clearly, this is not true.

According to the CDC’s ACIP, there are only two types of vaccine reactions that are absolute contraindications to getting revaccinated and thus warrant a medical exemption:26

  1. A life-threatening allergic anaphylactic reaction that occurs within minutes of vaccination.
  2. Development of encephalopathy, such as prolonged seizures, coma and other brain dysfunction, within seven days of receiving pertussis-containing vaccines — but only if the doctor believes the encephalopathy is “not attributable to another cause.”

Vaccine Precautions, Another Short List

The CDC also publishes a very short list of health conditions that warrant “precaution,” as they “might increase the risk of a serious adverse reaction, cause diagnostic confusion, or might compromise the ability of the vaccine to produce immunity.”27

Only one CDC-approved universal precaution applies to all vaccines: Having a “moderate or severe acute illness with or without fever.” But this is not a total contraindication, which means a doctor could still decide to vaccinate an acutely and severely ill patient, as it’s up to his or her discretion what “moderate or severe acute illness” is.

The CDC also recommends that hospitalized patients should be vaccinated as long as they’re “not acutely, moderately or severely ill” — as if hospitals are filled with people who are only mildly ill from chronic conditions.

The core message the CDC sends to doctors is that 99% of the U.S. population are candidates for vaccination 100% of the time.28 It’s not surprising then that most doctors, pharmacists and other vaccine providers — who cannot be sued if a vaccine injures or kills — simply ignore any listed precautions.

What Role Have Conflicts of Interest Played?

At the end of the day, what all of this means is that most vaccine damaged children have no chance of getting approved for a medical exemption, and are forced to play Russian Roulette with their lives if they want a public education. It really shouldn’t be this way.

It’s wrong. And it’s so clearly wrong that it’s not hard to understand why people like the Hamidehs conclude that it’s really all about making a profit at any cost, even if the cost is the life of a child. Indeed, evidence of financial conflicts of interest are all around.

A U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform investigation published in 2000 found serious conflicts of interest between the pharmaceutical industry and voting members of two of the most important federal vaccine advisory committees in the U.S:29,30

  • The ACIP, which reviews and votes on the quality of scientific evidence used to make national vaccine policy
  • The FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, which reviews and votes on the quality of scientific evidence used to license new vaccines

Yet, to this day, government-appointed members of both ACIP and FDA vaccine advisory committees can receive conflict of interest waivers by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which allows them to vote on the licensing of vaccines and make national vaccine policy that is turned into public health law.31,32,33,34

We Are Not All the Same

Emerging science reveals we are not all the same and do not respond the same way to infectious diseases or vaccines. Responses to infectious diseases and the risk for complications can vary depending upon genes, environment, age and health at the time of infection.35,36

That is why malnourished, vitamin-deficient children living in poverty, for example, are at higher risk for complications from measles and other infections.37,38,39

Your risk of having a vaccine reaction can also range from zero to 100%. It again depends on genetic influences, your epigenetic history, microbiome, environmental factors, your age and current state of health, the type and number of vaccines you get, and how much time has elapsed between them if you’re getting more than one.40,41,42,43

Research has also confirmed that vaccinated individuals can still get infected with and transmit infections like measles, pertussis and influenza to other people, sometimes without showing any symptoms at all.44,45,46

With that evidence, the vaccine acquired herd immunity argument really falls apart, yet like so many other medical myths, it keeps being repeated long after its been disproven.



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00:19 , ,

In November 2019, Dean Foods, one of the biggest dairy companies in the U.S., announced it had filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy,1 sending a wave of uncertainty through an already shaky milk industry. Dean Foods was one of the primary milk processors and distributers in the U.S., purchasing milk directly from dairy farms.

If farmers don’t sell their milk directly to a processor like Dean Foods, they can also sell it to dairy cooperatives, which negotiate sales of the milk to processors and retailers on behalf of its members. Dairy co-ops have been rapidly consolidating, however, leaving farmers with few options for sales — Dean Foods among them.

Alongside the bankruptcy, the dairy giant also announced that it was in talks with Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), the largest dairy co-op in the U.S., about a possible acquisition. The merger would pose a serious conflict of interest for dairy farmers, as DFA is supposed to advocate for farmers but would end up being a processor.

As such, they’d have an interest in keeping milk prices low, at the detriment of the more than 13,000 dairy farmers they represent.2

Dean Foods Bankruptcy Could Worsen Milk Monopoly

Speaking with New Food Economy, Peter C. Carstensen, a former attorney for the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice, explained that DFA acquiring Dean Foods raises serious questions about anticompetitive activity. “The problem with DFA is the conflict of interest that will result from [trying] to lower prices to farmers in order to increase their revenue as a milk processor,” he said.3

DFA already controls 30% of the U.S. milk production, which means acquiring Dean Foods could easily lead to a monopoly over the market. “What you’re going to see is increased risk of tacit collusion on the consumer side, raising the price of milk for consumers,” Carstensen continued.4

It’s not the first time DFA and Dean Foods have raised such suspicions. In 2013, DFA paid a nearly $159 million fine to settle a 2007 lawsuit alleging DFA conspired with a number of companies to suppress milk prices by closing bottling plants and stifling competition. In 2010, Dean Foods also paid dairy farms in the northeast a $30 million settlement as part of an antitrust lawsuit.5

Milk prices are already low, causing many dairy farmers to close their businesses. In Wisconsin, for instance, farmers in 2019 are getting nearly 40% less for their milk than they were in 2014. Nearly 700 dairy farms closed in the state in 2018, most of them small operations.6 Meanwhile, in 2018 the Organic Consumers Association reported:7

“Dairy farmers are suffering because the companies that send their milk to the grocery store refuse to pay them what it costs them to produce the milk. On the West Coast, cooperatives created to sell dairy products have been accused by their members of pocketing millions of dollars in an elaborate accounting scheme.

Meanwhile, farmers in the Northeast have filed a lawsuit against their coop, Dairy Farmers of America, and Dean Foods, the nation’s largest milk processor, alleging the companies conspired to monopolize the market and drive down prices, knowing their member farmers would have nowhere else to sell their milk.

Milk prices are so bad this year — farmers are getting the same price they got 20 years ago — that at least one milk processor sent farmers phone numbers for suicide prevention hotlines and other mental health services along with the latest market forecasts.”

Ultraprocessed Homogenized CAFOs Killed Milk

Many are asking what “killed” Dean Foods, blaming its downfall on everything from plant-based milk alternatives and millennials’ apparent distaste for milk to increased availability of other beverages.8 Even the relatively newfound popularity of drinking water has been pinpointed as a scapegoat.

Dean Foods president and CEO Eric Beringause said in a statement, “Despite our best efforts to make our business more agile and cost-efficient, we continue to be impacted by a challenging operating environment marked by continuing declines in consumer milk consumption.”9

The fact is, milk consumption is on the decline. In 1975, Americans consumed 247 pounds of fluid milk (about 29.6 gallons) per person, compared to 146 pounds (or about 17.5 gallons) in 2018.10

What’s truly responsible for this decline, however, is the shift of milk from a fresh, wholesome raw food to one that’s ultraprocessed, homogenized and the product of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

On CAFOs, milk can be produced in filthy conditions, then heated until all the pathogens are gone. Never mind that, along with killing “germs,” pasteurization kills off beneficial organisms in the milk and prevents natural souring (while naturally soured milk can still be consumed, pasteurized milk past its prime will quickly go bad).11

Rather than forcing dirty and dangerous CAFOs to clean up their acts, the FDA has waged a war against raw milk producers — those who are typically producing milk using far healthier, more humane and more sustainable methods than the industrial dairy industry ever could.

As CAFOs became the norm for dairy farms (even in idyllic-seeming dairy states like Vermont), farmers were forced to grow their herds and increase milk production using artificial (drug and hormone-based) methods, among others (like feeding cows an unnatural amount of grain-based food, 24-hour confinement and increased number of milkings per day).

Meanwhile, some people who experience gastrointestinal upset or other health problems when drinking regular CAFO dairy do fine when drinking raw, organic grass fed milk, which is far easier on your digestive system. Raw, grass fed A2-only milk may be even more ideal.

Raw Milk Advocates Win Lawsuit

In the U.S., raw milk is the only food banned from interstate commerce, which means small farmers cannot transport it across state lines, and even in states where farmers are allowed to sell raw milk directly to consumers from their farms, advertising bans may be put in place, allowing farmers to be punished with fines or jail time if they advertise their raw milk for sale.

In many cases, this effectively makes it impossible for farmers to successfully market and sell their raw milk, so farmers have been fighting back against this type of prohibitive legislation. In Kansas, for instance, a statute enacted in 1967 banned any advertising of raw milk, except for signage on the farm.

However, two goat farmers sued agriculture secretary Mike Beam, asking for the state to stop enforcing the statute. “Then an unusual thing happened,” Food Safety News reported. “The state agreed with the goat farmers”:12

“Under the terms of the settlement, the parties agree the advertising ban violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights Section 11 and is therefore unenforceable.”

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt further stated:13

“The statute restricting advertising of raw milk does not comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s modern application of the First Amendment to commercial speech and is plainly unconstitutional …

While we typically provide a rigorous defense for every statute enacted by the Legislature, in this case where there exists no plausible legal defense the better and less-costly course of action is for the Department of Agriculture to work with the Legislature to modify the statute so it complies with the U.S. Constitution.”

Fear and Control Aim to Keep Raw Milk an Illegal Food

There was a period of time, from 1860 to the 1920s, when raw milk went through what Mark McAfee, founder and chairman of the Raw Milk Institute (RAWMI), describes as a “dark age.”

The cow diets, combined with unsanitary conditions, raw sewage mixed with water and lack of refrigeration led to the spread of diseases like tuberculosis and typhoid. A lot of people died from raw milk that came from these unsanitary distillery dairies raising malnourished cows.

Around this time, the “swill milk” scandal also occurred, in which dairy cows being fed grain distillation remnants and raised in poor conditions produced diseased milk, which was then mixed with chalk and sold as fresh. A reported 8,000 children died as a result, which increased consumer support and industry acceptance of pasteurization.14

In the modern day, fear is still used as a tool to promote restrictions to your right to choose what to eat. A bill introduced in Tennessee by Sen. Richard Briggs, R-Knoxville, Senate Bill 15 (SB15), even suggests amending a Tennessee code relating to milk products to make it illegal for a partial owner of a hoofed animal to drink the milk from that animal.15

While graciously allowing a person who is the sole owner of a hoofed mammal to drink the milk personally, the bill is aimed at snuffing out herdshare programs. Private agreements called herdshares are often formed between farmers and individuals, which entitle you to the benefits of owning a "share" of a cow, such as a certain amount of milk each week.

However, SB15 not only would make it illegal for herdshare owners to obtain raw milk but also would make it against the law for the farmer running a herdshare to drink milk from their own cow (or other hoofed mammal), as they would not be considered a “sole owner.”

SB15 is poised as a bill to protect the public welfare from the “risks” of drinking raw milk, but raw milk is a nutritious and safe food when it comes from cows raised on pasture.

Briggs reportedly introduced SB15 to close the herdsharing “loophole” after 10 children in the state were sickened by E. coli that was blamed on drinking raw milk from a Knoxville shareholder dairy. But according to Weston A. Price, “no E. coli was found in any of the dairy’s milk that public health officials tested.”16

Raw Milk Cheese Is Also Targeted

In her book, “Ending the War on Artisan Cheese,” food scientist Catherine Donnelly states that fears of raw milk are threatening the artisan cheese industry, which uses raw milk in many of its cheeses. She explains that traditional cheesemakers carefully source raw milk from high-quality sources to ensure a safe and delicious end product.

In an interview with Eater, Donnelly states, “There are careful standards that cheesemakers pay attention to because if they don’t start out with the best quality raw materials, they’re not going to end up with a good cheese. Paying attention to the microbiological quality of the raw milk is really, really critical. The raw milk, the starting material, has to be of good quality or you’re not going to have a sellable product.”17

What’s more, Donnelly notes that more illness outbreaks are associated with processed products that have been pasteurized, while the FDA favors Big Dairy at the expense of the smaller, artisan producers:18

“Who has the ear of the FDA when regulations are being promulgated? It isn’t the small, rural farm people who have a seat at the table, influencing policy. It’s the large, multinational corporations who are looking at their bottom line and profit.

If those voices are having input on regulations, there isn’t a holistic approach for the FDA to look at something other than a one-size-fits-all approach to regulations. Cheese makers have no market for their product if it’s contaminated and they’re making their customers sick.

But I would argue that a small-scale producer has much more control over the safety of that process than some of these large-scale industrial plants, where there are lots of post-pasteurization processes like shredding, and cutting, and repackaging, and lots of opportunities for exposure to contamination.

That’s why we see more outbreaks associated with industrially processed products, as opposed to artisan.”

While in the U.S. cheese must either be made from pasteurized milk or held for 60 days prior to sale, Europe considers raw milk essential to such delicacies as traditional French cheese. Pennsylvania cheesemaker Sue Miller explained to Mother Nature Network:19

"There are all these great enzymes living in the milk when it's raw that create flavor profiles. When milk is pasteurized, they get extinguished so you have to add cultures to accentuate the flavors of the milk …

I'd love for people to really try raw milk cheese. In Europe people don't want pasteurized cheese. They know how good raw milk cheese is.”

Support Real Dairy and Your Right to Food Freedom

Ultimately, whether you drink milk or not, and whether it’s raw or pasteurized, is a personal choice — and it should remain that way. You have the right to choose what to eat, regardless of the government’s opinion on what’s healthy or what’s not. Further, by choosing raw milk that comes from small, grass fed farmers, you can support the small operators that deliver farm-fresh foods to local residents.

As long as farmers are prevented from selling to consumers directly, processors can and do price fix the market, ultimately leading to corporate monopolies, consolidation of CAFO dairy farms, a degradation of food safety and quality, and the intentional destruction of small, family dairy farms.20



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