The anti-vaccine movement has a few doctors of which they seem to be awfully proud.
One of them is Dr. Viera Scheibner.
What kind of doctor is she?
Although it does seem like she went to medical school, it was for only one year, so like Dr. Stephanie Seneff, she is not an M.D.
Dr. Viera Scheibner did receive a doctorate though – it was from the Department of Geology and Palaeontology. She is a micropaleontologist.
Viera Scheibner on Vaccines
What does a micropaleontologist know about vaccines?
“Amoebas are quite obviously widely spread protozoans and some of them have been established as causing serious disease in animals and humans. It is also quite well-established that amoebas are important contaminants of tissue cultures used in preparation of live biologicals, vaccines being the most important of them because they are widely injected into small babies and children.”
Viera Scheibner, Ph.D.
To not disparage micropaleontologists, the better question might be what does this micropaleontologist know about vaccines?
“Polio has not been eradicated by vaccination, it is lurking behind a redefinition and new diagnostic names like viral or aseptic meningitis… According to one of the 1997 issues of the MMWR, there are some 30,000 to 50,000 cases of viral meningitis per year in the United States alone. That’s where all those 30,000 – 50,000 cases of polio disappeared after the introduction of mass vaccination.”
Viera Scheibner, Ph.D. in the Dan Burton Hepatitis B vaccine hearings
If 30,000 to 50,000 cases of polio simply became viral meningitis, because we changed the name of the disease, how come those folks didn’t become paralyzed?
“Medical research demonstrated that having whooping cough prevents asthma.”
Viera Scheibner, Ph.D.
It soon becomes obvious that Viera Scheibner simply pushes common anti-vaccine talking points, including that:
- vaccines don’t work
- vaccine preventable diseases, like measles, polio, and whooping cough are actually good for you and are “an important development milestone in the life and maturing processes in children.” Again, she really likes natural immunity and thinks that “well-managed natural infectious diseases are beneficial for children.”
- vaccines are bad and cause everything from ear infections to SIDS and shaken baby syndrome
The obvious problems with her thinking?
Vaccines do work. Vaccines are safe. And even “well-managed natural infectious diseases” in the healthiest child, getting the best care, in the most modern hospital, can be life-threatening.
Not surprisingly, she got her start in the mid 1980s, just after all of the vaccine scare stories about the DPT vaccine in the UK and US. With her husband, she developed the Cotwatch Breathing Monitor, and by 1991 she thought they had found a “direct causal relationship between injections of DPT and cot deaths.”
“Our conclusion is that if vaccination were to be suspended, the cot death rate would be halved!”
Viera Scheibner, Ph.D. on Cot Deaths Linked to Vaccinations
Something soon did help the rate of SIDS or cot death go down 50%, but of course, it wasn’t suspending vaccinations. What was it? That’s right, it was the start of the recommendations to put babies to sleep on their back, which began in 1992.
Dr. Viera Scheibner’s conclusions are all wrong.
I am kind of disappointed that she hasn’t put her micropaleontology degree to work though and written a nice story about how vaccines might have killed off the dinosaurs…
What To Know About Viera Scheibner
Dr. Viera Scheibner is a micropaleontologist who thinks that vaccines do not work, that vaccines are bad, and that getting vaccine preventable diseases, like pertussis and measles, is good for you.
More About Viera Scheibner
- Infant vaccination correlates to reduced incidence of SIDS
- “Getting The Point” – the antivaxxer response to 60 Minutes’ story on their danger to Australia
- Debunking Viera Scheibner on Sunrise
- Anti-immunisation scare: The inconvenient facts
- Here we go again: The vile tactic of blaming shaken baby syndrome on vaccines, part 2
- Using the lie that shaken baby syndrome is a misdiagnosis for vaccine injury to try to exonerate another accused child abuser
- Dr. Rachie slays the Nine Vaccine Ringwraiths with Science
- From Jenner to Wakefield: The long shadow of the anti-vaccination movement
- Naegleria fowleri
I keep on seeing posts about amoeba — and even nematodes(!) — supposedly occurring in vaccines. Wouldn’t this be very easy to disprove? Random sampling of vaccine fluids under a light microscope (although you wouldn’t even need that for nematodes, or large amoeba) would immediately disprove these claims. It seems silly to give it any attention, as the claim itself is absurd, but has anything like this (and the random sampling of batches for quality control in general) been published?
Seems she was talking about the culture medium, not the product.
Her book is actually a survey of 100 years of orthodox literature, and that is her conclusion. There is much in the book that goes beyond cot death. However, there is also a correlation where they all died at almost the exact same time after the DTP shot as infants, and that issue didn’t exist in Japan, the cot deaths dropped off, after they started giving the shot after 2 years. So your research above (if research was done) is slightly flawed.
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