Last year, we found several connections between Father’s Day and vaccines, especially that Maurice Hilleman has often been called the father of modern vaccines.
Is there a mother of modern vaccines?
Vaccines and Mother’s Day
Does it have to be modern vaccines?
Of course, the first person that comes to mind is Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who learned about smallpox inoculation in Turkey and used it to protect her own children, also advocating for more general use in England.
But that involved variolation, not vaccination.
So who could be the mother of vaccines?
How about the person who “has done more for immunizations that any one person in this whole country?”
Betty Bumpers was a champion in our efforts to reduce the burden of vaccine-preventable diseases among children in the United States. She played a major leadership role as 1st Lady of Arkansas in improving immunization in that state and was inspirational in launching the first major Presidential Initiative on Immunization during the late 1970s. She continued to be a major immunization advocate through much of her life launching “Every Child By Two (ECBT)” which she chaired along with Mrs. Rosalyn Carter, now “Vaccinate Your Family”.
Six degrees of separation? The idea that most people are connected by six or fewer degrees of separation.
Six Degrees of Anti-Vaccine Separation
Not surprisingly, you don’t have to beyond a few degrees to see the connection between many anti-vaccine folks.
“Parents from around Southern California choose Gordon for his outspoken and controversial stance on vaccinations, driving from as far away as Santa Barbara and Long Beach.
They know he will lend a sympathetic ear to their concerns about the possible adverse side effects of childhood vaccinations — even though several large scientific studies have failed to find a connection.
His openness to alternative approaches has earned him an avid following. With thousands of patients, his practice is so busy that he no longer accepts new patients.”
Los Angeles Times on Doctor Contrarian
Especially the vocal anti-vaccine folks.
Few folks likely remember, but in 2000, just after Andrew Wakefield released his now retracted study, Dr. Jay Gordon and Cindy Crawford appeared on Good Morning America to discuss vaccines and how she had decided to delay vaccinating her baby.
After the segment, Dr. Gordon stated:
They edited the segment to make me sound like a vaccination proponent. We also have to understand the impact of a person as well-known as Cindy Crawford delaying vaccines for over six months.
March 1997 article in the LA Times describing how media savvy “skeptics” were attacking vaccines.
So while a lot of folks like to give credit to Bob Sears and Jenny McCarthy for starting the modern anti-vaccine movement, Dr. Jay and Cindy Crawford were on the scene far earlier.
Dr. Jay had even been featured in the LA Times before Wakefield published his paper!
Speaking of Jenny McCarthy, it is interesting to note that Jay Gordon was her pediatrician!
“Right before his MMR shot, I said to the doctor, I have a very bad feeling about this shot. This is the autism shot, isn’t it? And he said, “No, that is ridiculous. It is a mother’s desperate attempt to blame something on autism.” And he swore at me. . . . And not soon thereafter, I noticed that change in the pictures: Boom! Soul, gone from his eyes.”
Jenny McCarthy
Well, Dr. Jay is almost certainly not the pediatrician that swore at her after giving her child an MMR vaccine.
“Yes, there have been cases of Disney spread from Measlesland. I will give MMRs to kids 3 yrs+ if parents are worried.”
“Would any scientist give SIX vaccines at once to a baby? Asking for trouble. One at a time makes so much more sense.”
Jay Gordon
It probably makes even more sense if it is your pediatrician saying it…
“My name is Brittney Kara and my husband and I are parents who have chosen not to continue vaccinating our children. After thoroughly investigating and carefully weighing the risks and benefits of each vaccine, we have concluded that the current vaccines are not safe for our children and that they are not required for the optimum health of our children.”
Brittney Kara
Especially when you have a pediatrician who has said “I think that the public health benefits to vaccinating are grossly overstated” and who recommends that parents “Wait until a child is clearly developmentally “solid” before vaccinating because we just don’t know which children will react badly to immunizations.”
“I began researching vaccines in 2007 when I was pregnant with our first child. Dr. Jay Gordon was my pediatrician growing up and since I have always held him in a high regard he was the first person I turned to. He was very cautious about the current CDC schedule and his research inspired me to start my own. I began following the work of Dr. Russell Blaylock, Dr. Joseph Mercola, Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, and Dr. Suzanne Humphries, among others.”
Brittney Kara
What about Alicia Silverstone and Mayim Bialik?
How many celebrities got their ideas about vaccines from Jay Gordon?
Suspicions about the DPT were not confirmed. In fact, it was found that the DPT vaccine did not cause any of the neurological problems that folks claimed, something that seemed to trigger the anti-vaccine feelings in some pediatricians.
How many other people have been influenced by the anti-vaccine celebrities that Jay Gordon has inspired?
Anti-vaccine folks don’t seem to like that they are getting more attention these days.
Why are they getting more attention?
More unvaccinated folks are getting sick.
But Did Anyone Die?
Is that really such a big deal though?
Hillary Simpson doesn’t think measles outbreaks are a big deal because she doesn’t think that anyone has died….
It’s not like anyone has died in all of these outbreaks, is it?
Actually, they have…
Most anti-vaccine folks conveniently seem to not be aware of her, but an immunocompromised woman died after she was exposed to measles during a 2015 outbreak in Clallam County, Washington.
“New details about the first confirmed measles death in the U.S. since 2003 show that the victim, a 28-year-old woman with underlying health problems, was likely exposed to the virus at a Port Angeles tribal health clinic.
Nearly three dozen other people also were potentially exposed to the highly contagious germ on Jan. 29, 2015, at the Lower Elwha Health Clinic by a 52-year-old man who became the first case of measles confirmed in Clallam County in two decades.”
Fatal measles case linked to exposure at tribal clinic, records show
So yes, someone did die during the recent measles outbreaks.
A 28-year-old woman died in Clallam County, Washington.
Not everyone is all better.
And during the 2013 measles outbreak in Brooklyn, a pregnant woman with measles was hospitalized and had a miscarriage.
Yes, tragically people have died because of the anti-vaccine movement.
And tragically, unless folks stop believing this kind of anti-vaccine propaganda and start vaccinating and protecting their kids, even more people will die unnecessarily.
No, but in paying tribute to her father, who died in 2018, some folks may have gotten that idea.
“He was 92 years old. He had a good, long life. And he lived his life exactly how he wanted. He was Christian Science his entire life. He never had medicine his whole life. He never went to a doctor. I never had a vaccination. We never had medicine growing up and he lived to be 92. He was very proud of me.”
If you haven’t, when you get done learning about it, the name is going to seem very ironic…
“Why do babies have lopsided smiles? Why are so many people’s eyes misaligned? What started as a simple search to understand this phenomenon turned into a two-year quest that uncovered hidden links between our crooked faces and some of the most puzzling diseases of our time.
From autism to Alzheimer’s and from chronic fatigue syndrome to Crohn’s disease, Crooked methodically goes through the most recent scientific research and connects the dots from the outbreak of metallic medicine in 1800s England to the eruption of neurological and autoimmune disorders so many are suffering from today.
If the theories put forth in this book are true, the convergence of metals, microbes and medicine that started two hundred years ago may have set humanity on a path of suffering that could make the deadliest epidemics in history pale in comparison. Thankfully, for the millions who are afflicted, who may have found nothing to explain the cause of their suffering — these same theories could also illuminate the path to healing and recovery.”
Forrest Maready on Crooked: Man-Made Disease Explained
Spoiler Alert – The “theories” put forth in his book are not true.
Are you crooked?
Forrest Maready might get asked that a lot these days for actually trying to sell a self-published book pushing the idea that he knows what causes everything “from autism to Alzheimer’s and from chronic fatigue syndrome to Crohn’s disease.”
Of course, he thinks that it is vaccines and aluminum.
“And that’s what makes this even worse. Not only is the theory completely false, it’s not even original!.”
This “theory” of “his” has been well debunked, ironically, by Maready himself!
Doesn’t it look like many of these football players from 1899 had crooked faces?
As others have pointed out, Forrest Maready debunked his own book when he posted old photographs of football players, claiming it proved that vaccines caused chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
Not only did many of the football players from the late 18th and early 19th century who played without helmets go on to develop chronic traumatic encephalopathy, if they didn’t die on the field, as you can see, many also had crooked faces!
Crooked faces, brain damage because they didn’t wear helmets, and death from now vaccine preventable diseases – life was tough in the old days.
As early as the 1920s, after first being noticed in boxers, it was quickly discovered that CTE could also occur in football players. And again, many of the folks in these pics have crooked faces!
“All people have asymmetric faces. When one looks closely, these differences become more apparent.”
Why do celebrities get so much more attention when they say that they aren’t going to vaccinate and protect their kids?
This is a nice reminder that many celebrities advocate for vaccines.
What do vaccines cause? Adults. They cause adults.
Again, vaccines work.
Not vaccinating?
Still on the fence and need some help making a decision about vaccinating your kids? Do your research, but just keep in mind that every anti-vaccine argument has been refuted a thousand times already.
Need some facts about vaccines?
Don’t make a bad decision about vaccines.
Having a smallpox vaccine scar makes you a part of history.
Have you seen or heard about any of these movies about vaccines?
Vaccine Videos
Just as bad as so-called vaccine documentaries, many of the vaccine videos that you find on You-Tube are also filled with misinformation and propaganda, including many vaccine scare videos.
Where are you Jon Stewart? Measles is still around…
