Tag: Larry Palevsky

Who Is Larry Palevsky?

Think you know all of the anti-vaccine pediatricians?

“The pediatrician who spoke on Monday night, Dr. Lawrence Palevsky, is regularly cited in pamphlets circulated in New York City that urge women not to get their children vaccinated. His views have no basis in science, experts said.”

Despite Measles Warnings, Anti-Vaccine Rally Draws Hundreds of Ultra-Orthodox Jews

Sadly, there is more than one pediatrician pandering to parent’s fears about vaccines these days.

Who Is Larry Palevsky?

Although not as well known as Sears or Thomas, who were thrown into the spotlight because they wrote anti-vaccine books and were associated with measles outbreaks in their areas, it would be hard to say what makes Palevsky different from any other anti-vaccine expert.

A holistic pediatrician, he was an “expert” for the anti-vaccination movie The Greater Good. Palevsky also often links to and quotes other notorious anti-vax “experts.”

He even appeared on the Gary Null Show – in addition to being anti-vax, Gary Null is among the alternative medicine folks who actually denies that HIV causes AIDS.

So no one should be surprised that Palevsky spoke at an anti-vaccine rally during the longest measles outbreak we have had in the United States in over 25 years. An ongoing measles outbreak that health officials are still struggling to contain.

At the rally, he talked at length about mutating viruses and falsely claimed that failed vaccines were producing a new strain of measles. Women scribbled into notepads as he spoke. Others filmed his comments, sending them to their contacts on WhatsApp. Essentially, he said, there were no studies available to show how the vaccine affects the human body.

“Is it possible that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine that is somehow being given in this lot to communities in Williamsburg and Lakewood and Monsey, maybe in Borough Park, is it possible that these lots are bad?” he asked, referring to areas in New York and New Jersey with large ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities.

“It’s fascinating because we’re told how contagious the disease is, but somehow it’s centered in the Jewish community.”

Despite Measles Warnings, Anti-Vaccine Rally Draws Hundreds of Ultra-Orthodox Jews

It’s fascinating that a pediatrician would actually think that any of this is possible…

Bad lots of vaccines?

Does Palevsky, who runs a Wellness Center, realize that only about 3-4% of the people who have gotten measles in Brooklyn and Rockland County have been fully vaccinated. Most are unvaccinated.

How does that fit into Palevsky’s theories about bad lots, mutating measles viruses, and failed vaccines?

Since Palevsky doesn’t seem to believe in the germ theory of disease, that viruses and bacteria can actually cause us to get sick, it isn’t hard to figure out. For him, of course, it would be easier to blame vaccines instead of the measles virus, I guess even vaccines that these folks have never received.

Sure. It is anything and everything except the fact that parents are intentionally not vaccinating and protecting their kids…

What’s really fascinating is that people are still listening to this kind of misinformation when they can see the consequences of what happens when they leave their community unvaccinated and unprotected.

“I believe in what’s called a starvation diet for kids when they’re sick.”

Larry Palevsky

And that they are listening to it from folks like Palevsky!

“Most of the reason that kids get sick is to move or get rid of wastes anyway.”

Larry Palevsky

But just in case they don’t get better by just removing the wastes in their body or by using supplements, essential oils or herbs and reducing their stress levels, Palevsky is very happy to refer your child to one of the homeopaths, acupuncturists, chiropractors and/or other health professionals in his office.

Palevsky wants your child to “breathe more” when they get sick…

And that’s a clue to why we continue to see outbreaks of measles.

This industry of holistic and integrative “health professionals” goes out of their way to make sure parents are too scared to vaccinate their kids.

More on Larry Palevsky

Who Is Chris Exley?

Are you worried about aluminum in vaccines?

If you are, the chances are good that you have been reading something by or about Professor Christopher Exley recently.

Who Is Chris Exley?

To those in the anti-vaccine movement, Professor Chris Exley is one of the worlds’ leading experts on the subject of aluminum toxicity.

“I am a Biologist (University of Stirling) with a PhD in the ecotoxicology of aluminium (University of Stirling). My research career (1984-present) has focussed upon an intriguing paradox; ‘how come the third most abundant element of the Earth’s crust (aluminium) is non-essential and largely inimcal to life’. Investigating this mystery has required research in myriad fields from the basic inorganic chemistry of the reaction of aluminium and silicon to the potentially complex biological availability of aluminium in humans. I am also fascinated by the element silicon in relation to living things which, as the second most abundant element of the Earth’s crust, is also almost devoid of biological function. One possible function of silicon is to keep aluminium out of biology (biota) and this forms a large part of the research in our group. We are also interested in biological silicification.”

Professor Chris Exley Keele University Staff Profile

What do other people think of Dr. Exley and his work?

“Let me put this straight, this is not a paper that has evidence of scientific fraud or data manipulation. There is no duplicated images, no suspicious blots. The problem I have with this paper is its deep experimental flaws and data analysis that nonetheless should not have passed through the peer-review filter.”

Does the latest paper from Exley show a link between ASD and aluminum?

While it is typically strange to talk about fraud and data manipulation when starting to review a scientific study, remember that other aluminum studies, including other aluminum studies that were also funded by the Children’s Medical Safety Research Institute (CMSRI), were recently retracted.

In addition to performing deeply flawed studies about aluminum, Chris Exley gives lectures about aluminum toxicity at so-called vaccine safety conferences. At one 2011 conference, in addition to Exley talking about The systemic toxicity of aluminium adjuvants, you could have heard presentations by:

  • Russell Blaylock, MD on The central role of immunoexcitotoxicity in aluminum and mercury-containing adjuvant-triggered neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders
  • Shiv Chopra, MSc, PhD on Vaccination programs: prevention or corruption?
  • John Barthelow Classen, MD on Vaccine induced epidemics of type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes/obesity/metabolic syndrome, and their relationship to the epidemic of autoimmune autism
  • Barbara Loe Fisher, President & Founder of NVIC on Medical science & public trust: the policy, ethics and law of vaccination in the 20th & 21st Centuries
  • Lawrence Palevsky, MD, FAAP on Rethinking the germ theory
  • Christopher Shaw, PhD on Aluminum as a neurotoxin: the evidence from cell culture, in vivo, and human studies
  • Yehuda Shoenfeld, MD, FRCP on ASIA – Autoimmune (Auto-inflammatory) Syndrome induced by Adjuvant: a new syndrome to be defined
  • Lucija Tomljenovic, PhD on Gardasil: prophylaxis or medical misconduct? and Aluminum adjuvants and immunization science: a matter of pervasive uncertainty
  • Andrew Wakefield, MB, BS on Autism and vaccines: a research strategy focused on cause

Chris Exley keeps interesting company if he doesn’t want to be thought of as someone who is anti-vaccine…

Interestingly, he also believes that we are living in The Aluminum Age.

“The human race has inadvertently agreed to participate in a clinical trial to assess and understand the toxicity of human exposure to aluminium. This is an experiment which is, of course, ongoing as I write and you read this essay. It is an experiment which has neither been submitted for independent peer review nor received ethical approval.”

And he seems fairly sure that aluminum is responsible for a whole host of diseases, from Alzheimer’s and autism to diabetes.

Why hasn’t research been done to figure out whether or not aluminum is safe?

“While there are thousands of scientific publications over many decades demonstrating the toxicity of aluminium in all living things the larger questions concerning aluminium and common human diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease or diabetes remain unanswered or at best equivocal. These questions remain unanswered primarily because neither the global aluminium industry nor governments which have allowed the unfettered growth of the use of aluminium products are prepared for an answer. Try to imagine the immediate and short term economic consequences of human exposure to aluminium being directly linked as causal or even contributory in just one disease, for example Alzheimer’s disease.”

Of course, it’s a conspiracy!

“The ensuing chaos and stock market crashes would be unpalatable but they would just be the beginning of a world which would now have to change to address and accommodate such knowledge. Now that the tip of the iceberg has become visible the remainder would have to be investigated and the inevitable consequences of human exposure to aluminium would be revealed, piece by piece, and a new jigsaw of life on Earth would slowly be pieced together.”

Just like it was a conspiracy that there was a “tsunami of silence perpetuated by all mainstream media, almost globally” following his deeply flawed study that he thought linked aluminum adjuvants in vaccines and autism.

chris-exley-conspiracy
More than the criticism, it seems that Chris Exley was really bothered that his latest research was ignored…

What’s next for Exley?

You can be sure it will be something about aluminum toxicity…

What to Know About Chris Exley

Professor Chris Exley is an expert on telling folks that aluminum is toxic.

More About the Chris Exley

How Aluminum Became the New Thimerosal

Once thimerosal was taken out of vaccines, some doctors were left with a dilemma. What were anxious parents going to worry about now?

Some continued to push myths about thimerosal, but many quickly found a new “toxin” to scare folks about – aluminum.

More than 10 years ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a position paper stating that “aluminum is now being implicated as interfering with a variety of cellular and metabolic processes in the nervous system and in other tissues.”

Lawrence Palevsky, MD on Aluminum: The New Mercury?

Palevsky wasn’t the only doc to try and shift parents’ fears onto aluminum.

He wasn’t even the first to make it sound like the AAP had been warning about aluminum for years and years.

Bob Sears, MD seems to have that honor with his 2008 article in Mothering Magazine, Is Aluminum the New Thimerosal?.

“As a medical doctor, my first instinct was to worry that these aluminum levels far exceed what may be safe for babies. My second instinct was to assume that the issue had been properly researched, and that studies had been done on healthy infants to determine their ability to rapidly excrete aluminum. My third instinct was to search for these studies. So far, I have found none. It’s likely the FDA thinks that the kidneys of healthy infants work well enough to excrete aluminum before it can circulate through the body, accumulate in the brain, and cause toxic effects. However, I can find no references in FDA documents that show that using aluminum in vaccines has been tested and found to be safe.”

Bob Sears, MD

Unlike Dr. Bob, my first instinct when faced with a situation like this is to look to someone with a little more expertise before scaring folks away from vaccinating and protecting their kids. And do you know what all of those experts say – aluminum salts in vaccines are safe.

Bob Sears appeared on Fox & Friends in 2010 for the segment "Vaccines: A Bad Combination?"
Bob Sears appeared on Fox & Friends in 2010 for the segment “Vaccines: A Bad Combination?”

That’s not surprising, because just about everything Dr. Bob warned about and somehow equated with vaccines, was really about premature neonates and infants getting daily intravenous fluids and IV feeding solutions over prolonged periods of time, especially premature neonates and infants with impaired kidney function. Although aluminum toxicity wasn’t thought to be a common problem, even in these situations, it was thought to be enough of a risk that doctors were warned about it, and TPN fluid was limited to no more than 25 micrograms per liter of aluminum.

And that’s why the AAP had issued their position paper.

Now, would a premature baby getting IVF or an IV feeding solution containing aluminum every day for several weeks or months ever really be thought of as being at the same risk as an infant who gets a few aluminum salt containing vaccines at their well checkups?

No, it is clearly not the same thing.

“We conclude that episodic exposures to vaccines that contain aluminum adjuvant continue to be extremely low risk to infants and that the benefits of using vaccines containing aluminum adjuvant outweigh any theoretical concerns.”

Mitkus et al on Updated aluminum pharmacokinetics following infant exposures through diet and vaccination.

And not surprisingly, the aluminum salts that kids get in vaccines have been shown to be safe.

“Importantly, aluminum has a good safety record in which reported adverse events have been limited to acute local reactions.”

Glanz et al. on Cumulative and episodic vaccine aluminum exposure in a population-based cohort of young children.

Don’t believe the new anti-vaccine propaganda about aluminum and don’t let it scare you away from vaccinating and protecting your kids.

“We found no evidence that aluminium salts in vaccines cause any serious or long-lasting adverse events.”

Jefferson et al. on Adverse events after immunisation with aluminium-containing DTP vaccines: systematic review of the evidence.

Vaccines are safe and necessary.

Vaccines with aluminum salts as an adjuvant are safe and necessary.

What to Know About Aluminum Adjuvants in Vaccines

Aluminum salts in vaccines are safe. Skipping or delaying your child’s vaccines because you have been scared about aluminum isn’t.

More on Aluminum Adjuvants in Vaccines

Vaccines and the Blood-Brain Barrier

When they aren’t talking about toxins, anti-vaccine folks like to talk about two things – the gut and the blood-brain barrier (BBB).

Kelly Brogan, a holistic psychiatrist, missed an opportunity to talk about the gut when scaring folks about "toxins" in flu shots and the blood brain barrier.
Kelly Brogan, a holistic psychiatrist, missed an opportunity to talk about the gut when scaring folks about “toxins” in flu shots and the blood-brain barrier.

Sometimes they talk about all of them together.

What is the Blood-Brain Barrier?

The blood-brain barrier is exactly what you think it is – a barrier to keep substances in the blood from entering the cerebrospinal fluid that surrounds the brain and spinal cord.

Of course, the blood-brain barrier is not impermeable, as some substances, like glucose, ketone bodies, and amino acids have to get to the brain. Brain cells need fuel, just like every other part of the body. And waste products have to get from the brain, across the blood-brain barrier, and back into the blood, so that we can get rid of them.

So the blood-brain barrier doesn’t block everything though. Instead, it is a semi-permeable membrane that lets some things through, but keeps out foreign substances (neurotoxins), lipid insoluble molecules, large molecules (macromolecules), and molecules with a charge.

Why is all of this important?

With a functioning blood-brain barrier, many medications, hormones, and toxins, are kept from affecting our brains! Of course, the blood-brain barrier can make it hard when you do want something to affect your brain, like when you are treating meningitis, anxiety, depression, or migraines.

And there are times when the blood-brain barrier can break down, like after a stroke, certain infections, head trauma, or having high blood pressure, etc.

Vaccines and the Blood-Brain Barrier

So what do vaccines have to do with the blood-brain barrier?

If you understand how vaccines work, you have already likely expected that the answer is, not much.

Anti-vaccine folks think that vaccine ingredients, their so-called toxins, can cross the blood-brain barrier – our semi-permeable membrane that keeps most things out.

They also think that teething can induce a chemical cascade that can make a child’s blood-brain barrier extra leaky. It doesn’t.

And they think that an infant’s blood-brain barrier isn’t developed, an anti-vaccine talking point which helps reinforce their decision to skip or delay vaccinating their kids.

When Does the Blood-Brain Barrier Form?

It shouldn’t be surprising that none of the things that anti-vaccine folks say about the blood-brain barrier is true.

“In contrast with the rodent, in which the development of the BBB occurs primarily after birth, the human barrier and its tight junction protein complex develop mainly in utero. More recent evidence has confirmed that the proteins of the tight junction complex are present very early during human fetal brain development.”

Fetal and Neonatal Physiology (Fifth Edition)

So, of course, the blood-brain barrier forms before a baby is born.

“Given sufficient time and dosage most drugs can breach the placenta and enter the fetal circulation, posing a teratogenic risk to the fetal brain. Although the placenta and BBB have several efflux transporters in common, the BBB is a far more structurally complex and restrictive system.”

Goasdoué et al on Review: The blood-brain barrier; protecting the developing fetal brain

The placenta does a good job of most things from getting to your baby, but once inside, you don’t want everything in your baby’s blood to get to their brain, right?

That’s why the blood-brain barrier begins to form well before your baby is born.

“The BBB develops during fetal life and is well formed by birth, especially to proteins and macromolecules.”

Abbott et al on the Structure and function of the blood-brain barrier

And it is well formed by the time they are born.

None of the ingredients in vaccines, whether it is aluminum, polysorbate 80, or anything else, is going to cross the blood-brain barrier and act as a toxin.

“One can question why polysorbate-80 is in the vaccines if it serves to potentially transport vaccine materials across the blood-brain-barrier. After all, what vaccine materials need to enter the brain? The obvious answer is, none. I’ve heard people ask if the polysorbate-80 is in the vaccines intentionally, used as part of a medical experiment on the human race, like we heard about during World War II.”

Lawrence Palevsky, MD in the Holistic Child Health Newsletter August 2013

It should be clear that these ideas about the blood-brain barrier are just more myths to scare you away from vaccinating and protecting your kids.

Polysorbate 80, for example, is an emulsifier that helps ingredients mix together. It is also used in ice cream and other foods. Maybe someone can ask Dr. Palevsky if he thinks that’s why we sometimes get a ‘brain freeze’ when we eat ice cream – the polysorbate 80 is allowing the ice cream to cross our blood-brain barrier and literally freeze our brain as some kind of medical experiment on the human race.

What to Know About Vaccines and the Blood Brain Barrier

The blood-brain barrier is a semi-permeable membrane that develops before your baby is born. Review how that should affect your decision to vaccinate your kids.

More on Vaccines and the Blood Brain Barrier