The Great Harlem Vaccine Debate

Part 2

Are vaccines effective?

December 28, 2019 – The Great Harlem Vaccine Debate – organized by Curtis Cost – occurred on December 15th and consisted of 4 questions that were actively debated:

Question 1 – Are Vaccines Safe?

Question 2 – Are vaccines effective? (This report)

Question 3 – Can you raise a healthy child without vaccines? (report still to come)

Question 4 – Who should decide if a child is vaccinated, parents or the government? (report still to come)

I have previously published a full report detailing question 1. This report will cover in detail question 2 – Are vaccines effective?

As previously mentioned in Part 1 of this series, the pro-vaccine side of the debate consisted of Ankh Imhotep (Community Activist), Asar Imhotep (Computer Scientist), and Dr. Vanammee (PhD Biomedicine). The pro-Health Freedom side consisted of Del Bigtree (TV/Movie producer, journalist), James Lyons-Weiler (PhD Biomedicine), Virstyne Henry (Health Freedom Activist) and Danielle Gail (Parent Activist).

ARE VACCINES EFFECTIVE?

The first major point made on efficacy came from the pro-vaccine side of the debate. Ankh Imhotep pointed to http://www.ourworldindata.org/vaccination as proof vaccines are effective. He said that vaccines provide protection for the African American Community; if we don’t use vaccines, than what “effective cure” does the other side of the debate have to offer against pathogens? Imhotep yelled this out quite loudly and aggressively.

James Lyons-Weiler responded for the pro-Health Freedom side that there is no doubt if you put an antigen into someone’s body in sufficient dosage it will cause an immune response. However the massive amounts of vaccines we are putting into individuals has “changed the adaptive landscape” of the body and the immune system. Weiler pointed to DTaP as being a “failed vaccine program” as it no longer stops transmission of the pertussis infection.

I need to interject here – Weiler’s point is a true, accepted fact, admitted by everyone who pays attention to the most recent science including Dr. Stanley Plotkin, who is considered “The Godfather” of the modern day vaccination program. Plotkin invented and patented the Rubella vaccine that is used in the MMR. In a sworn deposition Plotkin has admitted that the acellular pertussis portion of the DTaP vaccine allows those vaccinated with it to still be carriers of pertussis (whooping cough) in their lungs. The vaccinated carrier does not show any symptoms of pertussis but can still transmit it to others; a very dangerous situation especially for newborns and infants. You can watch Plotkin admit this at the following link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHbl6GKC19o (go to 24:30)

Weiler went on to say because of vaccines, modern medicine has not looked for new treatments to infections such as pertussis because it is assumed to be taken care of by the vaccine. However that is no longer the case, and vaccine failure may place us in a very scary situation.

HPV may be one of these scary situations. Weiler stated after the HPV vaccination program began we started to find rare types of HPV rising in frequency, and girls as young as 24 who received the HPV vaccine started to get cervical cancer. Prior to the vaccine this was unheard of. “We think we can control nature,” said Weiler, but we are facing the frightening possibility of our “technologies becoming useless.”

Dr. Vanammee responded for the pro-side by going back to the first debate question of are vaccines safe. She stated that the DTP vaccine has been shown to be dangerous and even deadly, and because of this in America that vaccine is no longer in use. It was replaced with the DTaP vaccine and this is proof that safety is taken into consideration. She did mention that the DTP vaccine is still used in the developing world and perhaps it should be replaced with the DTaP, however she acknowledged that she was not qualified to make such a determination.

Ank Imhotep jumped in and referred to James Lyons-Weiler as an “anti-vaxxer” and reiterated the point that at the end of the day they have nothing to offer to replace vaccination.

Weiler responded for the pro-Health Freedom side by saying, “Do not call me an anti-vaxxer. I am a vaccine-risk aware American.” He continued discussing the safety aspect of the debate by saying he feels currently vaccines are not safe, but that they can be made safer. Our tax dollars go to funding vaccine research and hardly anything else. The National Institute of Health (NIH) should be studying how to respond appropriately to vaccine injuries, according to Weiler. He gave the example that if an adult has a seizure, an ambulance would come and EMT’s would perform a medical procedure on the individual suffering from the seizure. If a baby has a seizure after a vaccine the pediatrician sends the child home and does nothing for it. This is ridiculous, and money and resources need to be invested in how to treat vaccine injuries, according to Weiler.

Asar Imhotep on the pro-vaccine side continued on the safety argument by making an analogy comparing vaccines to air bags in cars. Air bags can cause harm to people when they go off, but the harm they cause is so much less than the harm they prevent. Ankh Imhotep made the point that he and his children, and the majority of the audience, are all living examples that vaccines are safe and effective. His children were all vaccinated and none of them got measles or mumps. Ankh Imhotep said if we were in Africa right now, we would all be begging and crying to get vaccines.

Del Bigtree responded for the pro-Health Freedom by first addressing safety one last time. He said safety of a vaccine can only be determined by comparing it to an inert placebo test, which has never been done for any of the vaccines on the CDC’s childhood schedule. He then referred to the failed DTaP vaccine reading directly from Boston University’s School of Public Health peer reviewed journal publication titled, “Resurgence of Whooping Cough May Owe to Vaccine’s Inability to Prevent Infections.” Bigtree went on to cite how the measles vaccine is capable of causing a vaccine-strain of measles (strain A) (See reports here & here for more information on vaccine strain measles). Bigtree ended by saying, “Many of these vaccines are not effective.”

Dr. Vanammee responded for the pro-vaccine side saying it is true that some vaccines can cause the disease that they are supposed to vaccinate for (such as polio or measles vaccine) however the numbers are extremely low. Safety of a vaccine has to be considered against the deaths caused by the diseases, not by comparing it to a saline placebo. I need to interject here – I think we want to consider *BOTH* of these when making safety decisions; not one or the other.

The pro-vaccine side continued by saying the HPV-9 vaccine is “100% effective against getting pre-cancerous cells” and that “the HPV vaccine cannot cause cancer.” They were reading from a report but I did not hear the source given. It sounded like a scientific journals publication that was funded by the pharmaceutical industry.

James Lyons-Weiler responded for the pro-Health Freedom side addressing the analogy of airbags in cars. Airbags are safe because we have a National Safety Board that makes sure car manufacturers produce a safe product. We don’t have anything like that for vaccines. The CDC’s mandate is to promote the use and sale of vaccines, so they are incapable of monitoring vaccine safety, according to Weiler. He then responded that the HPV vaccine is effective against preventing infections of HPV types 1 through 9, but there are 120 other strains, and many of those strains are rare, deadly strains. The vaccine actually causes rarer, more lethal types of HPV to sweep in. The net effect seems to be devastating increases in HPV-related cancers. Weiler recommended everyone read the phenomenal book The HPV Vaccine on Trial which has all of the scientific citations backing up this claim.

Del Bigtree added that the data coming from the World Health Organization (WHO) is biased, and cannot be trusted. He said he needs to see independent studies. (This indicated to me the data sourced on the HPV vaccine by the pro-vaccine side was coming from WHO).

Ankh Imhotep then said, “So let’s do the independent study!”

There were loud applause to this and Del Bigtree jumped up and hugged Imhotep for making this statement. After that Ankh Imhotep referenced the Institute of Medicine (IOM) as an independent scientific body that had reviewed over 12,000 peer reviewed studies in the medical literature to determine that vaccines were safe and effective.

When Ankh Imhotep was done Del Bigtree walked up to the laptop and projector with a “cat that ate the canary” smile on his face. To me it seemed as though Bigtree was quite thrilled that the IOM’s science had just been referenced.

Bigtree agreed with Imhotep that the IOM was an independent scientific body – perhaps the most respected in the world. He stated that the IOM had searched all the peer reviewed studies across the globe and found that there has never been a study comparing vaccinated children to their unvaccinated peers. The IOM also concluded the cumulative effects of every vaccine in the CDC’s schedule have never been studied. Lastly the IOM concluded that the science does not exist to determine whether or not the DTaP vaccine can cause autism.

After this Curtis Cost asked the crowd to vote on whether they felt vaccines were effective. The majority of the crowd clapped the loudest for, “No, vaccines are not effective.”

***Stay tuned – next report from The Great Harlem Vaccine Debate will deal with the Question Can you raise a healthy child without vaccines?