Month: May 2015

Just be

Mel CorriganLeave a comment

You see the posts on Facebook, read the headlines in the papers, hear the ads on television and radio. Seemingly anything of value needs to be…

The best
Ground breaking
Newest
Coolest
Rareist
Prestigious
Hype hype hype

You should make more money
You should be valued more
You should want _________

We’ve sold ourselves to the entities with the deepest pockets, deferred our authority to the premiere sociopaths. We’ve handed over our perceptions and lives to those with the audacity to tell us how to live.

What ever happened to using our own minds? What ever happened to just being?

Is it really so wrong to not want All The Things?

Is it really so wrong to be a woman, enjoying her job and un-worrying about her salary, despite the data showing that men make more?

Is it really so wrong to hang up one’s professional career to parent one’s children and pursue one’s personal interests?

Is it really so wrong to respect oneself and live one’s life according to one’s own scruples?

Is it really so wrong to __________________________?

Of course the only person who can define one’s value is oneself; deferring it to others is a choice.

Maybe the only thing anyone’s missing is nothing.

Numbers

Mel CorriganLeave a comment

At the Senate Health Committee Hearing on April 8, 2015 regarding SB277 in California, Steven Rubin, PhD (director of vaccine research analytics for the National Vaccine Information Center) testified, urging to permit vaccine waivers, given the vaccine injury statistics as captured in the VAERS database. At the time of his testimony, over 36,000 children were seriously injured (hospitalized, life-threatening injury, permanently disabled or died) by/due to vaccines since the VAERS database inception in 1986.

3,437 deaths were reported. You can see additional data in the link to his testimony below. Furthermore, you can use medalerts.org to search the VAERS database on your own.

Rubin’s statement includes a note about reporting in the VAERS database

There are nearly a half million reports in VAERS. And yet the system suffers from under-reporting, by anywhere from a factor of ten to a factor of a hundred.

More numbers

There’s been a lot of fear about measles outbreaks. No one in the US has died from the measles since 2003. But 107 people have died from the MMR vaccine alone (there are other vaccines that contain the measles antigen that I didn’t include in that search) between 2004 and May 1, 2015. Of the 107 deaths, 83 were children < 3.

In 2013, according to the CDC’s Mortality Multi-cause Micro-data Files, 10 infants (age <1) died of whooping cough (pertussis). Two adults (ages 75 and up) died of pertussis, for a total of 12 people. The CDC reported 28,639 cases of pertussis in the same year. In 2013, 62 children (ages 0-6) (plus one additional person, age not reported) died from vaccines containing the pertussis antigen, according to the VAERS database.

There ARE reasons to question the potential implications of vaccines. I don’t know if it’s fair to assert that vaccines are inherently dangerous, but at a minimum, vaccines ARE NOT safe for everyone. The dangers associated with vaccines might very well be due to individual health issues/susceptibilities/genetics. It’s indisputable that vaccinations harm more than help significant numbers of people.