Robert De Niro
The monied medical establishment won a victory this week in its fight against the anti-vaccine movement. Just a day after he urged a showing of the film Vaxxed at the Tribeca Film Festival, Robert De Niro bowed to scientists’ pressure to remove it. DeNiro co-founded the festival.
The movie, directed by anti-vaccine activist Dr. Andrew Wakefield, accused the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of covering up the risk of autism from vaccinations for measles, mumps and rubella. The scientific community has debunked the risk.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield
De Niro, whose child is autistic, said he met with the festival team and science bigwigs, and “we do not believe it contributes to or furthers the discussion I had hoped for.”
De Niro needed an expert on the other side of the argument to level the playing field. Someone like, say, Dr. David Brownstein, an internationally renowned holistic doctor from Michigan. Gee, what’s that sound I hear? Any time a doctor goes against the dogma of the medical establishment, the quacking that erupts is louder than a flock of ducks shotgunned out of a marsh.
Brownstein versus vaccines
Dr. David Brownstein
The scientists had me convinced the alleged connection between MMR vaccinations and autism was merely a conspiracy theory without foundation. Then I read Dr. Brownstein’s take on the controversy, and I reconsidered my belief. I have much faith in this physician from following advice in his newsletter on three health issues. I had severe leg cramps while in bed in the morning, and increased my use of sea salt in my meals. The cramps all but disappeared. I was getting up to urinate every two to three hours during the night, and took a product he developed called Prostate Revive. After three months, I began getting up only once, occasionally after seven hours. After having given up on several probiotics, I tried his Bactipro, and it works like a charm.
Brownstein said in his newsletter a year ago that Dr. Wakefield’s research found the measles virus in the lymph tissue of 12 autistic children. Wakefield reasoned that vaccines could be causing the gut inflammation that most autistic kids have. Later, the CDC changed data from a 2004 study supporting Wakefield’s findings, Brownstein said. In 2014, one of the authors of the CDC paper countering Wakefield’s discovery blew the whistle and said the paper was a fraud – that there was indeed a clear link between getting the MMR vaccine at an early age and autism.
“Perhaps Dr. Wakefield’s research was fraudulent,” Brownstein wrote. “(I have studied it and I don’t think it is.)” Until the truth of the CDC paper is known, we can’t be certain whether the MMR vaccine is safe for children, he said.
Scientist seconds the motion
Another authority, Dr. Helen Ratajczak, wrote a paper suggesting that the introduction of DNA from fetal tissue into vaccines significantly increased the risk of autism developing. She is a former scientist for a pharmaceutical firm. She said that DNA in vaccines can get into the host DNA, thus causing the immune system to fight against the cells with the imported DNA. This could start a never-ending inflammatory response that leads to chronic illnesses, including autoimmune diseases and allergies. Brownstein thinks that could be why so many children have severe allergies to foods such as peanuts.
Dr. Helen Ratajczak
But Brownstein concedes the MMR vaccinations’ effectiveness in combating these diseases. As to whether that overrides any risk of getting autism from them, he says it doesn’t. The scientific medical community maintains that unvaccinated children can pass measles onto other children. The doctor rhetorically asked how, if the so-called experts were correct in their claim of more than 95 percent effectiveness, vaccinated children would contract the disease. And vaccinated children excrete the live virus in the injection, which can infect others, he said.
Further, despite a measles vaccination rate of more than 91 percent in the United States, a measles outbreak occurs every few years, Brownstein noted. Measles can cause serious problems, including death from brain inflammation, yet serious complications are rare in the developed world. He ascribes this to advanced sanitation, sewage removal and other healthy living conditions that haven’t taken hold in poor countries.
Though medical authorities point to a significantly lower death rate from measles since the advent of a vaccine, Brownstein counters that measles deaths were rapidly declining before mass vaccination began – by more than 98 percent from 1900 to 1963.
Immunity for life
Brownstein holds that children’s immune systems need to be strengthened with infections, which render them immune from these diseases for life. On the other hand, vaccinations are good for only 10 years, and must be repeated to remain effective, he said. Girls who get measles, and have children as adults, pass their immunity to those children.
Hillary Clinton
In his medical practice, Brownstein said, “I’ve had too many parents tell me that their children were healthy until receiving a vaccine – often the MMR vaccine. Later the children developed regressive autism.” If vaccines are safe, he asked, why was a vaccine injury court established to compensate persons harmed by vaccines? And why has the rate of autism grown to almost one in fifty children?
He called on politicians such as Hillary Clinton to refrain from echoing false news media information about vaccines. Instead, they should use their influence to demand answers from the CDC.
But the doctor said he was not trying to persuade parents not to vaccinate their children. He simply wants the powers that be to back off from criticizing parents who choose not to vaccinate. Freedom of choice, he noted, “is what our country was founded on.”
