My youngest is doing currently doing his Junior Year at Berklee College of Music The following is his paper on Joel Lord's article VRM: Vaccine Toxicity – Middle Ear Infections and Autism. It may be the best (yea ok, I might be a tiny bit biased) paper to refute that idiot and all those who follow him.
This article, found on “vaccineresistancemovement.org” discusses the idea that vaccines are toxic and lead to middle ear infections and to children developing autism, as well as many other dangers, like overall compromised immunity. The Vaccine Resistance Movement claims to be a non-profit organization determined to expose vaccine fraud and encourage people to stop using vaccines to ward off the dangerous viruses and diseases.
After reading the article, the main points seem to be that all CDC-recommended vaccines contain neurotoxins, such as aluminum, and chemically altered viruses, which only worsens the child’s immune system and overall health. According to the article, after 15-18 months, sufficient damage has been caused to the axons, neurons, and Myelin sheaths all throughout the brain and central nervous system. This all leads to neurological impairment, chronic auto-immune disease, and increased risk of Autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. The article also goes into the dangers of antibiotics, but I will be focusing specifically on the vaccine part of the article.
The first reason that makes me believe that this article is pseudoscience is the lack of studies or really any evidence to support the claims they make. There is plenty of in-depth explanation of their points, but no scientific studies that support their claims are included in this article. The closest thing to a source that they include are “testimonials” gathered by “anti-vax” supporters. Even with this, there is not even a name attached to any of these testimonies. For all we know, somebody could’ve written all of these out themselves over the course of a few hours. Just to show how ridiculous some of these testimonies are, here is just some examples from the article, “I have three kids of my own now, all unvaxxed, none have ever had ear infections, but then neither has my partially vaxxed nephew.” Here is one more, “I was constantly sick as a child and had many ear infections. I lived in England and was born in 78 and I believe had all the vaccinations that were recommended.” Again, there is no citing of who said these words, or when and where they were said.
The sources that they do provide at all are usually correct, but they don’t correlate with the notion that vaccines are the cause of any of these issues. For example, “The middle ear consists of the ear drum (tympanic membrane), attached to the inner ear through a delicate bone structure (malleus, incus and stapes). The middle ear bones (ossicles) and the muscles keeping them in place are the smallest in the human body. One of the major functions of the middle ear is to ensure the efficient transfer of sound from the air to the fluids in the inner ear.” There are plenty of quotes/links like this in the article, however none of these sources directly support the main claims of the article, which is that vaccines cause serious health issues.
Another interesting thing I found was this quote, “One vaccine decreases cell-mediated immunity by 50%, two vaccines by 70%...all triple vaccines (MMR, DTaP) markedly impair cell-mediated immunity, which predisposes to recurrent viral infections, especially otitis media, as well as yeast and fungi infections.” by Dr. H.H. Fudenberg, who the website claims is a world-renowned immunologist. Upon further research, I found that Fudenberg was indeed a clinical immunologist, and actually was one of the first people to claim that the vaccines cause autism. Fudenberg had is medical license revoked in 1995, after being found guilty of “engaging in dishonorable, unethical, or unprofessional conduct”. He was fined $10,000, and was ordered to surrender his license to prescribe controlled substances. He admitted to obtaining controlled substances unlawfully for his own use. Aside from this revocation, his work has been discredited by the scientific community, and his work has been cited by Andrew Wakefield’s fraudulent 1998 Lancet paper, claiming that there is a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines and autism. According to Flaherty, D. K. (2011). "The Vaccine-Autism Connection: A Public Health Crisis Caused by Unethical Medical Practices and Fraudulent Science", the proposal of a vaccine-autism link is “the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years.”
In conclusion, this article does not have any supporting evidence for their claims. There are no official studies that are shown to support their ideas, the closest thing they have to providing a reliable source is Dr. Fudenberg, who has been proven to not be a credible immunologist. This article falls under the category of pseudoscience because it is presented as scientific, but does not have the scientific research to back up their claims.
This article is geared towards parents, more specifically parents with very young kids. The author of this article is trying to convince these parents that if they vaccinate their kids, there will be long term health issues. This is bad because the parents that do believe this article and others like it will put their kids at risk of getting these diseases, and even spreading it to other people.
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