Orthodox Reflections

Have you seen the new definition in the Merriam Webster dictionary (online version) of the term “anti-vaxxer”? Here it is below:

According to the new dictionary definition, if you oppose some vaccines, even if not opposed to vaccination in general, you are now an “anti-vaxxer”. Same goes for being pro-vaccine, but in favor of voluntary, informed consent as opposed to mandates. To be in the “mainstream”, according to the dictionary, you must uncritically support the uptake of any treatment labeled a “vaccine”, along with fully endorsing any regulations and mandates pertaining to it.

We recently published an article by an Orthodox Christian and pharma insider called, “The Differences in Risk-Benefit Analysis and Ethics of Targeted vs Mass Population Medicine”. The number one question we got on that article – why did you publish something like that? Let us explain in light of the current state of allowable discussion concerning medical topics.

In the article, the author gives details of two drugs he supports which are examples of “targeted treatments”. In other words, they are given to people who are already sick. In the case of these two drugs, the patients are very sick. The drugs have substantial potential side effects, including the possibility of death. However, the risk-benefit ratio, in the author’s opinion, is still in favor of treatment because the drugs represent much better chances at positive outcomes than just letting serious diseases run their course.

The author then discusses Gardasil, a vaccine and a classic example of “mass population medicine” as favored by Public Health:

According to the manufacturer’s website, Gardasil “can help protect your child from certain types of HPV-related cancers that may affect them later in life.“(6) Gardasil is injected into healthy young girls, at an age when the vast majority are not sexually active, to protect them against a disease strain they may never encounter, and which if they did, would not necessarily cause them any harm.

 

Criticisms have been made towards the Gardasil vaccine for its misleading trial results, improper placebos, and reported cases of infertility, neurological disorders, and increased susceptibility to other HPV-related cervical carcinomas. The vaccine actually makes it more likely to develop cervical carcinoma from HPV strains that the vaccine does not protect against. It is also worth noting that not all cervical carcinomas arise from HPV.

 

Clearly, any rational risk-benefit analysis would conclude that it is unacceptable to inject millions of school-aged girls with this drug. Any potential adverse reactions would easily outweigh the very modest potential benefits.

The author’s primary point in contrasting these two types of interventions (targeted versus mass population) is summed up in the quote below:

Specific targeted treatments usually present a favorable risk-benefit ratio, where the benefits outweigh the potential side effects and toxicity. This is because the treatment is targeted toward individuals who are already suffering from a specific disease and have a high likelihood of developing severe consequences without treatment. In the case of a severe disease, even a substantial risk of toxicity could be acceptable if the treatment can cure a debilitating or potentially fatal disease. However, when it comes to treatments for large populations, such as vaccines, we must consider the potential risks and side effects in a different manner entirely. This is because the intervention is not targeted toward individuals who are already suffering from a specific disease, but rather toward a population that may not necessarily even need the intervention. In the case of most mass treatments, almost any toxicity would be unjustifiable as there was nothing wrong with the individuals from the beginning, nor is there is any certainty that anything will ever be wrong with them.

If there is any serious risk at all of side effects, then you can’t force healthy people to take a medical intervention such as a vaccine. That is not only immoral, it is also illogical as the risk-benefit calculation is clearly opposed to widespread use. You can easily be doing more harm than good. If you offer a “mass population” intervention, such as a vaccine, to individuals on a voluntary basis – then you must thoroughly and honestly disclose possible side effects and provide a realistic appraisal of potential benefits. When the risks and benefits of Gardasil are properly explained, many parents opt to forego it for their children. Which is why the manufacturer has gone to such lengths to have it mandated, thus taking the decision completely out of the hands of parents and their doctors.

The article differentiating targeted versus mass population medicine is a very mild discussion by an industry insider who is not anti-pharmaceutical, not anti-vaccine, and does not reject germ theory. The article even calls for an expansion of public funding for developing more so-called “Orphan Drugs”. Yet, because the author questioned the risk-benefit calculation of a particular vaccine, the new terms of medical debate will label him an “anti-vaxxer”. His reasoned approach will be written off as “extremism”.

This is where we find ourselves. That is what we were trying to highlight by publishing the original article. It is not that we have a very narrow window of debate on mass population medicine available to us. The truth is that we have no window of debate whatsoever.  The Public Health / Big Pharma complex seems intent on enforcing a new type of medical orthodoxy in which one is either a believer or a heretic, with precious little ground in between.

In the original article, the author intentionally chose the Gardasil vaccine as an example, rather than the COVID shots. He did this for three reasons. First, he was trying to illustrate issues with mass population medicine in a way not overshadowed by the politics and the emotional posturing surrounding the mRNA shots. Second, he wanted to avoid the new technology issue. mRNA injections are not classical vaccines, and any discussion of them can easily end up focused on the technology and not the principles. Third, the author wanted to make it clear that vaccine controversies well predate the current COVID “crisis”.

The author mentioned misleading trial results and improper placebo with respect to Gardasil. He barely scratched the surface of the issues concerning vaccines in specific, and many pharmaceutical products in general. Fortunately, other authors are stepping up to make us aware of the awful ways in which vaccines are currently developed, tested, marketed, and tracked.

The following is from a review of the book Turtles All The Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth. For those who are unfamiliar with vaccine development, the information below and in the book will be shocking. Everything you thought you know about this topic is, in fact, a lie:

According to the authors, such vaccine trials are not conducted against true placebos such as saline solutions, but only against previously approved vaccines. So a new treatment is considered safe if its rate of harmful side-effects is no worse than those of previously approved versions rather than no treatment at all, an illogical approach that seems to make little sense. Thus, the supposed safety and efficacy of current vaccines has only been established relative to a long series of their predecessors, often stretching back decades, and this constitutes the “Turtles All the Way Down” metaphor of the book’s title. This sort of very simple factual claim seems unlikely to have been made unless it were actually true.

 

Surprisingly enough, the tested rate of adverse vaccine side-effects is sometimes quite significant. For example, during the clinical trials of the Prevnar vaccine, about 6% of the 17,000 infants tested needed emergency room visits and 3% required hospitalization. But because the previous vaccine used for comparison purposes had similarly high rates of negative side-effects, Prevnar was judged safe and effective, a shocking verdict.

 

There are also cases in which no previously approved version of the vaccine existed for use in such a comparison trial, and one might naturally assume that the only possible choice would be to use a true placebo such a saline solution. Yet as Turtles reveals, in that situation a deliberately crippled version of the vaccine itself is given to the other half of the trial population, a compound which could not provide any benefits but would still probably produce all the same adverse side-effects. The most plausible reason for this strange methodology would be to mask the existence of those adverse side-effects, thereby ensuring the vaccine’s approval.

 

Turtles summarizes this outrageous situation by stating that each year tens of millions of vaccine doses are administered to infants and toddlers in America, and not a single one of them has ever been tested in clinical trials against an inert placebo. None of this proves that any of these vaccines are dangerous, but it certainly raises that serious possibility.

 

At this point the authors raised a very simple question. The easiest and most convincing means of demonstrating that vaccines are actually safe and beneficial with few serious side-effects, would obviously be to conduct a large randomized trial study comparing the total health consequences of vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals, what they call a “Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated” (VU) study. Yet according to Turtles, no such study has ever been conducted: “It seems inexplicable that VU studies have not been initiated by the vaccine establishment for so many years.”

Clearly, even in the best of times, there is reason to question the current development and testing system, which is obviously rigged in favor of finding potential vaccines “safe”. Procedural safeguards seem to be weak at best. Under a period of intense political pressure as seen during COVID, even those minimal standards appear to have ceased functioning altogether. From The Epoch Times:

U.S. regulators sped up the approval of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to enable vaccine mandates, according to newly released emails.

 

Pfizer and BioNTech asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in May 2021 to approve their vaccine. Regulators said publicly that the review of the Biologics License Application would likely be done by January 2022, but behind the scenes top agency officials were pushing the Office of Vaccines Research and Review (OVRR) to quickly complete the review.

 

Dr. Marion Gruber, the head of the office at the time, and her deputy Dr. Phil Krause outlined in a memorandum that the review could not be done before Sept. 15, 2021, according to one of the newly released messages.

 

While that was longer than desired, “OVRR believes that public confidence in COVID-19 vaccines would not be served by rushing our review and evaluation of the submitted data,” Gruber wrote in an email to Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting FDA commissioner, and Dr. Peter Marks, another top official at the agency. The email summarized a July 19, 2021, meeting involving Gruber, Krause, Woodcock, and Marks.

 

During the meeting, Woodcock and Marks “expressed concern about rising COVID-19 cases … and stated your opinion that, absent a license, states cannot require mandatory vaccination and that people hesitant to get an EUA authorized vaccine would be more inclined to get immunized when the product is licensed,” according to Gruber.

 

The vaccines at the time were under emergency use authorization, which generally doesn’t allow mandates. Approved vaccines can be mandated in certain scenarios.

 

“Previously, one could infer that there was a coupling between regulatory decisions and political expediency. But with these emails, you see the smoking gun,” Dr. Robert Malone, who helped invent the messenger RNA technology that Pfizer’s vaccine uses, told The Epoch Times.

Do the regulators control the Pharma companies, or do the Pharma companies control the regulators?

Over the past few decades, we have seen an explosion in chronic illnesses at younger and younger ages, including asthma, autism, ADHD, obesity, rare cancers becoming more common, Type 2 Diabetes, and even lowered sperm counts in young men who should be at the height of their virility. In the post-COVID shot era, many areas with high mRNA uptake are seeing troubling numbers of excess deaths. In such an environment, everything should be questioned.

Unfortunately, the Public Health / Medical / Pharma / Media Complex and its Woke allies appear willing to go to extreme lengths to prevent any discussion of our ongoing medical crises at all. This includes trying to cancel a Super Hero actor for questioning Pfizer on Twitter, taking away medical licenses of doctors who dared question the COVID narrative, and even passing a law to control the free speech of medical professionals in California. Without the freedom to research, debate, and question – medical science will simply stop progressing. Drugs and treatments that should be developed, won’t be. Important safety signals will be lost, causing millions to needlessly suffer, perhaps even die, as a result of treatments that never should have been sent to market. Such stifling of discussion is not “Science”, it is the anti-thesis of it.
This is all deeply immoral. The most shocking part is the support given to this authoritarianism by so many average people. Many modern humans appear terrified of death, ideologically blinkered into blindly following their “team”, and mentally enslaved to a false religion known as Scientism.  Orthodox Christians, with their commitment to authentic revelation as preserved in the Orthodox Church, must stand against this corrupt system with an absolute dedication to finding and defending the truth.

Irene is an Orthodox Christian and a clinical educator with decades of experience. In cooperation with her husband, she is able to work part time and homeschool her children.