Heidi Stevenson
Gaia Health
04/19/2010
Have you ever heard of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)? In all likelihood, you haven’t, though you’ve probably had it. You or your parents most likely called it a cold. Now though, there’s an RSV vaccine on the horizon, so the fear mongering is starting. Of course, to back up the fear, a study was done to give the impression that the disease is terrible. It was funded by vaccine promoters.
The Lancet has just published the study, which was financed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO is now being examined for its handling of the swine flu so-called pandemic. They stand accused of being in bed with pharmaceutical corporations to promote the use of vaccines. One of the Gates Foundation’s primary goals is to promote vaccines.
The loss of lives to any disease is tragic. However, things must be kept in perspective. People whose health is already compromised may be helped, but that benefit needs to be balanced against the risks and even the costs. If a life is saved from one thing, that does not mean it’s saved from others. In fact, the history of drugs and vaccines shows that, for any benefit, there is often as much, or even more, lost. That is the primary objection that needs to be raised before any new drug is applied—especially when the issue is meting a vaccine out to everyone, especially tiny babies, as in the case of an RSV jab.
So, it should come as no surprise that the study’s results refer to RSV in terms that imply a severe problem. The article refers to its “global burden”. Because it’s a mild disease in normally healthy people, it focuses on developing nations. The study’s result was, of course, a foregone conclusion:
“The development of novel prevention and treatment strategies should be accelerated as a priority.”
The fear mongering has already started. BBC News has reported on HSV, describing it as “the single largest cause of lung infection in children”. That sounds so very terrible, but the reality isn’t necessarily so bad. After all, if you have a chesty cough, you have a lung infection. Do you automatically panic over it? Usually, such infections are referred to as the common cold.
RSV is a common disease at all ages. Unlike most viruses, which provide lifetime immunity after infection, only limited immunity occurs. It’s usually a mild disease, generally called a cold. In those with weakened immune systems, such as premature babies, it can be a serious disease, even leading to death. However, that happens in only a minuscule percentage of cases.
The Lancet focused on a single year, 2005. The authors reported that, worldwide, 66,000-199,000 children under age 5 died from RSV that year. This was misreported by BBC as simply 200,000 deaths in children under 5 worldwide, with the claim that it’s an annual figure, though the study was clear in pointing out that it referred only to a single year. Only 1% of these deaths occur in industrialized modern nations. The rest happen in the developing world, where malnutrition, lack of water, and poor sanitation are rampant. In other words, health is already compromised.
Rather than focusing on the most obvious issue relating to deaths from RSV, poor health from lack of the basic needs, the goal is to trot out a new vaccine. To have it accepted requires that people in the wealthier nations see it as a good thing—and that requires developing a hefty fear of the disease.
Big Pharma is brilliant at manipulating the media and creating false impressions through the use of phony grassroots groups and bribing researchers and doctors. They’ve already started to create an atmosphere of fear around the respiratory syncytial virus and its cold-like symptoms.
Once the vaccine is routinely administered to small children in industrialized nations—at enormous profits, of course—it can be pushed on impoverished people elsewhere. Of course, one must question who will bear the cost—but there can be little doubt. The WHO’s budget ultimately comes from the wealthier countries, and that means you and me.
Through all of this, consideration for safety will be nonexistent among the producers of the vaccine or the mainstream media or government agencies pushing it or mainstream medicine administering it. Those who express safety concerns will be marginalized, as always. Bit by painful bit, the truth will come out. But how long will it take? The experience of the last hundred years suggests that no amount of ill health or lives damaged will curtail Big Pharma from making its profits.